"The first thing we do, let's kill all the [lawmakers]"
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part 2

China: Threatens prison sentences and death penalty for some cybercrimes. Has abandoned "Great Cyber Wall" strategy of blocking outside access in favor of policing and selective enforcement.

Germany: Holds Internet service providers responsible for content on their services, provided they are aware of it. Requires blocking of access to content to be technically "tolerable or feasible."

Iraq: Requires government authorization to install a modem. Lets the general public access the Internet in one of four cybercafes but says people must not go against the "teachings of Islam" or offend "ethics and morals."

Myanmar: Owning a modem without government authorization is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

North Korea: The only country to ban the Internet. Runs the government's own Web sites from servers based in Japan.

Saudi Arabia: Routes all Internet connections through proxy servers based at a control center known as the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Jeddah. Caches government-approved Web sites locally and filters others.

Source:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-5589627-3.html

who, in turn, quotes its source as:

http://www.rsf.fr/uk/homennemis.html

I hope that you enjoy this issue on tracking single page conversions.

For e-commerce sites, it is very important to track and improve conversion ratios. And, in Turning Visits Into Action, many conversion ratio improvement tactics and techniques are explained in detail. But for some e-commerce sites, conversion rates need to be tracked one page at a time.

An overall site conversion ratio may not provide the level of detail needed to make the greatest possible improvements. An overall conversion ratio would be calculated by taking the number of orders generated and dividing it by the total number of visitors to arrive at a percentage. But some sites may have traffic coming to many different areas for reasons other than purchasing - content areas of general interest, financial information, job seekers, etc. To really expose specific areas of improvement, it might be necessary to break the stats down to further level of detail.

For example, you may want to calculate a conversion ratio based on the number of visitors reaching your "shopping cart" page. This way, you can make improvements to your shopping cart page and know that your results aren't being skewed by traffic to other areas of your site. You may have 500 visitors reaching your shopping cart page while at the same time you are generating 10 orders. Your conversion ratio is 2% for this comparison. By making improvements to your shopping cart page, you may see this ratio improve to 5% - generating 25 orders for every 500 visitors to this page.

Similarly, you may want calculate a conversion ratio for sales of a specific product based on the number of visitors coming to that specific product's information page. You may have 10 Widget orders for every 250 visitors to the Widget overview page. This works out to be a conversion ratio of 4% for this comparison. Improvements to the Widget overview page may yield 25 Widget orders for every 250 visitors - increasing the conversion ratio to 10%.

If your sales process requires multiple steps, you might want to track conversions from one page to the next. The first page of your sales process might get 1000 visitors, while the second page shows 500 visitors - you have a 50% conversion rate from the first page to the next. You can make improvements to the first page and try to get the ratio up to 60%, or 75%. In this manner, you can improve the conversion ratio of a multi-step sales process one page at a time to finally increase your sales ratio overall.

You can track these multiple comparisons in a spreadsheet by pulling visitor information from your site traffic reporting tools and combining it with order information. Of course, visitor information is rarely exact, but it is intended to provide a relative data point - if the data is off, at least it will be off consistently. A spreadsheet like this, developed over time, can provide you the detailed type of analysis necessary to improve the critical "cogs" of your online sales machine.

About the Author
Kim Wingate of AvidSurfer, is the publisher of "Big Time Banner
Advertising" and "Turning Visits Into Action." Both of these
informative Web business manuals, as well as a FREE conversion
ratio case study, can be found online at:
http://www.avidsurfer.com/default.asp?src=arts

Peter Thiruselvam
Editor

The Tracking Single Page Conversions Team