By Mark Patron, CEO of behavioural email specialists RedEye International

9 Jan 2012: Before working in direct and digital marketing I was a project engineer with Mobil Oil, so I’ve always had a keen interest in how we use technology. In the 1980s most direct marketers were a fairly technology adverse lot. They saw the need for developers and analysts but did not let them out in polite company. With the advent of the internet there was a complete swing of the pendulum. Only technologists and engineers seemed to have the keys to the inner sanctum of how to make internet marketing work. Fortunately things have moved on making digital marketing much more accessible

Over the last three years Econsultancy and RedEye have surveyed thousands of client-side and agency digital marketers about conversion rate optimisation (CRO). We have found that the CRO market is rapidly maturing. Technology is no longer the major barrier preventing companies from improving their website conversion rates. The challenge is becoming one of people and processes.

Over the last three annual surveys, when answering the question “what are the biggest barriers preventing your organisation improving conversion rates?”, lack of resources and budget have consistently been cited as the two biggest barriers. Over the three years poor technology has moved down from third to seventh place, or 25% to 18%, and poor integration between systems has moved from fourth to eighth place, or 24% to 17%.

This indicates that technology is becoming less of a barrier to optimisation. However, while technology has declined in importance, people and process issues have increased. In the most recent survey when we analysed the variables most strongly correlated with improved website conversion we found the top four in order of importance were: perceived control over conversion rates; having a structured approach to CRO; having someone directly responsible for CRO; and incentivising staff based on conversion rates.

Companies with a structured approach to conversion were also twice as likely to have seen a large increase in sales over the previous 12 months. This is all well and good, but the problem lies in the amount of companies actually implementing these activities. Only 31% had a structured approach to conversion and only 25% bothered to incentive staff. On the plus side 73% of companies did have one or more person directly responsible for conversion, although this did leave almost a third of companies with no one responsible for conversion.

It could therefore be argued companies just aren’t using their staff or managing their processes as well as they could be, when it comes to improving conversion.So what is causing these people and processes barriers to success in digital marketing?The digital industry lacks enough experienced people. A lot of this is down to companies not investing enough in people and wasting too much on tools they don’t use or media that does not work. Sadly, when the cost of acquiring a customer online is much better than offline there is little incentive to change this.

Not enough digital marketers have the skill sets to analyse the masses of online data. Many simply make superficial use of Google Analytics to track numbers of visitors without getting underneath the data to understand why numbers have gone up or down. Knowing why makes it possible to do something about it. Avinash Kaushik’s 90:10 rule (that you should spend $90 on people for every $10 spent on analytics tools) is as relevant today as when he first said it in 2006.A lot of this comes down to working on the analytics problems that exist rather than running off reports when requests come in.

The people that best prove the value of analytics are those that can converse with senior managers and understand their problems, then provide solutions through analytics. Without this the senior managers would never have thought to ask the web analyst to help them. A lack of structure and process is more a reflection of the digital market’s immaturity. There has simply not been enough time for the more rigorous process disciplines we have offline to have developed online. As results for online marketing inevitably converge with offline results the incentive for companies to be more disciplined with their online marketing will drive change.

Technology is becoming less of the major barrier it was in preventing companies from improving their digital marketing. The challenge is becoming one of people and processes. After all, technology can only take you so far, it’s up to you how you use it. The next challenge perhaps is finding a successful way to make the most out of the people and processes available.