MarketingSherpa reports that on average consumers are taking 34 hours from click to conversion. That’s up from 19 hours—180% as long as their original study in 2005 indicated. The full report on time to conversion is expected tomorrow from ScanAlert.
As MarketingSherpa President Anne Holland noted, this finding indicates how important it is for marketers to mearsure longer conversion cycles than just click-buy.
Noting that every page is a landing page these days, MarketingSherpa also offered four suggestions to improve the conversion cycle:
- Add “About Us” blurbs to every conceivable entry point
- Grab emails early on — before the shopping cart
- Content: give more product info than the competition does
- Exclusive here-only bonuses
Oddly enough, some of these suggestions contravene conventional landing page advice, especially #1. Just today, the Copywriting Maven (writing on Copyblogger) did a copywriting makeover on SEOmoz’s Premium Membership page. Her first recommendation?
1. Remove all the extraneous material from the most valuable real estate on your landing page – the area “above the fold”, the visitor’s first screen view.
Eliminate all the sign-ins, search and navigational links. They are all reasons and exits from the landing page and your message.
(I do have to insert here that I’m such a such a spelling stickler that putting a capital ‘M’ in SEOmoz probably bugs me more than it does Rand Fishkin.)
Who’s right?
