By now you’re probably aware of the importance of optimizing your site for conversions. Conversions are the ultimate goal of any web campaign, no matter what you’re doing. For businesses, conversions mean placing orders, signing up to newsletters, etc. But the process itself is a tricky one. Optimizing a website to maximize conversions involves performing dozens of little experiments.
One of the most important considerations for optimization is geo-targeting. With a dot-com suffix at the end of your URL, you could attract customers from all over the world. They’ll all have their own cultural expectations. And they’ll expect you to change the language and currency to suit them.
Geo-targeting is the process of making sure the content you’re serving up is suitable for any particular customer. Customer location is identified using WiFi or GPS. And then your site or mobile app gives them the content that is relevant to them. You can see this sort of thing in action across a bunch of international businesses. Go on the Hertz website in Singapore, and you’ll be greeted by a group of smiling international women. Go on the same site, but in Chile, and you’ll get a picture of a coconut.
Ask any software development company, and they’ll tell you that geo-targeting is important. It’s a way of making websites and mobile apps respond to a customer’s location and likely needs. And even subtle differences in location specific settings can have remarkable conversion results.
But actually finding out what works and what doesn’t can be tricky. So what should you experiment with to boost conversions with geo-targeting?
Play With Visual Elements
Playing around with visual elements can make a big difference to conversions. The way that visitors with different cultural backgrounds interpret bright colors can differ significantly. For instance, if you are trying to market a holiday business in the UK, you’d present customers with bright colors. In Britain, something like 70 percent of days are overcast. That means that there’s a yearning for blue skies and warm, golden sand. In Hawaii, they get that all the time. So there, you’d want to the focus on the imagery to be different. Perhaps you’d show people images of great European cultural monuments to get them excited about holidays.
It’s also worth noting that visual elements aren’t the only way companies experiment with location. Some companies, like Skype, alter their deals and discounts, depending on location. In some cultures, massive discounting and bundle deals are the norm. In others, they’re not. So even the type of discount you offer can make a big difference to conversion rates.
Marketing Based On Location
The cool thing about geo-targeting is that it enables businesses to vary their marketing by location. Say, for instance, you want to market a product in Russia. It’d be no good for your ad coming up in English to a Russian-speaking audience. They’d see it and just think it was spam. Instead, your marketing has to get specific and meet customer needs. This is where marketing based on location, or match marketing comes in. With match marketing, you can add geo-functionality to your site or your app. Once you’ve done this, you can tailor your advert depending on where somebody is.
You don’t have to do geo-targeting just through a regular browser either. Let’s say that your customer has your app on their mobile device. If they have their location turned on, you can track them as they make their way through a city. If you’ve got a location nearby, you can let them know directly through their mobile app. They can then use your app to find your location, place an order or just get more information. The point here is that the advertising is relevant to their location, meaning you’re much more likely to convert.
Match The Currency
If you run an ecommerce store, you’ll know a lot about listing prices. But are you truly maximizing sales by listing only in one currency? Probably not. You might suspect that international customers are put off by your store if you only use the domestic currency. If that’s your hypothesis, then it’s time to conduct a little experiment. Split your customers into two groups using A/B testing. Send half to the version of your site or mobile app that displays the domestic currency. And send half to your site that displays the local currency. Then track conversions and see if it makes a difference. Did the conversion rates spike when you used local currencies? Almost certainly.
