In response to a conversion analytics article we wrote awhile back, one of our readers recently asked:

As the Founder and President of a breast cancer foundation, I wonder if you can comment on how you might use conversion analytics to determine success for an enterprise, such as mine, that is not selling product but ideas and calls to action.

The short answer is that Conversion Analytics focuses on measuring and increasing the number of people who complete a desired action, as well as increasing the quality of each action. The desired action does not need to be a sale, and can be anything like donating, volunteering, sponsoring, or learning. Conversion Analytics and Optimization can help you measure and increase the rate at which people complete this action.

For the long answer, I’ve included a quick recap on how Conversion Analytics works for businesses, and then translated that into conversion analytics and optimization for non-profits. As always, our search visibility and conversion optimization team is always available to help, and even though we currently work mostly with businesses, most of us got our start in the non-profit world and so we understand its many unique needs and challenges.

Conversion Analytics for Business: A Quick Recap

In business terms, there are two things that we want to increase: First, we want to increase the percentage of our website visitors that buy a product. But not all sales are equal and so for our second goal we also want to increase the percentage of visitors that buy multiple products, or that buy more profitable products. We’ll call this Tier 1 and Tier 2 conversions.

Tier 1 conversions are just getting people in the door and buying things. This can be increased through SEO, on-website design, landing page optimization, and a couple other techniques. Tier 2 conversions focus on increasing the value of each sale – either by encouraging people to buy more products, or to buy more value products. This is commonly seen on websites as "people who bought this product also bought these products."

Conversion Analytics for Non-Profits

Non-profits usually do not sell products. But, non-profits still have a call to action –an action that you need people to take in order for the organization to be effective.

This could include things such as:

• Corporate sponsorships (monetary, underwriting, supply donations, etc)

• Receiving grants, endowments or other government "sponsorships"

• Private donations or fundraising

• Increasing the number of volunteers or volunteer hours

• Increasing attendance and participation at public fundraisers

• Event attendance (rallies, hearings, meetings, etc)

• Networking lists (for disseminating a message or educational material)

• Participation of those being served (soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc)

The standard argument is that in order to increase the number of something (donations, for example), that you must increase the number of people that donate. While this definitely can be true, there is an alternative method.

Increasing the number of people you reach is usually done through SEO, SEM and Web Marketing strategies. However, you can also increase the amount of donations received through Conversion Optimization, which seeks to increase the conversion rate of your current audience. This focuses on increasing the impact your message has on your already existing audience. In business, we called this "increasing the quality" of each lead or sale. But for non-profits, it means getting more people to act without having to reach out to a larger audience. It is optimizing your message and web content to enable and encourage people to act.

Like in business, we can break down our goal into two tiers.

Tier 1 Conversions:

Tier 1 Conversion focuses on increasing the percentage of visitors that become customers. Or in the case of non-profits, increasing the percentage of donors, sponsors, volunteers, participants or advocates. Generally conversion rates are fairly small (around 5%) for most ecommerce sites, which means that only 1 out of every 20 visitors will actually complete the requested action.

For example, if you want to double your donations in a month, you can either double the traffic to your site, or you can double the percentage of visitors that donate.

Increasing traffic to your site focuses on influencing factors beyond your website, and generally takes a longer amount of time to implement and improve. Increasing conversion rates focuses almost entirely on factors within your website, which can be more easily deployed, tested and improved. The benefit to increasing your conversion rates, rather than increasing traffic, is that it is something that you can more directly control.

In ideal situations, you would push both sides and implement the best strategies for increasing traffic, as well as implementing the best techniques for increasing conversions. However, it is important to note that even these two approaches are closely related, they do have many important distinctions.

Tier 2 Conversions

In many cases, quality matters more than quantity. For non-profits, we’ll look at two examples: volunteers and asset donations.

With volunteers, quality matters. Or course, quantity helps too. But every non-profit I have worked with seems to have a very strong core of dedicated volunteers. They are skilled, motivated, dedicated and committed to the success of their cause. A tier 2 conversion seeks to increase the number of "regular" volunteers that become core-volunteers, ideally without reducing the number of total volunteers.

For example, instead of a group of regular (well motivated, but inexperienced) volunteers helping at an animal shelter, recruiting an experienced veterinarian to volunteer can have a huge impact, both in terms of the skills and services they can provide, and in terms saving you the cost of services that you would otherwise have to pay for.

One veterinarian volunteer should have a much larger impact than a regular volunteer. The goal of tier 2 conversions might be modifying your message or part of your website to attract and convert a higher number of veterinarians. However, other tier 2 strategies might include increasing the number of hours that each person volunteers, or increasing the number of times that they return and volunteer.

The other quality example is with asset donations. While in college, I helped coordinate item donations for a local non-profit. We accepted almost any used item – clothes, appliances, books, etc— which were then sold to raise funds. Starting out, we received a lot of junk, as people were looking for a tax write-off by donating things they would otherwise have thrown away.

However, by redesigning and redeploying to focus on quality goods, we were able to vastly increase the effectiveness of the donation service. The number of donations did not immediately increase, but the quality of each donation did. We had local business donate their stock as things went out of season. This meant that instead of trying to store and resell junk, we could keep things well organized and sell things that were new or practically new, which helped exceed our goals.

These types of tier 2 conversions can have an equally large impact and generally focus on creating larger conversions.

Some Common Questions

Q: Are tier two conversions better than tier one conversions, or vice-versa?

A: Not necessarily. It really depends on where you are in your business. At some point, you will begin to plateau in your ability to drive new traffic to your site, and in your ability to convert that traffic into some type of customer or donor or volunteer, etc (Tier 1 conversions). At that point, it will become more important to focus on tier 2 conversions, but I would almost never say that you should focus on one type at the expense of another. They should work together to provide a comprehensive solution.

Q: Where can I learn about specific strategies for increasing conversions, or conversion optimization?

A: A good place to start might be our own blog, or just look around online. There are tons of resources, and usually most areas have some sort of user group that meets regularly. Try finding your nearest Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), or other web professional group.

Also, we have written a few articles here (and will continue to provide conversion optimization and SEO insights.) You can check out a few of our conversion optimization articles on our blog. Or, if you have specific questions, please let us know, or leave a comment below!

Q: What is the difference between SEO and Conversion Optimization?

A: In very basic terms, SEO seeks to increase traffic, and Conversion Optimization seeks to increase the percentage of that traffic that commits to action. Both techniques are generally used to increase the effectiveness of a website. Conversion Analytics is the data and measurement side of Conversion Optimization, and helps you make informed decisions about future changes or improvements.

Q: What type of Conversion Optimization consulting do you provide at Amadeus Consulting?

A: Amadeus Consulting is primarily a custom software development company. As such, we have become very skilled in working the "data end" of conversion optimization, and we take a very measurement and results driven approach. Also, we are able to implement and monitor everything, not just offer consulting advice. You can visit our site to learn more about our Search Visibility and Conversion Strategy Consulting Services, or contact us directly.