So the inevitable question comes along - why?
Here is a list of possible reasons - may not be exhaustive but its a good start.
1) wrong target audience
It may be that the target audience is wrong and we could be buying the wrong media. So even though there are click through from media to the microsite, but if the message is not what the audience expect, they will just close the browser or exit elsewhere.
2) Poor site loading time
If the site is heavy (e.g. flash), then the visitors may exit or close the browser. Different countries may have different patient level to wait for the site to load.
3) Poor internet connection speed / interruption
Some countries could be running on a lower bandwidth / lower internet speed, so it affects the loading speed of the site. Or even there could be a instance of connection drop (e.g. earthquake under the sea bed affected internet cables) - however such incidents typically will not last a few days.
4) Disconnect between media and microsite
Sometimes the message /look and feel on the media differ from the landing site, then the visitor may be confuse and leave the site.
If the media message is promotion but when visit comes to the landing site, the message is value proposition, then that will be a total disconnect.
5) Fake visitors
In certain countries, there are paid underground syndicates that just click on media to boost the cost per click, hence driving up the exit rate when it comes to the microsite.
If you have any other reasons, please share with me.
Hi Thomas,
ReplyDeleteWhat are your conversion objectives? Is it registration, white paper downloading, webinar viewing? You may find if you analyse your data beyond the initial landing results you may be achieving better goals than first seen. If your conversion goals are also under performing, then a drill down analysis of segmented visitors (for example by your distinct media channels) might shed some light into what is happening.
After this analysis my recommendation would be to generate some content / action based hypotheses and start some testing - I've seen with clients that very mall changes to content (such as repositioning of a CTA or modification of messaging) can lead to huge improvements in performance.
Cheers, J
http://twitter.com/insightr
hi James, thanks for your comment. my conversion objective is clicking on the redemption link on the microsite to go to another redemption site. I agree with you that we should look beyond landing site exit rate to study conversion. however high exit rate indicates possibly media dollar wastage... hence exit rate is still a key metric to study. I also agree with your recommendation of making minor changes of CTA/ messaging.
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