Engage and convert site visitors, or just convert?

Call me old-school, but when it comes to web marketing, I know of only three goals: acquire, convert, retain. In case this needs explaining: get visitors to come to your online property, make them buy stuff (or download, register, reserve or do whatever conversion means to your business), and then make them come back for more. Acquire, convert, retain – the three goals that make up your online visitor lifecycle.

But recently I attended a webinar that introduced a forth term, engage, that was tucked neatly between acquire and convert.

They told me I had to adopt a new paradigm:

• Acquire: get visitors to your site
• Engage: let them interact with your site and with whatever other online stuff you have
• Convert: seal the deal with those engaged
• Retain: develop a lasting relationship with the converted

I tell you, when I saw that I fell to my knees. I was dumbstruck. I was like Greenspan seeing the world he thought he knew suddenly collapsing before his eyes. Bye-bye, old paradigm, the time for change has come!

Before we all order our individual crates of new kool-aid, and at the risk of encroaching on melodrama, let me merely whisper that --

THIS IS THE CRAZIEST IDEA I’VE HEARD IN A LONG, LONG WHILE!

(Sorry, had to get it out of my system.)

With all due respect, this is not a terribly smart idea. It is even potentially dangerous.

And before you start lecturing me about visitor engagement -- yes, I know all about it. I know it’s here. I know it’s becoming part and parcel of every online interaction. With all the new Web 2.0 gadgetry arriving daily on the scene, people have come to expect some fun and play before business is conducted.

“What do you mean ‘sign up now for a three-year contract’? We’ve just been introduced. Step aside and let me play your apps.”

I get it, it’s the virtual foreplay that’s imposed on us all. Rushing to close the deal is so politically incorrect now, oh so vulgar.

Fine. But removing engagement from conversion? Do you see what’s going on here?

It’s not enough that the website is already removed as it is from the core functions of the business, now we are asked to separate online conversion from engagement?

Are you kidding me?

People, we cannot have competing objectives on the website -- some focused on engagement and others on conversion. True, the website can meet different needs of different audiences or visitor segments, but it must have one overarching objective at any given time and that objective is conversion.

Engagement is subservient to conversion. Because conversion is often difficult to achieve (it may require monetary, emotional or other forms of commitment from the visitor), websites can and often do employ one or more engagement tactics that, together, push the visitor closer and close towards conversion, until it’s finally achieved.

But engagement does not exist for its own benefit. It is not an end, but merely a means to an end.

Once we elevate engagement and put it on equal footing with acquisition, conversion and retention, we run the risk of investing time, energy, attention and resources on things that provide little to no value to the business.

Worse, engagements that develop their own objectives can actually pull visitors away from the acquisition-conversion path and hurt the business. They can result in silly business models that many a startup is founded on, which can neither scale nor sustain themselves over time, and which ultimately usher in the startup’s demise. (The doomed startup’s longevity is determined chiefly by the extent to which its founders can attract good money after bad.)

Often, a company’s decision to bet on visitor engagement stems from its attempt to address lackluster conversion performance by treating symptoms rather than root causes. By symptoms I mean selecting the wrong key performance indicators as proxies of problems. Lets look at an example.

Suppose your website hosts user-generated product reviews. Conversion for you happens when a user posts a product review. And suppose you’re concerned that your conversions don’t grow fast.

So you look at your metrics. Average time on site is lower than you’d like it to be. Same goes with average number of page views per session. Repeat visitors is way off. Obviously, you conclude, the problem is that visitors are not engaged enough with your site to post reviews. They get to your site through fabulous SEO, browse through a couple of pages and abandon you.

You realize that you must make your visitors more engaged and the sooner, the better. So, you go out and license product videos and post them. You develop a cool widget that lets users find stores that sell products in their area. You get the idea.

And guess what: your average time on site actually goes up. Page views per session flies higher as well. Even repeats edges up. Yes, you’ve reached engagement.

But there is one problem. Your conversion events are still few and far between. People still don’t post reviews.

Come on, people, what is your problem?

Suppose, instead, that you promise to pay $500 to anyone who posts a review -- would your conversions go up? Sure they would. You may run out of money fast, but you will increase conversion. So, what does it tell you?

It tells you that your visitors don’t see the value in posting reviews on your site. That all your engagement shenanigans did not make posting reviews more compelling. Actually, those Web 2.0 bells and whistles are diverting traffic away from your boring review forms. Next thing you know you start to second-guess your business model. Maybe it’s time to rewrite the business plan.

If you believe in your conversion events, then your job is to take landing page traffic to the “thank you for converting” page in the shortest path possible. Which is a straight line, by the way.

Figure out what that straight line entails and convert them. Convert them as if your life depends on it. Spend your money on getting to know them and understand what blocks their conversion. Your job is to remove those roadblocks, not to suggest alternate routes via a rich media library or cool RIAs or whatnot.

If conversion requires a heightened level of engagement, then by all means pursue it. But don’t do it for engagement’s sake. Do it because it makes conversion faster and more frequent.
The goal is conversion. At all times. Never lose sight of that.

Remember the famous line from Glengarry Glen Ross: Always be closing!

I’ll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for your attention.