On BNR

Notes from a business radio appearance on effective websites and where marketing budgets actually go.

The central claim

Most businesses do not have a traffic problem; they have a conversion and measurement problem. Spending more to send more people to a page that converts badly is an expensive way to avoid the real work. See conversion optimisation.

What the interviewer pushed back on

The reasonable objection: if you cannot measure it, how do you know the budget is not simply being spent badly? The answer is that you start by making the funnel legible before you spend a penny on optimisation, which is why funnel mapping comes first.

Takeaways

The three points worth repeating

• Define the job the website is doing, in revenue terms
• Instrument the funnel before optimising any part of it
• Judge suppliers on what happens when the estimate is wrong