One of the main goals of any business website is getting more traffic and improving conversion rates. To achieve this, you must take various steps to ensure that your website is optimized for that goal. You work on the design, improve navigation, publish amazing content, and more.
But as you know, there’s one thing that you can’t control, at least not directly, and that’s the actual traffic. Your audience may come from different age brackets, their gender may vary, and they may come from different parts of the world where what’s relevant definitely varies. Although you can’t exactly control who reaches your website, you can do something to make sure that the traffic you’re getting also finds content that’s relevant to them, thus improve your conversion.
You can do this by making use of IP geolocation technology, or simply, geo-targeting.
What Is IP Geolocation Technology and How Can It Help Your Business?
IP geolocation is the technology that determines the internet connection characteristics of a web user, including an approximation of its physical location. The data gathered is then used to help improve business strategies and deliver a better user experience.
IP geolocation can help a business in different areas - from improving its marketing strategies by filtering content that is relevant to the user based on location, strengthening security and preventing fraud by comparing IP geolocation to provided shipping address during registration, and more.
How Can Geolocation Increase Your Conversion Rates?
By using location as a basis for your conversion tests, you might find that the results would provide you with useful insights that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. Here are a few ways geo-targeting can help boost your conversions:
1. You Can Personalize Your Content for Your Visitors
Just think about it. Isn’t it more exciting for you as a web visitor to find content that you can relate to and seems to be tailored just for you and people from your city or country? It’s not just the language used for the content but even the visual elements and information provided - it makes a difference if these are customized to the visitor’s locality.
2. You Can Experiment With Currencies and See Which Delivers Better Results
You can also see if offering products in the currency based on the user’s country would make a difference on your conversion rates. Compare that to the sales made in that same location if the products are not available in their currency.
3. You Can Try Match-Marketing
By geo-targeting, you can see how running different campaigns, depending on specific locations, affect your conversions. You can see for yourself if using geo-targeted ads would work well for you. You may also compare whether traffic coming to a geo-targeted landing page from a geo-targeted ad converts better than traffic coming to and from a generic page.
4. Having an IP Geolocation Database Allows You To Keep Accurate Traffic Logs
It’s beneficial to know not only how many website visitors you have, but also how they’re accessing your website and where they are coming from. By having these data, you will be more confident that you can efficiently keep malicious activities and spam out and that the traffic you’re getting is safe and relevant to your business.
To better drive the point of geotargeting’s efficiency, here are some statistics that you might want to check out:
- According to Google’s research, 61 percent of smartphone users prefer to purchase from apps and websites that offer customized information based on their location.
- According to a 2019 report, about 9 in every 10 marketers believe that marketing and advertising efforts that are location-based have increased not only their sales but also gave their customer engagement a boost.
- An article published by Entrepreneur says geo-targeted marketing has been found 20 times more effective than generic banner ads.
Are There Pros and Cons?
Like with any other strategy, there are some advantages and a couple of disadvantages to geotargeting that you need to consider before you decide to go with it. Here are some of the considerations you have to make:
Using geolocation technology allows you to better understand not only the market in other countries or regions but your competitors as well. The data you’ll be able to gather through testing and experimenting with traffic using this technology can help you get noticed by potential customers and increase your conversions. You might even find that location plays a bigger role than factors like the keywords used for searching, the kind of browser used, and more.
Using geolocation for marketing can also help brands achieve better local search positioning. And not only online businesses but even those with brick and mortar stores can benefit from this as customers are more enticed by content that’s relevant to them and offers that are more accessible.
As for disadvantages, some might argue that location won’t really tell you much about the web visitor that will provide marketers with a real advantage. Then there’s the issue of privacy and personal data. Laws and regulations vary depending on the country and other specifics, including the age of the user, so you must be very careful and ensure that you are very specific when you ask for permission from your web visitors.
Final Thoughts
Geo-targeting is not a new strategy as it has been around for a while now. But it’s potential in increasing your conversions is just as strong as ever. It is indeed a great way to reach your audience and engage them. Not only will it allow you to successfully match relevant content to everyone who visits your website but it also lets you dig further and experiment with the traffic you are getting so you can really optimize your funnels.
With the availability of tools that allow you to study your market and even your competitors wherever they are in the world, there’s no reason for you not to enjoy their benefits. If geotargeting can provide you with helpful insights that could boost your conversions and potentially open more doors of opportunities for you, why not try it, right?