R.O.I. MEDIA

What do information architecture, conversion funnels and onsite SEO all have in common and why should I care? Well on one hand, every one of these three topics can be extremely complicated if you dissect them in detail by themselves, but putting together the answer to this is question is in essence fairly simple.

You see, when you combine all three of these scientific digital systems the effect on your business can be astounding. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, all three of these factors fit perfectly into one another to compliment and execute the all important functions of turning your website visitors into buying customers – but not just one-time customers, no, you want these valuable customers to become loyal repeat customers that regularly visit and hang onto every word on every blog post. You also want them to open and read every email you send, and then after you’ve offered valuable high quality information and products, they must purchase from you again and again.

Why is it that many online entrepreneurs sometimes miss the plot when trying to create a start-up venture, and then slap together a 10-20 page website, put on a buy now button and wonder why they’re not making any sales? Well as some people say “the Devil is in the Details” and if you don’t carefully breakdown the specifics of the whole business model, website architecture and purpose beforehand, then you could very well end up with big problems and empty pockets.

Let’s start by defining the meanings behind these three principles.

Information Architecture –In laymen’s, this could be summed up as intelligent systems and software that are designed to effectively and accurately carry out their individually designed purpose, and offer an environment (like a website) that’s easy to use and simple to understand and navigate.

Conversion Funnels – This marketing phrase is used to describe the process whereby a visitor navigates through your e-commerce designed site to fulfil an order or purchase of a product.

Onsite SEO – This is the process whereby a website goes through a rigorous website check to improve its overall architecture so that the website is targeted for both search engines and targeted customers. To gain improved rankings, search engines are designed to look for various key factors which when crawled will help your website go up in the search results.

“The core focus point here is to establish the fact that no matter how much traffic you receive to your website, if it’s not properly designed and optimised for search engines and visitors you’re just simply not going to make as many sales as you’d like.”

Always do your research beforehand and discuss what you want your site to achieve and how you want the visitor to travel and navigate though your site. This will assist in helping them make their way to the purchase or order page.

A simple example of a conversion funnel is featured below. The whole point of optimising your conversion funnel is to see where most of your visitors are leaving at the “Exit “pages and optimise those pages based on keyword rich content, and also make them as relevant as possible to your visitors.


On that note, you can see how crucial it is to have a strong focus towards onsite optimisation in terms of not only SEO, but also create your information architecture to make it simple and easy for visitors to navigate through your site. Sign up to Google Analytics and set up goal and conversion funnels that empowers you to optimise your business model from the get go. Keep an eye on those exit pages and constantly see how you can improve those pages to make them convert your visitors into buyers more effectively.

Another important note to make on exit pages is to also have a focus on capturing your visitors email information so that if they don’t want to purchase something today, you can always market helpful and valuable information to them through email marketing and convert on that customer in the future.

Still think onsite SEO is fruitless or pointless? No? Didn’t think so. There’s an old saying that’s quite apt here: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Keep that in mind when you’re designing your new website or editing your existing one.

Some useful resources:
http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2010/07/26/the-complete-guide-to-search-engine-optimization-and-social-media-marketing/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo
http://www.seobook.com/link-building-flowchart.pdf