As a marketer or a business, your goal is to boost your conversation rate, so you create different sales strategies and see which one work before for your business or agency.

To help you boost your sales conversion rates, we have made the needed research and provided you with 10 sales strategies and other effective tips to help you succeed. Read on to find them.

• Top 10 Sales Strategies to Boost Conversion Rates
• What is a Good Conversion Rate for Sales?
• How can I Increase my Online Conversion Rate?
• What are Some Conversion Strategies?
• Ways You Can Improve Conversion Rates for Your eCommerce Brand
• How do I Increase my Sales Conversion Rate?
• What is a Good Lead to Sale Conversation Rate?
• What Are Conversion Strategies?
• How to Improve Conversion Rate in Retail
• Customer Conversion Strategy
• How to Convert Customers Into Sales
• How to Increase Conversion Rate e-commerce
• Sales Funnel Conversion Rates
• How to Increase Conversion Rate in Digital Marketing
• Sales Conversion Rate Calculator
• What is Sales Conversion Rate?
• What Are The Four Conversion Strategies?
• How do I Increase Amazon Conversion rate?
• How do I Increase Google Ad Conversion Rate?
• What is a Good Marketing Conversion Rate?
• How Many Leads Does it Take to Make a Sale?
• What is a Good Conversion Rate For Retail Stores?
• What is KPI in Retail?
• What is a Good b2b Sales Conversion Rate?

Top 10 Sales Strategies to Boost Conversion Rates

1. Create or refine your “Pre Selling” system

Have you sat down and strategically mapped out how you can best prepare any prospect before a sales interaction?

Is there a video you want them to watch? A white paper you want them to review? A client testimonial you want them to see?

Read Also: Email Marketing – How to do it Right For Effective Sales Conversion

When you intentionally map out how to presell your sales prospects you can significantly increase your closing rate.

One companies increased their conversion rate by over 20 percent just by introducing better trust messaging and credibility enhancers into the 5 email pre-sales appointment sequence they use for their service business.

Part of this boost to conversion came from increasing their “appointment held” rate, and the balance from making those held appointments even more effective in terms of final conversion.

2. Improve your sales scripting

This mean first that you actually have a written sales script. If you don’t, record your top sales person giving a mock sales presentation. Get that sales presentation transcribed and go back through and turn it into your first version of your closing script.

Now slowly test out different elements of the script and see the impact on your closing percentage. Try out several of the ideas by building them into your sales script.

Not only will this help you develop the best closing script to increase your current sales, but it will also protect you from the loss of a key sales person as a good degree of your sales knowledge will be captured in the written script, not just in the head of one key sales person.

3. Set and hold your prospect and you accountable to an upfront agreement

An upfront agreement is a formal or informal oral contract that you and your prospect both agree in which you both agree to give each other a clear decision – yes or no – whether you want to take the next step in the sales process.

This next step could be to purchase right then and there, or it could be to set up the next sales meeting. No “think it overs” allowed. Plus, it is your way to clarify that your prospect has the ability (authority and or money) to make a purchasing decision.

An upfront agreement might sound like:

“Now Mark, I am more than willing to give you my time and really work with you to find out exactly what the best solution for you and your specific situation is, I’m just going to ask for one thing in return… As we go through this, if you don’t feel that what we have is a good fit, are you okay telling me that? Great, I want you to know that you’re not going to hurt my feelings. On the other hand, if after going through this it’s clear that we really do have a great fit are you okay telling me that too here today?

“Great, I’ll be doing the same thing. If I don’t think you’re the right fit to own our product I’ll let you know that straight out. And if on the other hand I do think you are the perfect candidate from really benefiting from our product, then I’ll let you know that too.

“Are we both in agreement on this Mark as part of the ground rules for today? Great.”

4. Optimize your offer

Test your price point. Test the terms you’re offering. Test the way you frame your offer – as what you’ll gain… or as what you’ll lose if you don’t take action. Test any bonuses they’ll get or added features if they act now. The only way to maximize your conversion is to test, test, test.

5. Introduce a “fear of loss” to spark action

One of the biggest sparks to action is fear of loss. How can you legitimately introduce or strengthen your prospect’s fear of loss if they don’t take action now?

One of the easiest ways is to introduce a highly valued bonus that they get today when they take action and buy. Or you could give them a significant pricing incentive to take action now.

6. Use stronger risk reversal – clearer and more powerfully worded

Are you confident that your product or service correctly used will provide great value? Then but yourself on the hook by guaranteeing certain results.

Why should your customer have to hope your product or service will fit their needs? Put yourself on the line.

7. Get better sales training for your team

It amazes me how many otherwise rational, intelligent business leaders will spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in lead generation activities for their companies, but then pinch pennies when it comes to sales training for their core sales team.

The most effective sales training is not a one-time event, but rather, month in, month out, behaviorally based sales coaching. Shaping behaviors takes gentle pressure applied relentlessly over time.

The feeling from a high pitched sales training wears off fast; the deep behavior changes from grooming and developing a sales culture over time last long term.

8. Testing, testing, testing

In fact, setting up a healthy environment to test tactics and confirm hypotheses is just as important as actually testing the tactics. A/B testing new theories and practices against your old stuff will make for a smarter, more efficient system.

Your product, your team, and your prospects will interact differently than what every case study reports. Find the tactics that work for you and drop those that don’t. That’s what Conversion Rate Optimization is all about, after all.

9. Use Social Proof at Your Conversion Points

In other words, people do things because other people are doing them. This isn’t news, but it is something that you should incorporate in your optimization strategy. 

Include components like testimonials, stats on how many customers bought a product, reviews, and pictures of customers in key conversion points. This can look like testimonials on landing pages, case studies brought up in sales calls, or positive reviews next to services and products.

Train your sales team to include social proof where they can in dialogue with warm leads.

10. Provide Value Up Front

The art of sales is rapidly changing. Today’s trendsetters have replaced the mantra you once knew as “Always Be Closing” with the more approachable “Always Be Helping”.

Almost any sales manager will tell you a deal can take upwards of 15 touches before you’ve even reached the proposal stage of closing a customer. If those touches look like “did you get my last email?”, you’re doing something wrong.

In your first few engagements, serve up valuable content and information, working to solve the prospect’s problems while educating them on your brand and services.

We buy from people we like and trust. As simple as it is, it may be the reason that deal stuck in your pipeline hasn’t closed. Build the relationship from the get-go and you’ll start to see the results.

What is a Good Conversion Rate for Sales?

After all the efforts you put into implementing the strategies mentioned above, you might sometimes wonder whether you are actually achieving a lot with your sales strategies. Here are some factors you need to keep in mind.

Conversion rate optimization enables you to maximize every cent of your PPC spend by finding that sweet spot that convinces the maximum percentage of your prospects to take action.

If you’re already achieving 3%, 5% or even 10% conversion rates, is that as high as you’re going to go? But what is a good conversion rate? Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher.

Ideally, you want to break into the top 10% — these are the landing pages with conversion rates of 11.45% or higher.

How can I Increase my Online Conversion Rate?

Website conversion rates average around 2 percent. For every 100 visitors, you can expect to only get 2 customers. And honestly, that’s a pretty good conversion rate.

Many sites only have a 0.1 to 0.2% conversion rate. That takes 1000 visitors to get 1 customer.

How do you boost your conversions so we can get more customers with the traffic we already have? Follow the tips below

1. Add a pop-up to your site

According to a study by Sumo, the average conversion rate for all pop-ups is 3.09 percent. However, if you do it the right way, you can reach the top 10 percent of pop-ups which average a 9.28 percent conversion rate.

This one change will catapult your conversion rate. And it works on every site it is tried it on.

Here are some quick tips for getting the highest conversion rate from them:

• Try several offers (PDFs, premium content, different products, other free stuff) until you find a winner that you can feel right away
• But a 30 second delay timer on the pop-up, this keeps them from being annoying
• Make it easy to close the pop-up
• Set a cookie so the pop-up only appears once per user. Most pop-up tools allow you to do this

This combination will give you a huge boost in conversions and keep the complaints to zero. You won’t annoy anyone and you get all the benefit.

The impact on your conversions will be so large that you could skip the rest of this list.

2. Remove unnecessary form fields

Have you ever had the intention of filling out an online form, just to be scared away by too many required fields? It’s one of the best ways to kill your conversion rate. Remove all unnecessary form fields, leaving only those that are essential to accomplishing your goal.

Back during my KISSmetrics days, we did a bunch of A/B testing on form fields within our signup form. For each form field that we removed, signups grew by about 10%.

Obviously, you can take this too far.

If your sales team doesn’t get all the lead info that they need to follow up, your signups could be super high but your close rate will be trash. So find the right balance between getting the critical lead info while keep fields to a minimum. Just make sure every field plays a critical role. If not, remove it.

3. Add testimonials, reviews, and logos

No one wants to be the first person to use a product or service. So, you can put their mind at ease by providing testimonials and/or reviews from past customers. 

Social proof, including testimonials, puts consumers at ease. In an interview with ConversionXL, growth marketing expert Angie Schottmuller said, “If quality social proof buffers notable uncertainty, get ready for some remarkable conversion impact — in some cases up to 400% improvement.”

Every critical page on your testimonials, reviews, or logos.

4. Remove distractions

There’s nothing worse than visiting a website that pulls you in too many directions.  

Your landing page should be clear, concise, and easy to navigate. If it’s not essential, don’t include it. Stick with what your visitors need to know and nothing else.

When possible, implement the following (and not much else):

• Headline and subheadings
• Benefits and features
• Testimonial and/or reviews
• Visual combined with context, which shows what you’re offering

There are other things to consider – such as a live chat box, social proof, and video (more on these below) – but the point remains the same: eliminate all distractions. You want your visitors to focus on your offer and nothing else. 

5. Make the initial step really easy

There’s a psychological principle that humans prefer to finish things that they start.  So, when it comes to your offer, the first step should be extremely simple to complete. 

Instead of asking for an entire form to be filled out. simply request an email address to start. From there, you can provide the rest of the form in hopes of securing additional information. But even if you don’t, you still have the person’s email. 

The easier you make the initial step, the greater chance there is of your visitors taking action and following through to the end. 

6. Add a third-party signup service

Alternative logins have become quite popular. Instead of creating a new profile from scratch, a user logs in using their Google, Facebook, or other account.

This eliminates the signup form altogether. You’ll see an immediate impact on your conversion rate.

7. Strengthen your CTA copy

Generic CTAs like “Sign up” and “Start trial” won’t give you the best conversion rates. A few minutes spent improving the copy will give you an easy conversion rate win.

Start with a CTA that starts with the word “Yes.” It’s highly effective psychologically because it paints the offer in a positive light.

8. Add live chat to your site

Many visitors want to buy your service but are on the fence. They have a lingering doubt or question that keeps them from taking that last step

Live chat tools are perfect for helping these folks. Just like a pop-up, live chat tools are easy to add on any site and have an immediate boost to your versions.

9. Try another offer

Don’t pay so much attention to your landing page design, copy, and related factors that you overlook the importance of choosing the right offer. 

This has one of the biggest impacts on conversion rate, as your offer must be appealing to your market. 

If your conversion rate is on the low-side, cycle through different offers until you find something that clicks with your audience. 

It may not be the first, second, or even third offer that resonates with your market. But if you continue to experiment and track your results, you’ll eventually find a winner. 

10. Offer a money-back guarantee

As marketers and business owners, we know consumers avoid risk. They don’t want to put their money at stake unless they’re reasonably sure they’ll get what they paid for.

A money-back guarantee helps assuage fears and move past objections. If you’re worried about losing all your sales because of returns, don’t be.

11. Add a countdown timer

It’s natural to become anxious when time is running out. So, adding a countdown timer to your landing page may be just what you need to capitalize on this feeling.

According to Neuroscience Marketing, the addition of a countdown timer can increase sense of urgency, which leads to a higher conversion rate. 

Another study by CXL explains how one brand increased sales by 332 percent by using a limited-offer sign with a countdown timer. The addition of a countdown timer, which should only take a few minutes, can immediately boost your conversion rate.

12. Add a point of purchase upsell

While it doesn’t technically change conversion rates, it does increase revenue without any impact on your current funnel. Immediately before a consumer completes their purchase, offer a similar product or service that can be added to the order with a single click.  

This one trick will lead to your average order value increasing by roughly 10 to 20 percent.  You’ll want to experiment with different points of purchase upsells. One offer may fall flat, while another quickly boosts your average order value to 20 percent.

13. A/B test your headlines

A good headline can make or break a landing page. In fact, if you take the wrong approach, some people won’t read any further. They’ll simply hit the “back” button and vanish for good.

According to Copyblogger, on average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. Imagine that. Eight out of every 10 people to your landing page may neglect to read past your headline.

When A/B testing your headline, experiment with variables such as:

• Length
• Tone
• Use of statistics 
• Use of numbers

What are Some Conversion Strategies?

There are many conversion strategies available to analysts, and also a contingency approach that takes into account several user and organizational variables in deciding which conversion strategy to use. There is no single best way to proceed with conversion.

The importance of adequate planning and scheduling of conversion with the strategic involvement of users (which often takes many weeks), file backup, and adequate security cannot be overemphasized.

Direct Changeover

Conversion by direct changeover means that, on a specified date, users stop using the old system and the new system is put into use. Direct changeover can only be successful if extensive testing is done beforehand, and it works best when some delays in processing can be tolerated.

Direct changeover is considered a risky approach to conversion. Disruption to the work environment may occur if users resent being forced into using an unfamiliar system without recourse. Finally, there is no adequate way to compare new results with old.

Parallel Conversion

Parallel conversion refers to running the old system and the new system at the same time, in parallel. When the same results can be gained over time, the new system is put into use and the old one is stopped.

One advantage of running both systems in parallel is the possibility of checking new data against old data to catch any errors in processing in the new system.

The main disadvantages include the cost of running two systems at the same time and the burden on employees of virtually doubling their workload during conversion.

Gradual Conversion

Gradual, or phased, conversion attempts to combine the best features of the two previously mentioned plans, without incurring all the risks. In this plan, the volume of transactions handled by the new system is gradually increased as the system is phased in.

The advantages of this approach include allowing users to get used to the system gradually, the possibility of detecting and recovering from errors without a lot of down time, and the ability to add features one-by-one. Agile methodologies tend to use this conversion approach.

Modular Conversion

Modular conversion uses the building of self-contained, operational subsystems to change from old systems to new in a gradual manner. As each module is modified and accepted, it is put into use.

One advantage is that each module is thoroughly tested before being used. Another advantage is that users are familiar with each module as it becomes operational.

Their feedback has helped determine the final attributes of the system. Object-oriented methodologies often use this approach.

Distributed Conversion

Distributed conversion refers to a situation in which many installations of the same system are contemplated, as is the case in banking or in franchises such as restaurants or clothing stores.

One entire conversion is done (with any of the four approaches considered previously) at one site. When that conversion is successfully completed, other conversions are done for other sites.

An advantage of distributed conversion is that problems can be detected and contained rather than inflicted simultaneously on all sites.

A disadvantage is that even when one conversion is successful, each site will have its own people and culture, along with regional and local peculiarities to work through, and they must be handled accordingly.

Ways You Can Improve Conversion Rates for Your eCommerce Brand

If your website, brand, and messaging don’t measure up to potential shoppers’ expectations, your conversion rates could be suffering.

The average conversion rate for online stores is around 1-2%. In fact, even if you’ve mastered conversion rate optimization (CRO) to pro level, you should expect to win the sale around 2% of the time as a benchmark and then aim for 2%+ as your conversion rate baseline goal.

Conversion rates are about far more than just the number of online sales. Conversions are determined by the eCommerce KPIs you’ve set. Therefore, there are more metrics than total sales to consider if you want to improve conversion rates for your eCommerce brand.

This could include the number of shoppers adding products to carts, email signups, social media reviews, wishlist adds, or upsells, depending on what your goal is at different stages of the buying journey.

In short, conversion rates are impacted at every single touchpoint of your shoppers’ buying experience. It means that CRO should be done on elements like product, landing, and checkout pages, as well as across your whole eCommerce site.

Most Important Metrics You Should Be Tracking Before Implementing Hacks to Improve Conversion Rates

Besides total sales, here are some additional metrics you can find in your Google Analytics account under ‘Behavior > Overview,’ which can help you assess your conversion status.

1. New Visitor Conversion Rate: This will help you assess how first-time store visitors behave compared to returning visitors. If this rate is low, you will want to improve their overall experience of browsing your store and make sure they are getting a good first impression.
2. Return Visitor Conversion Rate: This metric will help you compare what products or messaging brought shoppers to your store initially (why they didn’t convert the first time around) to what eventually converted them.
3. Cost Per Conversion: You also want to assess how much each conversion is costing you. If shoppers pass many points before finally making a purchase, your cost per conversion will be higher.
4. Average Session: Your average session duration will tell you how long potential shoppers are hanging around, browsing your store before they leave. If they are only there for seconds, it will be hard to convert them.
5. Pages Per Session: If shoppers are spending sufficient time on your store but still leaving, knowing which pages they view before they go can be very useful for improving CROs on those specific pages. In other words, it points to a gap in your conversion funnel.
6. Exit Rates: An eCommerce exit rate is the percentage of shoppers who leave your site after viewing a specific page. Pages with high exit rates point to optimization issues and messaging flaws.
7. Bounce Rates: Bounce rates are the percentage of potential shoppers who leave your online store after only viewing the one page they clicked through to to find your store. Poor store bounce rates can point to mixed messaging, where shoppers come to your store through an ad or search, don’t find what they are looking for on that page, and click right off again.
8. CTRs: Click-through rates are the number of people who click through to your store from a search, email, social post, or PPC campaign. If you have a high CTR but low conversions, high bounce rates, or reduced exit rates for those landing pages, then it’s time to make some changes.
9. Interactions Per Visit: This will show you how many times a customer interacts with your store pages before they finally buy something from you.
10. Traffic Sources: Last but not least, you should have an excellent idea of where your shoppers – as well as those who don’t buy – are coming from. Suppose one source is resulting in more conversions than others. In that case, this will help you not only determine your marketing strategy and spend but point to platforms or targeting issues for sources not resulting in traffic and conversions. This should include direct, search, and referral visitors.

Google Analytics Intelligence can help you ask the right questions and get the correct data to see which areas of your store you need to optimize to improve conversion rates.

5 Ways You Can Improve Conversion Rates for Your eCommerce Brand

1. Put Your Unique Selling Position Front and Center

The very first thing a potential buyer should be able to ascertain from any page they find themselves on is why they should buy from you.

As you know, you have just seconds to make your first impression on shoppers, and putting your unique selling position (the one thing that sets you apart from your competitors) front and center is the key to doing that.

If you take a look at the top Shopify Plus store brand Allbirds’ homepage from last year and this year.

With clever copy, good-quality lifestyle product photography, and a beautifully clutter-free site, their selling position is crystal clear from their store’s headlines: comfortable, environmentally-friendly shoes for the outdoors.

A strong USP (unique selling position) should be assertive and highly focused on the value your products bring your customers. It’s more than a slogan; it’s messaging that should be used as a benchmark for all pages, site copy, and policies.

2. Do A Full Technical Audit for Your Store

Another important step when improving your conversion rates is ensuring your store is technically sound.

You can streamline messaging to your heart’s content, upgrade photos and copy to million-dollar brand status, and be selling the ultimate product, but if your site doesn’t function properly or loads too slowly, it’s meaningless.

This means ensuring that your product and site images are optimized for both desktop and mobile and that your store upload time meets your customers’ and Google’s requirements.

The quickest way to check this is by using the free Benchmark Hero tool. This will not only assess your eCommerce site’s technical performance but also offer guides on how to improve it.

As a huge plus, this tool also will compare your brand to other 7- and 8-figure stores to point out shopping experience, trustworthiness, and marketing issues and offer improvement suggestions – all of which will help your conversion rates.

3. Ensure Your Product Videos and Images are Top Class

The next things you will want to optimize are your product images and videos. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s something that even successful online stores struggle with.

Here’s the thing: yes, you need good, high-quality white background product photos. Still, you have to find a way to make your product displays unique and on-brand – especially when it comes to creating lifestyle images in a highly competitive niche.

An excellent example of this comes from the top eCommerce website Envy Stylz, where they not only use creative light backgrounds but also flat lay displays for their products. Or, you can draw inspiration from 100% Pure’s refreshing lifestyle photos or Bite Toothpaste’s product and lifestyle GIFs.

4. Make the First 5 Seconds, and the Above-the-Fold Area, Count

The first five seconds a potential customer spends on your site are the most crucial for making a good impression. When you combine site speed, good-quality lifestyle images, and unique positioning, what do you have? An optimum, persuasive above-the-fold design.

Yes, your whole home, landing, or product page should be visually appealing and persuasive, but the top of the page is where the magic really starts. After you have gotten their attention, you can then follow through to keep potential customers engaged.

This means you need to get creative with your main image (or video) and the text overlay, and ensure you follow through with a strong CTA. It’s important to note here that although some sites have similar layouts, you should be testing designs for your specific brand and target market.

5. Upgrade Your Popup

Popups are often put last on the eCommerce to-do list, but they are still very effective when optimized correctly!

When you pair a well-tested and -optimized popup with a winning remarketing strategy, you will boost sales.

Read Also: How To Earn Money Online With Email List Marketing

In one popup case study, eCommerce brand Tiger Mist was able to increase their email list by a whopping 40% by using strategic discount coupon deals. This strategy can also be used to grow your social media platforms.

A good popup will have context, straightforward copy that matches your brand voice, a good design, and an offer to help you seal the deal.

Additionally, like with most optimization tactics, you will want to test a variety of elements including your headline, text, and discount amounts, to find the best combination for your store. You will also want to test the technical aspects of your popup, such as time delays and the number of views per visit.

Here are some tips to help you upgrade your popup to increase signup conversions and, ultimately, sales.

1. Use targeting to tailor popups to specific pages, locations, or referral sources so that popup messaging is highly relevant and more likely to convert.
2. Find a balance between being too intrusive or pushy and making use of the limited attention time you have. Test different delays to find your optimum conversion rate.
3. Include an offer your potential customer can’t refuse. Test a variety of generous ‘gifts’ such as coupons, exclusive VIP sales, a free gift, or high-value information.
4. Make sure you set up popups so that they don’t show to customers already on your mailing or social follow lists.

How do I Increase my Sales Conversion Rate?

If you want to know how to close more sales, start with these five steps.

1. Provide value

Before everything else, there has to be value for your customers. This is the beginning of the sale process, the heart of the hook and the core of the end sale. You need them to see the value in what you have to offer, something that they want. The value proposition can be so obvious to businesses that they don’t think it through, but crafting it carefully is the critical first step in successful lead engagement.

Are you offering a way to make life better? A way to make it easier? Does your product remove something negative in the life of your customers or add something positive?

The other side of providing value is giving your potential customers the content they want in the format that they need. For some customers, that might be an actual direct mail piece — think seniors. For others, it might be in the form of a mobile app that they can download to their phone.

Video content is ideal for many potential clients. If what you’re giving them is the right content or the right product but in the wrong format, then it’s not giving them the value that they need. It’s about the whole package.

2. Offer information

Information is power and comfort. One key to engaging potential customers is to offer them as much information about the process as you possibly can. Realize that while your team might be intensely familiar with the processes of your company, potential customers are very much not.

Don’t wait for potential leads to come to you with questions or concerns — particularly when it comes to things like timeline, delivery and managing potential problems. Always be the first to reach out when you have new information. Keeping customers in the loop shows you’re invested in them, offering them a sense that they are a valued part of the process and not just another number on a sales chart.  

A simple email is sufficient to keep potential customers in the loop, though whatever form of communication you’ve established is absolutely appropriate.

3. Maintain integrity

Honesty is an essential part of this process and of any successful relationship. There is never a good reason to offer customers or potential customers anything that could be misleading. It’s a solid rule for businesses to make a commitment to honesty and integrity no matter what problems may arise or what kinds of issues could come up.

This goes especially for claims about the efficacy of a product and the timeline of delivery. Don’t promise more than you can offer a customer and don’t hold back when it comes to saying what the process actually is. You will never be sorry for telling the truth to a client, but any kind of falsehood will come back negatively, damaging not only potential leads but also current customers.

4. Create an experience

Look to the overarching experience that you are creating for potential leads, keeping in mind that people are driven by their humanity. Run yourself through the process that you are offering to potential customers and think about what improvements you could make to it. Keep in mind that these are not unconnected steps but a conglomeration.

What kind of responses does your process elicit? Where are the gaps in the experience? Think about the sales process as a chain, with each piece tightly linked to those before and after.

Then look at that experience and create tighter links in that chain as you make an effort to more effectively engage your leads. Often, there are obvious weak links that can be mended in order to keep the overall experience unified and compelling for potential customers.

5. Tailor your approach

As you work to create that overarching experience, be sure to meet your leads where they are. At what point are they in the sales funnel? Are they researching? Ready to buy? Your customer engagement efforts shouldn’t be the same for someone who is making a first inquiry about your product as for someone who has previously been connected to you.

Again, we see that lead engagement is all about the personalized, individual experience that you’re offering to your customers. One of the best ways to give them that kind of human appreciation is to amend your message to meet them where they are.

The common thread through these tips for improving conversion rate is that they all move toward building that positive and personal relationship with the customer. It starts from the very beginning and moves through the whole process, bringing you to the end result that you’re looking for: making that sale.

What is a Good Lead to Sale Conversation Rate?

If you’re already achieving 3%, 5% or even 10% conversion rates, is that as high as you’re going to go? But what is a good conversion rate? Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher. Ideally, you want to break into the top 10% — these are the landing pages with conversion rates of 11.45% or higher.

A healthy lead to sales conversion rate will vary greatly by industry. B2B businesses have a more complex sales cycle than B2C businesses. A healthy lead to sales conversion rate should be determined by your industry benchmarks, as well as your historical performance.

This chart below reveals B2B sales conversion rates by industry based on data by MarketSherpa:

What Are Conversion Strategies?

Missed sales opportunities can translate to enormous missed sales revenue over time. For example, if your business misses a single $25 average sale each day, you’ll lose sales revenues of $9,125 in one year and $45,625 in five years.

This makes establishing a startup or growing an existing small business much more difficult. Proactive strategic planning is vital to creating a steady stream of new customers and also to avoid missed sales opportunities through improved conversion rates.

Acquisition vs. Conversion Strategies

Customer acquisition and conversion are equally important, even though each has a different focus. Acquisition strategies are broad action plans that concentrate on getting new customers into the store. For example, elements of an acquisition strategy focus on creating awareness, distinguishing the business from its competitors and encouraging potential customers to shop.

On the other hand, conversion strategies have a narrower focus. Conversion action plans concentrate on turning “lookers” into paying customers. Merchandise displays, product promotions and customer service policies are common elements in a conversion strategy.

Developing an Acquisition Strategy

A good acquisition strategy is one based on a well-defined target market and market research information. The underlying theory is that it’s much easier to attract new customers when you focus on those most likely to buy instead of every person who could buy.

Target market identification works to pinpoint specific characteristics your ideal customer will have. Market research information tells you where potential customers are, how they make buying decisions, what the competition is doing and how competitors are attracting customers. From there, ongoing community outreach, marketing and promotional plans continually work to attract new customers from your target market base.

Elements of a Conversion Strategy

Conversion strategies work to add value, create a good customer experience and turn browsers into repeat buyers. Each goal is a vital element in a well-developed conversion strategy. Employee training and development programs, high customer service standards and differing pricing strategies all drive conversion rates.

From an even narrower perspective, the store layout, merchandise displays and inventory availability influence conversion. Together, these elements create a total customer experience that often determines whether first-time or repeat customers will return.

An Online Perspective

Acquisition and conversion strategies are as applicable to online businesses as those with a physical presence. While elements in acquisition and conversion strategies are the same, however, creating a good customer experience differs slightly in an online environment.

Customers won’t stay — and may not come back — if the site layout, response times and controls — such as the navigation system and shopping cart — aren’t user-friendly. In addition, a digital conversion strategy needs to account for differences in the comfort levels and skill levels among customers and the different mediums customers use to reach your website.

How to Improve Conversion Rate in Retail

Once you figure out your current conversion rate, you can set yourself a goal and start using the following techniques to achieve it. As a note, if you’re starting conversion rate is truly abysmal (think 15% or lower), you should check your marketing. You may be mis-marketing your store, bringing in shoppers expecting something completely different than what you offer.

1. Set up your store for success.

The very first thing you’ll want to look at is how your store is set up. Where are the displays? How long does the queue usually look? Does the store look packed to the rafters or is it easy to find things?

Unless you are a discount retailer like TJ Maxx, you don’t want your store looking like your customers will need to hunt through racks and racks to find things. Instead, set up clean displays that make it easy for shoppers to find unexpected items they just have to have.

Here are some ideas:

• Use your “power wall” wisely. If you’re in the US (or a country where people drive on the right side of the road), use your right wall to make a big statement, because customers naturally turn to the right when they walk in. But if you’re in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, your power wall is located on the left, since most of your shoppers will have a tendency to turn left when they enter your store.
• Remove excess merchandise from the floor (i.e., only have one of each size or product on the floor) to keep the store from looking cluttered.
• Mind your decompression zone, which is the first 5 to 15 feet inside your front door. Shoppers who are in this part of your store are prone to distractions, which is why most experts agree that retailers should keep the decompression zone simple and uncluttered. Avoid placing too many products or fixtures in this area, as people will likely just walk right by them.

2. Hide your queue.

Customers can be easily spooked if they see a lengthy queue. The good news is that there are a number of ways to fix this.

• Put your registers in the back. You’ll notice that many stores do this. New York & Co., for instance, places their registers at the center-back of the store by the fitting rooms. The registers are further obscured from sight because they usually have several high displays creating “rooms” positioned well around the checkout area.
• Get rid of the registers all together and go mobile. By allowing your employees to ring customers anywhere on the floor, you’ll get rid of your queue altogether. Of course, if that doesn’t work for your business, simply adding mPOS systems will help you reduce your queue, at the very least.

3. Staff according to traffic, not just sales.

Many stores will schedule their staff according to hours where the most sales are made, rather than the amount of traffic walking through the door. By switching to heavily staffing when there are many customers in the store, your employees will be able to more effectively help everybody, which will likely result in an uptick of sales.

4. Recognize that your employees play a huge role in boosting conversions.

This point is part and parcel of the previous point. Not only do you need to be well-staffed, but it’s essential that you train your employees well. In terms of increasing your conversion rate, there are some important things your staff can be taught to do:

Have them greet and engage each and every customer in the store.

It’s fairly rare for a shopper to engage an employee out of nowhere when they need assistance, so have your staff establish the relationship.

An easy method to ensure that your staff is greeting everyone is to have someone work the front zone specifically to greet people.

Consider what American Eagle is doing. Walk into any AE shop, and you will be greeted by someone who “just happens” to be folding and tidying up near the front. American Eagle’s method can seem less intrusive and could fit your branding better.

Train your staff on how to prompt customers to share what they’re looking for.

The bulk of this is to ensure that they don’t ask yes or no questions. For instance, “Can I help you find something?” will most often be met with “No.” But “What are you looking for today?” requires the shopper to engage with the question a bit more, even if the answer is negative.

Put in the effort — and mean it.

Once your staff member has identified the customer’s wants/needs, train them to go above and beyond in solving these problems. When your employees are putting in a huge amount of effort, they will…

a) Most likely come up with a great solution and

b) Convince even iffy shoppers to make a purchase.

And even if your staff is well-trained at this, you can always incentivize them to help you reach your objectives by offering them a prize for meeting the goals.

5. Give free samples, nibbles, or drinks.

Ever wonder why Costco has made free samples a part of their business model? It’s for a number of reasons, but the main one is that, as Dan Ariely, a Duke University behavioral economist, says, “Reciprocity is a very, very strong instinct.” Basically, when Costco gives you a free sample, you feel obliged to do something for them. Ariely also points out that free samples remind you of cravings you have, making you want to buy what you just sampled.

If you’re selling something that can’t be given away as samples, then find something else to offer. Several retailers are now serving drinks to get people to come in and linger.

Not to keen on giving away freebies? Consider charging for samples, instead. Wineries, in particular, make great use of this concept. Wineries offer tastings of their wines at a fairly inexpensive cost. This gets customers in the door. During a tasting, the employee running the tasting will give a lot of wine education to the tasters and more often than not give the tasters “extra” wine or offer to taste a wine that’s not on the menu.

6. Create the feeling of scarcity.

Scarcity is a well-known psychological trick to increase an item’s perceived value. Scarcity makes something seem special to a customer. There are a number of ways you can make things feel scarce in your store.

• Reduce the amount of merchandise on your floor. Not only does this make the floor feel de-cluttered, but it can make customers think that the item on the floor is the last one in stock.
• Train your staff to let customers know when something really is the last one that you have. It’s an easy sales line that can help them close a deal. As a salesperson myself, I used to love being able to say to a woman, “You’re in luck! That’s the last one of those dresses we have and it’s just your size!” Nothing would make a customer jump at buying one of our clothing items faster than knowing it was the only one left *and* it happened to be in her size.
• Run limited-time promotions to provide a temporary boost in your conversion rate and artificial scarcity. By limited-time I mean very short, not several days or a week. A great example is doorbuster sales on Black Friday. These sales typically only last until noon and/or until the products sell out. Running a one-day-only sale will create a sense of urgency for your customers, making them feel like they don’t have much time to get that amazing deal.

7. Get customers to invest time with you.

The more time a customer spends in your store, the more likely they are to purchase something. The Wall Street Journal actually says that you can see up to a 40% sales increase from encouraging your customers to hang around. We’ve already done a full guide on how to effectively encourage your shoppers to linger, so here are the highlights:

• Offer amenities to make shopping easier and more fun. Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary & Supply, for instance, has a children’s corner in the back of the store for parents shopping with kids. Happy kids = happy shoppers, after all. And Costco, as previously mentioned, offers those free samples in part because they make grocery shopping a fun and surprising experience.
• Train your employees to help your customers spend time in the store. Jumping back up that winery example, part of educating customers about your wine is giving out awesome free education, but another part is that the more the employee converses with the customer, the more time the customer has invested in that winery.

8. Have a backup plan for products you don’t have in store.

Give your customers no excuse not to spend money with you. Have a plan for customers looking for an item that your physical store is out of. DSW ensures customers purchase from them by offering free shipping on an item when they’re out of stock in their store.

The associates can also ring customers for that purchase right from the floor on a mobile device so that the customer experiences minimal frustration. Hopefully, very soon in the future, you’ll even be able to offer same-day delivery on such items so that customers don’t even have to wait for these items.

9. Offer flexible payment options

Sometimes, a limited budget is the only thing keeping a customer from purchasing. If this is the case, consider being more flexible with how you accept payments. For example, you could provide layby or installment options.

If you’d like to get paid upfront (and who doesn’t) then offer a “buy now pay later” option through a solution like Afterpay. Afterpay enables customers to pay for their purchases in installments. When customers purchase goods with Afterpay, you receive payment for the items upfront while your customers pay in four fortnightly installments. It’s interest-free and when paid on time there are no extra costs for your customers.

Afterpay not only provides a payment solution to help customers out, it also aids your sales team. As Bill Parry, Head of Sales – SMB at Afterpay says, “Afterpay is more than a payment method, it is a sales tool your team can use to drive results in-store.

By integrating Afterpay into your team’s sales journey, you can combat objections and remove barriers to purchase by offering a simple way for your customers to pay for their purchase over 4 installments.”

Customer Conversion Strategy

Having a robust and streamlined lead conversion process is essential for any business to survive in today’s highly competitive market place. A good conversion strategy can not only boost your business dramatically but help to get good leads aboard. Below mentioned are five steps to building an effective and efficient lead conversion process. 

1. Prepare Quality Content

Adding quality content to your website significantly increases the chances of getting more leads for your business. Write catchy website copies, create informative content such as blogs, ebooks, white papers, and work on product demos. 

When you generate qualified content, it develops the trust of your customers and nurtures a healthy relationship with them. Their trust and relationship can indirectly generate good revenue for your business. So, tell your content team to produce engaging and converting content. 

2. Build an SEO Strategy for Your Site

Visibility on Google can generate more leads to your business than you can imagine. So, investing your efforts in correcting your SEO strategies is essential for Google ranking.

Five primary SEO elements to focus your attention to include the page title, page URL, page header, internal links, and page content. Refer to Google updates to understand how to use SEO to rank high on search engines effectively.

3. Create an Appealing Landing Page Design

Your landing page design is the first and foremost element that defines the usability and success of your website. Having a good strategy of building landing pages can help to convert more leads. 

Strategically add images, videos, and call-to-action buttons on your landing pages to make them appealing and get more conversion. Further, make sure all your landing page links are clickable and directly or indirectly help to generate leads. You can also use pre-designed landing page templates to improve your site’s user interface.

4. Use Social Media Channels to Generate Leads

Today people are massively engaged on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other ones. They consume more content here than on other mediums. Leverage social media to your advantage. Promote your business offerings here and grab the attention of your target audience.

A company generates 80% of B2B leads by using LinkedIn as a marketing medium. So social media is a smooth platform to spread awareness of your brand products globally and gain more customer engagements. 

5. Do Email Marketing in Your Relevant Niche

Email marketing is an age-old inbound and outbound marketing tool that still serves as an effective medium to generate leads. You can design various email templates and send them to your target audience on multiple occasions, such as festivals or birthdays, to nurture them regularly. 

The marketing tool not only helps build a strong relationship with your target audience but keeps them informed about your products and services as well. Furthermore, emails have proven to get more leads to a business than most other marketing tools.

How to Convert Customers Into Sales

The speed in which your sales team follows up on the marketing lead is paramount. A slow follow up means losing business to a competitor whereas a quick follow up is more than likely to lead to a sale.

We’ve put together five easy tips to help you turn more website leads into paying customers.

1. Don’t make leads wait

Leads are a fresh commodity, and can’t wait until the next day.

The level of interest for the prospect drops dramatically after one hour, and he or she may have already have moved on to a competitor. It is therefore important to set up internal routines for the handling of incoming lead.

Directing leads to a personal mailbox can be missed due to email overload, forgotten or not attended to due to illness or travel. You may direct your online leads to a company mail, where several people have access to ensure quick handling or you can use customer service software.

The same principles apply for marketing leads as for support requests – traceability and speed. More and more companies are seeing the benefit of using customer service software as they implement it across several departments and not just limit it to customer support.

2. Qualify the lead first

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) may download a free white paper whereas as a sales-qualified lead (SQL) might request a meeting. They have different characteristics and are most likely in a different stage of the buying cycle.

However, all leads are potential sales leads. In order to provide a valuable first impression, it’s important you qualify the lead first. This can be done through an assigned coordinator or by the sales team themselves.

You won’t be closing sales if you reach out to a lead that isn’t ready to buy. And even more so, you may even put the lead off by coming on too strong.

Perform a quick Google Search on the person or the company, or if the search for the company in your CRM software. Find out if the lead has already performed an action prior such as attending a conference, rather than initiating contact only to find out they are already in discussions with another sales rep.

3. Structure sales teams for speed

Some organizations prefer to divide their sales team in two; with one part of the team that handles existing customers and one part of the team that handles new business.

And while the way you structure the team is not the important part here, what is important is the processes you create, which allows the sales team to move quickly. And this doesn’t just apply to new leads, but all stages of the sales process.

To get started with your internal processes, think about the following questions;

• How do we initiate first contact; by email or phone?
• Who will register to contact data?
• At what stage do we register a sale?
• How do we follow up activities?

4. Keep leads warm

Even if you call the prospect after within ten minutes of completing a web form, he or she may not be ready to move forward in the sales process. But they have shown an interest in your product or service, so don’t lose the opportunity to keep them warm while on the phone call. For example, you can ask them if them if they want to be added to your mailing list, which will help nurture them for when they are ready.

Customer care starts before any sale is done. Keep them informed and show them that you care and they are sure to come back to you when they are ready to move to the next step.

5. Monitor your sales pipeline

Your sales pipeline gives you a unique overview over the prospects you are working with. In a CRM system you can monitor which stage of the sales process the prospects are in and the activities that are done. This can be done by each individual salesperson, and by the sales manager to get a complete overview.

Dashboards visualize your sales data with charts, and can be pre-defined to fit your needs. Each week during a sales meeting, you can go through sales cases and see which stage they are in and give a status on the progress. If the pipeline is regularly updated you can easily see which cases you need to focus on.

How to Increase Conversion Rate e-commerce

When most people think conversion rate optimization (CRO) they immediately jump to conclusions about the cost and headaches of implementing a strategy. While implementing a CRO strategy may seem like a daunting task, imagine what improving your conversion rate by even 2 percent would mean to your monthly sales revenue.

We will give you some pointers on how to minimize those headaches and improve your eCommerce website conversions.

1. Utilize Google Analytics to Optimize Your Best Performing Product Pages

Track your best-performing pages in Google Analytics, searching for pages with high traffic and low bounce rates. This tells you a large number of people are coming to your product pages, and doing one of two things: they are staying on that page to learn more (because they find the content compelling), or they are being driven to another page on your site.

Once you have established which pages are driving the most traffic, you can optimize the content on those pages to rank for high-search-volume keywords.

For example, say you are an online store that sells men’s casual dress shoes. You have written an article about the high-quality leather used in some of your products and its benefits in terms of style and durability.  The page seems to be driving a good amount of traffic to your website, yet these leads aren’t turning into conversions.

The first step in fixing this issue is to perform keyword research and optimize your content based on the high search volume keywords that you identify. When you do this you may realize that the search terms “men’s casual dress shoes” and “leather dress shoes” have high search volumes. As such you will want to use these phrases within your post and then link them back to the corresponding product pages on your website.

This technique will help you usher customers down the sales funnel, from a blog post they found through organic search to a product page on your site, where they will hopefully be compelled to purchase.

Another option is to link text in your blog to a video or FAQ page. This educational approach gives your shoppers more in-depth product or company information with the end result of improving consumer confidence and trust.

2. A/B Test Your CTA Copy & Placement

Have you ever wondered why that eBook or whitepaper you launched last month isn’t converting as well as you thought? Well, it could be your call-to-action (CTA) buttons falling flat.

Let’s say you have created a landing page around a size and style guide for your new line of men’s casual dress shoes. After a short description of the guide that leaves the consumer wanting to know more, you have placed a CTA at the bottom of the page. The copy on that CTA says, “Download Now.”

What if you changed the copy to “Try It for Free,” or “What’s my size?” or “View All New Styles”? Would conversions increase?

A/B testing CTA copy can give you more insight into what drives your potential customers.

Similar to testing CTA copy, you can also test the placement of CTA buttons on your website pages.

Have you ever read an article online, wanted to learn more and noticed a well placed CTA button jumping out at you to read more? Well, whoever made the decision to place the CTA right there probably knew that you would be compelled to click based on traffic data from the number of downloads.

By testing the placement of the CTA (whether it be at the bottom of the article, sidebar or in the middle) will help you pinpoint that page’s conversion sweet spot.

3. Starting Thinking Like a Consumer

Sometimes you have to take a step back and put yourself in the mind of an online shopper who is coming to your website for the first time. When analyzing pages, ask yourself questions like “what question does this page answer?” or “why was I directed to this page specifically?”.

Remember, each page of your website should serve a purpose be it to attract, educate, convert or close. Ultimately, each page on your website should help identify and push the visitor further along through the buyer’s journey.

Think about what influences someone to stay on your website. Is it the amazing product photos? A creative infographic? Stellar customer reviews? Eye-catching video content? Is shipping free or is there a small fee? Pick and choose what content you want to highlight on your site based on each page’s performance. Try to make shopping and researching products on your site a smooth and hassle-free process. Remember you want to give the consumer as much information and social proof as possible, on each product page, without overwhelming them.

4. Optimize Your Page Structure & Product Pages

Optimizing page structure – Does your page structure reflect how you want to guide a user through your site? L.L. Bean is a good example. They have categorized hundreds of products they sell on their site into seven major categories. Each category has numerous subcategories that help a consumer narrow their product search. Their page structure leads shoppers to what they’re looking for, while also giving them the freedom to choose between multiple styles or products using simple on-page filters.

Optimizing product pages – Taking a look at L.L. Bean’s product page for a men’s fleece pullover, you can see how all of the product information is displayed in front of you.

When a consumer is on this page they can easily view multiple images of the product. L.L. Bean has a clean product title with a link to reviews underneath. The page gives you options for color, size, fit and quantity. The price and free shipping promotion are easily displayed. Notice how the CTA button is the largest text on the page?

L.L. Bean has designed their product pages to make it enticing and easy for shoppers to add their product to the cart and check out. They also have a ‘recommended products’ section where a user can view similar items that other customers have purchased. This is a great cross-selling strategy that entices the shopper to bundle items that go well together.

Below the product features section, L.L. Bean has a section that details its products features, materials and use. It shows a brief product video, has social sharing icons and features a link to their live chat for additional assistance.

Adding live chat not only helps to answer questions about your products but it also keeps the consumer on that product page and reduces exit or abandonment rates.  L.L. Bean’s live chat and customer reviews can address any questions or concerns shoppers have about the product, shipping, or credibility.

5. Improve Your Internal Search Functionality

Have you ever left a website because of a frustrating experience trying to find a product?

Helping your shoppers quickly and painlessly find what they need, will help you drastically increase eCommerce conversion rates.

The first step to improving your website’s search functionality is to setup search in Google Search Console. This tool will track what your customers are searching for in relation to your products. This can help you identify what keywords to target on your product pages and blog.

The next step would be to setup contextual search functionality on your website. This helps guide the user as they search by offering appropriate keyword suggestions. Google is a master at this, increasing the precision of search results based on the user’s input. For example, if I start typing ‘best fall boots’ Google will provide me with a list of other search queries to help narrow down my search query.

6. Treat Your FAQ Page as a Working Document

Your FAQ page should be a working document or a never-ending laundry list on your website. Going back to searcher intent, think about what kinds of questions shoppers are asking when searching for your product. The more FAQs you have the better informed and aware your shoppers will be. This helps instill buying confidence and can mean the difference between an abandoned cart and a sale.

See how people are navigating to your FAQ page. This can be done through strategic CTA placement on product pages.

For example, say your business offers free shipping on all orders over $50 for men’s casual dress shoes, but you have not stated that this rule only applies to the continental United States. You should be driving that traffic to an FAQ page to help better answer this shipping question.

An example of this could be placing an in-line CTA saying, “for questions on our free shipping policy visit our FAQ page.” The CTA would then direct the consumer to the FAQ page to better help answer his/her question.

7. Use Heat Mapping Tools

HotJar, CrazyEgg, ClickTale, Lucky Orange, etc.… There are many heat mapping tools that let you track shoppers on your site.

Heat maps help marketers see what areas of a website people are most attracted to and what areas need improvement. The flow of user interaction from the first page a person lands on to the last page a person visits can tell you a lot about how well your website is structured and how you can improve CRO. Heat mapping tools allow you to track user interaction on your website and are also great tools for testing landing page copy, CTA copy and CTA placement.

Video now appears in 72 percent of the top 100 search result listings and viewers are 55-70 percent more likely to buy after watching a product video. Video can help grab your visitors’ attention, increase on site time and show them (not tell them) about your product.

Bottom line. Use video. It converts.

9. Ease the Checkout Process

According to Baymard Institute, a complicated checkout process can account for 27 percent of cart abandonment rates for any online retailer. To help reduce these high rates you can first try to remove any distractions for customers by creating a checkout window with minimal navigation.

This allows the customer to focus solely on completing their purchase. Ideally, the checkout page should have one link that navigates away to the homepage in case someone decides to continue shopping.

• Reassurance is key. Provide a clear view of shopping cart prices and delivery charges (if any) to re-assure the customer of their total amount. Provide alternative payment methods, visible security logos or certifications to back up your product warranty. Distrust of payment is a leading cause of cart abandonment as customers can be skittish about placing their personal financial information online without such logos.
• Show a progress indicator. At every stage during checkout, the customer should know where they are in the process and what remains to be done before the purchase is complete. Including a progress bar that shows shoppers, where they are during checkout, is key to easing this sometimes-lengthy process.
• Let people use the back button. Sites should make it easy for customers to navigate back and forth through the checkout, but should also ensure that they can use the back button. Have you ever backed out after filling in your payment information to check the price of an item in your cart only to come back to the payment information page missing all of your previously filled out information? Let me tell you, it is the absolute worst. Design your forms to use this item field to allow previously entered data to be transferrable between forms if a customer exits at the checkout page.
• Default “Billing = Shipping” Field. Have you ever been frustrated at checkout when you have to enter in the same information twice for the shipping section? Well, now you can smooth this process out by adding a field selector to default your previously entered text to match the shipping information using a dynamic query string.

Sales Funnel Conversion Rates

With various different funnel paths and user journeys, it can get tricky to calculate your actual funnel conversion rate. How many cold leads are warming up in the top funnel and moving on to the middle funnel, how many middle funnel leads have successfully moved on to the bottom funnel? 

The easiest way to track and calculate your funnel conversion rate is through Google analytics. 

Crystal Diaz, of Air-Rite, is a big believer in utilizing the power of Google Analytics.

“To improve funnel conversion rate, I use google analytics and google search console. I first use google analytics to see what is getting traffic. I use Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels>Organic>Landing Page.

What this does is tells me what page people are landing on. Then I go to the google search console, I find that page and search the queries that people type to get that page. This can help me figure out what people are searching for, what questions they want, and answers so we can help our customers more.” Diaz explains.

If you’re looking to improve your conversion, which we all are, then read on. We’ve asked marketing experts their 8 best tips for improving funnel conversion rates:

1. Grow your organic search traffic

Aqsa Mirza, of Simple Fulfillment, explains that they’ve increased funnel conversion rates for Simple Fulfillment by incorporating higher buying-intent keywords in their search strategy. 

“We put more focus on grabbing organic traffic through search engines as it is the most stable and most significant source of traffic. Audiences relying on the conversion phase focus on higher buying-intent keywords. So, our marketing team generates quality content after analyzing the keyword volumes and potential buyers’ intent. Focusing on money keywords could bring conversions; otherwise, informative keywords could only bring traffic to your website,” says Mirza. 

2. Leverage social proof  

Social proof can be a huge conversion rate booster when done right. 

Why? 

Because as Olusola David, of TorchBankz, explains, “I need to create an awareness that educates my potential customer about my product first. This will help turn them from cold to warm traffic which is very good for conversion.”

Khris Steven, of Khris Digital, also strongly believes in leveraging the power of social proof. 

“One solid approach I’ve used and encountered is implementing social proof elements on my sales funnels. Adding social proof elements like testimonials, reviews, influencer endorsements, ratings and purchase notifications in your funnels are things that can explode your funnel conversion rates dramatically. Social proof has been proven to be the most powerful sources of psychological influence in the world of business. It describes a psychological and social phenomenon where people copy the actions of others in an attempt to take up a behavior in a given condition.” 

Isaac Hammarburger, of SearchPros, is of the same opinion and says, “A simple way to improve conversion rate is to add testimonials, reviews, and logos. By doing so people will be at ease using your product or service since there were other people who have used it before them.”

3. Conduct split tests

Test, test, and more tests. 

Alistair Dodds, of Ever-Increasing Circles, is a firm believer in the power of testing every part of your funnel. “Use your experience and knowledge to put your best hypotheses forward as far as ad copy, landing pages, lead magnets and so on but then ensure that you split test each element to ensure you’re following what the market responds to and not just basing it on your own hunches and subjective decisions,” Dodds explains.

A\B testing is essential for figuring out what marketing and sales efforts are converting, and which ones are going down the drain.

As Jack Choros, of IronMonk Solutions, explains, “We use traditional A/B testing. We use a Facebook pixel for each step in the funnel so that we can gather information for retargeting purposes and then we can put people into separate email campaigns based on where they end up in the funnel. It’s a long term gain but it’s profitable.”

Split testing also includes testing different versions of your ad copy and other marketing copy. This is where you’re directly connecting with your audience so you need to know what kind of copy resonates best with your audience.

“From headlines to body paragraphs, every word makes a difference. We are heavily invested in testing different headlines for above the fold to ensure that we’re able to maximize the results of our campaigns,” shares Saif Al-Janabi of BlankSpace.

Olivia Tsang, of SuperMoney, also believes split testing is an essential part of your conversion funnel process. 

“Never stop split testing. There’s always one element that can be improved upon on each landing page. Be sure to always run a form of landing page testing in order to improve your visit-to-lead conversion rate,” affirms Tsang.

After split testing different offers, Jacob Landis Eigsti, saw a whopping 75% increase in their cart value. And since then, Eigsti says, “We’re aggressively testing landing page layout and headlines since we’ve found this dramatically impacts the number of people that initiate checkout.” 

And don’t forget, as Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard, says, “Buyer habits can change over time so A/B testing is something that should be continued after initial optimizations are completed.”

4. Keep your forms and CTAs simple

“After you spend hours with your team crafting some creative call to action, share it with your grandmother so that you can test if it’s simple enough for someone new to understand,” advises Matt Holmes, of Handshaking.

The simpler your form and CTA are, the more leads it’ll generate. No matter how invested your audience is, if they have to jump through a hundred questions, they’ll balk at your form and click the exit button on the top of your page faster than you can say STOP!

“In order to attract the user to register on your form, especially after they’ve made the decision that this is the right offer for them; it’s important to ask a few simple and non-generic questions to get them to the next step,” explains Al-Janabi.

Djordje Milicevic, at Stable WP, also believes the same and says, “Complex conversion flows, too many form fields, redirects, and even slow loading pages can increase friction, potentially diminishing your conversion rate. Use analytics to determine which elements of your opt-in forms can be optimized.

Set up goals, events, and funnel visualization in Google Analytics to observe how users move through your funnel. Pay close attention to any steps with high drop-offs to identify potentially problematic areas. For example, many users might be dropping off after a CTA redirects to a new page. In that case, you can reduce friction and increase conversion rate by allowing users to complete all steps on a single page.”

5. Create urgency

Investing in scarcity widgets for your website can be a great way to boost your funnel conversion rate and convert warm leads into hot, ready-to-buy ones. 

Samikshas Rawool, of Yummy Tummy Recipes, saw an 11% increase in conversions after she implemented a countdown clock on her landing page. 

As Al-Janabi says, “This method is proven to perform if it’s done authentically and transparently. If you’re selling a program with limited seats, or a product with limited inventory, or simply have a timed offer that actually expires in a given time, these tools/widgets can bring forth increased conversion.”

6. Simplify pricing

To warm up your leads, you need to make them take some sort of initial action. By simplifying your pricing and encouraging them to buy a low-priced product initially, you can warm them up for more purchases later on. 

Justin McGill, of CheckoutFlow, believes the same thing. McGill says, “Simplify pricing to make the initial purchase an easy one. Then, add more bonuses/features/services available to purchase through one-click upsells or downsells through the checkout process.”

Alexandra Zelenko, of DDI Developments, adds, “Providing hassle-free payment process is a must. Offering expedited payment options such as Amazon Pay or PayPal or alternative payment methods to choose at checkout to quickly move through the checkout process – they can complete their purchase with one or two clicks. In addition to that, make it simple for customers to find your product or service and optimize your checkout page by using live chat, offer free shipping, etc.”

Referrals also work great at making people take that initial plunge. 

As Steve Bourie, of American Casino Guidebook, explains, “By offering a free or discounted product or service to a returning customer if they refer a friend is a great way to increase your customer retention rate all while improving your funnel conversion rate.”

7. Run personalized campaigns

Did you know, 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized? And, 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalization, with more than half reporting a lift greater than 10%. These are powerful stats. 

Which justifies why Casey Hill of Bonjoro is a huge advocate of personalization.

Hill believes, “more and more customers are starting to tune out automation. We build funnels as a business to help streamline processes, but customers don’t want to feel like their relationship with a company is ‘automated.’ It hurts conversions and leaves customers looking elsewhere.

People are tired of automated campaigns. They lean towards brands that offer personalized campaigns. Hill explains, “the key to improving conversions is to get personal. Send a personal handwritten note, or a personal video email, or respond back personally on social media. Show them they are valued, even though you might have tens of thousands of customers.”

8. Make data-driven funnels

According to James Gardner, of Topline Partners, data-driven funnels are the way to go. Without having essential data on your various goals and funnels, you’ll never know what’s working and what isn’t. 

“It’s essential to start your conversion rate optimization efforts with reliable and complete analytics data. Without a starting baseline and a means of measuring the impact of your changes, you can’t tell what’s working and you won’t learn anything for next time.

So, start by auditing your Google Analytics implementation and ensuring that it’s capturing everything big and small that you’ll need down the road. For extra insights, consider using heat maps and user exit surveys.” Garner explains. 

Alex Berkett of Omniscient Digital agrees. Having data in hand will help you diagnose the problem and figure out at what point your leads are dropping off.

Berkett says, “Blindly flying into an optimization project hoping to apply a bunch of tactics is generally going to be lucky at best, and usually a big old opportunity cost. Do the conversion research (analytics audit, qualitative surveys, and interviews, etc.) and prioritize your biggest impact areas.”

While analyzing your funnel data, involve your whole team and harmonize your data in a single platform so everything is available at a glance. As Raj Dosanjh, of Rentround, explains this helps to “avoid redundancies and target the right customer in the right place.”

Michael Alexis, of TeamBuilding, also takes a very technical approach to data and numbers and explains that this means, “for example, making sure our email deliverability rates are solid. Aspects of this rate include making sure the server is set up properly, making sure anyone we email explicitly opted-in and expects our messages, occasionally cleaning the list, being careful about not sending spammy content, and similar.”

Gathering leads data and ranking them according to their buying intent is also a great way of optimizing funnels. Anna Tatelman, of Online Optimism, says this is one of their best strategies at improving the funnel conversion rates. 

“Coupling demographic information of past clients with other data, such as where those leads that led to customers originated, allows us to ‘grade’ our current leads and analyze which ones are most likely to become sales. By leveraging this type of data and subsequently tailoring our marketing efforts to focus on the highest-ranking leads, we’ve witnessed great improvements in our funnel conversion rate.” Tatelman says. 

Using heatmaps is another great way to gather user data.

“Heatmaps are a great way to monitor user behaviors. If they come to your page and bounce right away (without scrolling or spending any time on the page)—you may be targeting the wrong pool of users,” shares Hung Nguyen, of SmallPDF.

9. Research

One of the key areas of researching is micro-tracking conversions at every step and mapping out your buyers’ journey. This helps in finding gaps and redundancies in the funnel and then makes it easy to fix these gaps. 

Tiffany Ruder does exactly this and says, “This way, I can get a sharper picture of where exactly the biggest dropoff points in the funnel are. Then I spend time looking at a large sample of individual journeys of prospects who dropped out of the funnel at specific points in their journeys, and I brainstorm a few hypotheses as to why these people might have dropped off where they did, based on persona data.

Armed with these hypotheses, that’s when the experiments can begin, with re-engagement efforts as well as creating new assets that might serve the flow of people’s journeys more effectively.”

10. Know your audience – buyer personas

WikiLawn’s Dan Bailey explains, “the thing that’s worked best for us is narrowing down our audience focus. On Facebook, for example, you can potentially have an audience that has millions of people. You might think that’s a good thing, but how many of those people will care about your product or service?

We aggressively target our ads to reach between 100,000 to 300,000 people ideally. This number allows us to specifically target people who are most likely to convert.”

Before you start this process, you need to be crystal clear who your audience is. What their likes and dislikes are, where they hang out digitally, their demographics, and so on. Only then you can create personalized targeted campaigns that persuade cold leads to turn into hot ones. This will eventually boost your conversion funnel rate and bring in more sales.

As Carolyn Cairns, at Creation BC, says, “Knowing your clients will help you market to them better and turn them into paying customers. If you target the wrong people then you are just wasting time and money.“

And what’s an easy way to get to know your target audience? Involve your sales and customer service teams.

“A non-technical way to do this is to collaborate with your sales team, start listening to what they say. Users share the information they find most valuable, so your sales team has important information about your audience, therefore you can better understand their pain points and determine which features or products make the most impact on them.” Bernadett Dioszegi, of BannerSnack, explains.

You can also make use of social listening tools to understand what your users are talking about and what they want from you. 

Chris Gadek of AdQuick also points out, “It really comes down to listening to your customers. Add on new features to services, or pay special attention to your product reviews. Nothing can increase your sales more than providing the services and products that are of most benefit to your customers.”

11. Retarget campaigns

Retargeting campaigns work great at luring warm leads and converting them into ready-to-buy customers. Samikshas Rawool saw a whopping 23% increase in conversions after she started incorporating retargeting campaigns in her marketing mix. 

Daniella Pozolungo, at Pup Digital, believes that it works especially well for e-commerce business and says, “if they have lots of people add to cart, but a small percentage follow through to initiate checkout, we’ll look at strategies on how to improve this. To help improve this particular part of the funnel we might engage in dynamic remarketing, standard remarketing as well as landing page optimization to help encourage the next step.”

How to Increase Conversion Rate in Digital Marketing

Many business owners jumping into the Digital Marketing bandwagon naturally develop this basic notion that all they have to do in achieving their Internet marketing goals is to drive tons of traffic right into their websites. However, they fail to realize that the most important aspect towards Digital Marketing success is not web traffic but conversion – turning a good percentage of your website visitors into business leads or even sales.

The process of improving your Digital Marketing conversion rates is aptly called Conversion Rate Optimization. It is one of the most overlooked processes in Digital Marketing but it is during this stage where the main purpose of your website should be realized – whether to gather contact information, increase subscription to a newsletter or training program, or product purchase.

1. Optimize Your Page Load Speed

Improving how fast your web page loads is definitely one of the most important factors digital marketers overlooked to improve their digital marketing conversion rates. Many have the tendency of loading their sites with heavy graphics, videos, and other plugins that slows down loading speed considerably.

They don’t realize that 47% of people expect pages to load within 2 seconds, and 47% of visitors will abandon the site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds, according to a report from Akamai.

Google’s own Matt Cutts announced way back in 2010 that page loading speed can be a ranking factor that affects search engine results. So, you should just realize how important page load speed is not only with your conversion rates but also your search engine optimization. The key here is to identify what web elements are affecting your page loading speed – HTML code, graphics, advertisements, file compression, etc – and try to speed things up!

2. Optimize Social Validation and Testimonials

Social media has emerged to be a very significant digital marketing factor, so it is but natural to include social media signals as part of your conversion rate optimization plan. The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey establishes the fact that 90% of the more than 25 thousand consumers from 50 countries surveyed say they trust what people they know say about a particular brand, product or service.

What this implies is that they would most like respond to a call to action if one or more of their social media friends have previously done so – or is recommending that they do. You can add social proof and testimonials together with information or content about your brand, products or services.

The best location for such testimonials to appear on your site is near the Call-to-Action section – and let these social proofs prod your visitors to convert into leads or sales right there and then.

3. Optimize Your Sign Up Forms

One of the biggest mistakes digital marketers make is to copy/paste sign up form templates and embed them into their sites without making any customizations or optimizations. Many of these generic forms would ask online users with a bunch of questions, some personal even, that will really not help or urge them to convert. Some may even be turned off and leave without finishing the sign up form, feeling that they’re just wasting their time.

The key to optimizing your sign up forms is to focus only on the most basic information you will need to make conversion complete. Contrary to what others may think, the Captcha field is not really appealing to online users.

Spam is your problem, not theirs, so don’t burden them with such time-consuming controls. Choose forms that can validate and check errors inline instead of after web form submission to be more efficient and save time.

4. Optimize Your Location Targeting

One mistake digital marketers do is to create campaigns that target almost everybody in the planet. That would be good if you have the capability to market and deliver products or services to anywhere in the world. You might get website traffic from as far away as Timbuktu, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll avail of your products or services – or you have the capacity to deliver to this part of the world.

But if your intent is to target only customers near a specific geographical location, then optimize your website and landing pages specifically for that location. Doing so, you may experience a decrease in web traffic, but the traffic generated will be highly targeted to potential customers near your area of operations who may be more than ready to avail of your products or services.

5. Optimize Your Template and Content for Conversion

Many business owners and digital marketers tend to rely on “custom” templates they buy or subscribe to for their landing pages, banking on promises that such templates will drive conversion rates up. Although this is not really a bad thing, but you’ll need to customize and optimize your landing page content and other web elements if you want to increase your conversions.

The key to digital marketing success is to establish a connection with your targeted audiences well enough for them to take the next step further and become a subscriber or even a customer. Templates may not have the capability to do that as is. They need to be “tweaked” a bit more so they’ll fit right well with your targeted audiences’ profile.

6. Optimize Your Product Reviews

Testimonials, as mentioned earlier, will influence the buying patterns of your website visitors particularly if these come from people they knew from their social media circles. You can take the power of testimonials a step further by using optimized product reviews. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Survey 2011 confirms this when they highlighted that more than 70% of respondents will trust consumer opinions about a product or service.

However, simply posting product reviews as is will guarantee your credibility enough to influence people to convert. Reviews should be: believable, help potential customers in the decision process, and eliminate doubts or objections others may have about the product or service.

The rate system also adds to the overall impact of the review, making it more realistic and credible, in the same manner Amazon makes use of in their product reviews. To enhance the impact even more, you can add in additional sections like “Top Reviewer”, “Top Contributor” and “Most Helpful Customer Reviews” to put more air of authority and credibility to your reviews.

7. Optimize Your Call-to-Action Buttons

The Call-to-Action is definitely and obviously a must for your landing pages. How will you expect your targeted customers to take action if you don’t specify what you want them to do next? Digital marketers may be aware of the importance of the Call-To-Action per se, but what is little known is the importance of optimizing the Call-To-Action button itself. Buttons are a natural magnet for click-through unlike ordinary text links, but they should clearly specify the type of actions you want your page visitors to do: Sign Up, Download, Like, Buy or Call.

The location of where you position your buttons is also critical. It would be wise to have it above the fold of your screen so visitors don’t need to scroll down to take action. However, it would also be wise to place duplicates (or variations) of these Call-To-Action buttons intermittently across the page: basically above the fold, halfway through your content, and the last section. If you offer both free and paid options, you must place corresponding buttons side-by-side, with each button clearly distinguishable in bright colors and easy-to-read fonts.

Sales Conversion Rate Calculator

Once you have defined what conversions you want to track, you can calculate the conversion rate. For the purposes of the following example, let’s call a conversion a sale.

Even if you’re still in the dark ages without a viable website, as long as you are tracking the number of leads you get and the number of resulting sales (conversions), you can calculate your conversion rate like so…

Conversion Rate = Total Number of Sales / Number of Leads * 100

Example: Let’s say you made 20 sales last year and you had 100 inquiries/ leads. Your sales to lead conversion rate would be 20%.

If you’re tracking conversions from website leads, your formula looks like so:

Conversion Rate = Total Number of Sales / Number of Unique Visitors * 100

Example: If you made 20 sales in a month and you had 2,000 unique visitors to your site, your conversion rate would be 1%.

What is Sales Conversion Rate?

The Sales Conversion Rate metric measures the effectiveness of your sales team at converting leads into new customers. It’s an important metric for aligning your sales and marketing team as both teams will use this metric to determine the quality of leads.

The process for generating leads is the responsibility of marketing, and that team will engage in lead generation activities. For example, a marketing team will organize and execute a conference sponsorship (often in coordination with sales) to generate sales-ready prospects. Once marketing qualifies those leads, it’s the responsibility of sales to convert those leads into paying customers.

Perhaps marketing is able to generate 100 leads for sales, and after working with those leads sales is able to win 10 new customers. That is a 10% conversion rate. The real question is whether this is good or bad. Ultimately, this depends on your past historical performance and industry benchmarks. 10% sales conversion rate may be stellar or it may be terrible. It depends on what you sell and the market to which you sell.

What Are The Four Conversion Strategies?

There is no single best way to proceed with conversion. The importance of adequate planning and scheduling of conversion with the strategic involvement of users (which often takes many weeks), file backup, and adequate security cannot be overemphasized.

1. Direct changeover

Conversion by direct changeover means that, on a specified date, users stop using the old system and the new system is put into use. Direct changeover can only be successful if extensive testing is done beforehand, and it works best when some delays in processing can be tolerated.

Direct changeover is considered a risky approach to conversion. Disruption to the work environment may occur if users resent being forced into using an unfamiliar system without recourse. Finally, there is no adequate way to compare new results with old.

2. Parallel conversion

Parallel conversion refers to running the old system and the new system at the same time, in parallel. When the same results can be gained over time, the new system is put into use and the old one is stopped.

One advantage of running both systems in parallel is the possibility of checking new data against old data to catch any errors in processing in the new system. The main disadvantages include the cost of running two systems at the same time and the burden on employees of virtually doubling their workload during conversion.

3. Gradual conversion

Gradual, or phased, conversion attempts to combine the best features of the two previously mentioned plans, without incurring all the risks. In this plan, the volume of transactions handled by the new system is gradually increased as the system is phased in.

The advantages of this approach include allowing users to get used to the system gradually, the possibility of detecting and recovering from errors without a lot of down time, and the ability to add features one-by-one. Agile methodologies tend to use this conversion approach.

4. Modular conversion

The modular conversion uses the building of self-contained, operational subsystems to change from old systems to new in a gradual manner. As each module is modified and accepted, it is put into use. One advantage is that each module is thoroughly tested before being used.

Another advantage is that users are familiar with each module as it becomes operational. Their feedback has helped determine the final attributes of the system. Object-oriented methodologies often use this approach.

How do I Increase Amazon Conversion rate?

1. Sign Up For FBA

Taking part in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is one of the easiest and quickest things you can do to increase conversion rates. It makes your products Prime-eligible, and having the Prime badge on your inventory makes it that much more appealing to buyers. They know they’re getting a high level of trust and security, and it’s far more often than not a tipping point in purchases.

However, independent or regardless of FBA, you should also be…

2. Regularly Optimising and Enhancing Brand and Product Content

Optimizing your product and brand content is a bit of a loaded tip, as going over everything that’s involved can easily cover several posts. But here are some pointers to keep in mind:

• Make your images, which are one of the first things a buyer sees, as good and self-explanatory as possible. In the most general sense, this means hi-res images shot from multiple angles on neutral backdrops.
• Have a solid title in place that appeals to buyers and covers the main keywords. Usually it goes manufacturer/company/brand name + flavour/variant/colour + quantity or size + product name.
• Regularly research keywords to ensure you have the best-performing ones. Use the top ones in the title, then the second-tier keywords in bullet points in the product description. Any leftover keywords, you can use them in the back-end.
• Maximise your reviews to convince others to purchase with you. Feedback is one of the top ways buyers make purchasing decisions, and the more — and more positive ones — you have in place, the more trust and security someone has in making a decision.

3. Use A/B Testing to Settle on the Best Changes

A/B testing means you compare two things that are exactly the same, except for one — and only one &mdash difference between the two. Perhaps you might A/B test which image to use as the main one, or which bullet point feature goes at the top of the list. Once you have the results of one change, keep it and work down a list of variables until you have a product page as close to perfect as possible.

4. Get Your Prices in the Goldilocks Zone

Remember Goldilocks, the scamp of a girl who broke into a bears’ house and ate their porridge, sat in their chairs and slept in their beds, remarking on which of each was most perfect? Adopt the same approach with your product costs.

Use Amazon repricing software to implement rules so that you can get into the Goldilocks zone as often as possible, maximising on conversions and profit margins at the same time. Just remember that too low can make buyers equate prices with cheap product quality and too high will turn buyers off, so try and find that sweet middle spot.

5. Link Products in Various Ways

Some of the most common methods are up-selling, cross-selling and bundling when it comes to improving conversion rates. But a somewhat unique feature on Amazon is ‘frequently bought together’, which links products and shows the total price to buyers, as well as the option to add all the products to the cart.

6. Stay in Regular Contact with Your Buyers Throughout and After the Process

When a prospective buyer asks a question about your product, answer it as soon as possible, taking no longer than 24 hours. And when they’ve made the purchase, send follow-up emails so that nothing falls through the cracks. You can also include a discount code for a second purchase — if the buyer does make that next purchase, you can be pretty certain they like what you’re about.

7. Go After Every Single Review

Chase after every single review like your business depends on it — in a way, it does. Online, you’re only as good as your reputation and the more buyers you can have to vouch for your quality of products and customer support, the more you’ll be able to capitalize on conversions in the future.

How do I Increase Google Ad Conversion Rate?

If you’re getting a good amount of traffic from your ads but not enough people actually buying or signing up for things (we call these actions “conversions”), you can take several steps to improve. 

You can use the free Google Ads conversion tracking tool to measure how many people are actually buying or signing up for things after they land on your website. Then, there are a number of things you can do to improve your conversion rate, like adding more specific keywords and negative keywords, which we’ll cover in this article.

1. Track your success with conversion tracking

Before you start making any big changes to your account, it’s a good idea to see how much business your ads are currently generating. Google Ads shows you the number of impressions and clicks you get with your ads, but wouldn’t it be great if Google Ads could also show you the number of conversions you’re getting? Well, Google Ads can do that – with conversion tracking.

After setting up conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see how effective your campaigns are once you make adjustments to them. For example, If you make a change to a campaign and notice your conversion rate increasing, that’s a good sign that your change is leading to better campaign performance.

2. Use specific keywords for better conversion rates

Once you’re able to track your conversions, you can then focus on improving your conversion rate. Specific keywords often tend to have a better conversion rate than general keywords. For example, consider the keywords below. Which one do you think leads to a higher conversion rate?

1. Acme
2. Acme printers
3. Acme 710c

Generally, more specific keywords like “Acme 710c” tend to lead to a better conversion rate than general keywords like “Acme.” That’s because people searching for specific models or product numbers have typically already researched their product and want to make a purchase.

Keep in mind, however, that using more specific keywords can lead to fewer impressions. If your keywords are too specific, fewer people may end up searching for those terms. The trick is to find the right balance between being general enough to match what people are searching for, and specific enough to lead to conversions.

3. Use negative keywords to refine your traffic

Another way to try to improve your conversion rate is to use negative keywords. When you use negative keywords, your ad won’t show up when people search for those particular keywords. This is helpful when you’re trying to limit your ad so that it doesn’t show up for people who are just browsing around and aren’t ready to purchase anything yet.

For example, some advertisers use “free” as a negative keyword. Unless your site offers free products or trials, you might want to add this as a negative keyword to attract fewer people who are just looking for free products. People searching for free products are probably less likely to make purchases.

4. Use the search terms report to reach the right customers

Google Ads shows you how well your individual keywords are doing, but it can also show you the exact words that your customers searched for when your ad showed up. You can view this list of terms in the search terms report.

After reviewing this report, you can then decide to add or exclude certain keywords from your keyword list. Doing this can help you target the right customers by either expanding or refining who can see your ad.

Example

Let’s say you sell video games on your website. After looking at the search terms report, you see that your ad showed up when people searched for “video game magazine.” People searching for magazines probably aren’t looking to buy video games right now. In this case, you might want to consider adding “magazine” as a negative keyword so that your ad won’t show for these searches.

Meanwhile, you also see that your ad showed up for people searching for “video game figurines.” And it just so happens that you sell video game figurines too! In this case, you might want to consider adding “video game figurines” as a specific keyword so that your ad has a better chance of showing up for this search.

5. Include prices in your ad to attract potential buyers

Another way to get more relevant traffic is to include prices in your ad text. If a customer sees the price of your product and still clicks your ad, you know he’s interested in potentially buying that product at that price. If he doesn’t like the price, he won’t click your ad, and you’ll save yourself the cost of that click.

As an experiment, you might want to consider adding prices in your ad text to see if that helps your ads lead to a better conversion rate. This can be especially effective when your prices are lower than your competitors’!

To test whether this will work for you, you can run an experiment by creating a new ad and rotating your ads. When using ad rotation, you can compare the clickthrough rates and conversion rates of the ad that includes the price versus the one that doesn’t.

What is a Good Marketing Conversion Rate?

A good conversion rate is above 10%, with some businesses achieving an average of 11.45%. Earning a good conversion rate places your company in the top 10% of global advertisers, which makes your conversion rate two to five times better than the average conversion rate.

In addition, it’s important to remember that a conversion is not always the same thing as a purchase. While conversion rate is a handy metric, the goal of most marketing isn’t to produce conversions—it’s to produce sales.

How Many Leads Does it Take to Make a Sale?

There are a number of online resources that can assist you in gauging how many qualified sales leads/prospects you will need to make a sale.  Some of them are free-of-charge, others can be purchased and should be evaluated based on the degree and usefulness of information they provide for your overall investment.

These more elaborate sales-lead calculators are generally designed for business-to-business sales and provide a tremendous amount of data based on the information you provide about your business and goals, including everything from new customers, qualified leads and total inquiries needed in a given fiscal year to the average cost per inquiry, qualified lead or sale ― along with pretty much any other data you could ever want or possibly need.  Just type Sales Lead Calculator into your browser, and watch your options appear!

For those of you who are looking for the short, easy and somewhat over-simplified version of how to calculate your sales leads-to-close ratio, consider the following:

1. Select a given period of time, the longer the better ― say over a period of months.
2. Calculate the number of leads and closed sales during that same time period.
3. Divide the number of leads by the number of closed sales.
4. Turn that number into a percentage out of one hundred to estimate just how many leads you need to close a sale.

For instance, if you had 300 leads over a three-month period and also closed 30 sales over that same period, then your close rate is roughly 10% for that quarter.  Just having that information alone can be helpful in guiding your marketing and prospecting efforts over the next year or so, but it should also prompt you to ask further questions, such as “What is the best closing strategy?” or “How can I close more sales?”

What is a Good Conversion Rate For Retail Stores?

Retail conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a retail outlet who make a purchase.

In other words, it indicates the number of people out of all potential shoppers who buy something from your store – and it is this act of purchasing which “converts” them into customers.

Let’s assume you’re a manager at a brick and mortar store.

To calculate the conversion rate for a specific day, you simply have to take the number of transactions made during that day and divide it by the number of potential customers who walked into your store. And you have to multiply it with 100 to see the percentage.

Conversion Rate = Number of Sales / Total Number of Visitors x 100

So, if 32 people made a purchase out of the 200 people who were in your store, you would have a conversion rate of:

32 / 200 x 100 = 16%

– meaning it is time to take measures to increase the conversion rate.

The conversion rate of each store depends on a number of factors, with location being among the most important.

Whether your store is located in an area with heavy foot traffic will invariably impact your conversion rate, as will additional factors like your operating hours, merchandising and marketing efforts.

Although these variables make it hard to estimate an average conversion rate across the board, various studies have shown the industry average to be around 20 percent for brick-and-mortar stores and anywhere from 20 to 40 percent for major retailers.

With online shopping becoming ever-present in recent years, these figures should come as no surprise. Still, regardless of the type of store in question, conventional wisdom dictates that a conversion rate of 15 percent or lower is bad for business and must be addressed.

What is KPI in Retail?

A KPI, or Key Performance Indicator, is a metric used to measure performance. Retail stores use various KPIs to measure their activities. There is no particular set of KPIs that every retail store must use. Retail stores need to pick the right KPIs based on the outcome they want to achieve or their strategic goals.

For example, one retail store might want to manage their inventory better, so they would use KPIs like inventory to sales ratios or inventory integrity. On the other hand, another store might want to enhance the customer experience, so they would choose KPIs like customer satisfaction and customer retention.

Retail stores need to choose the right KPIs when measuring their business processes or goals. Each KPI must have a specific purpose, must be measurable quantitatively or qualitatively, must have a realistic goal, must be relevant to the strategic direction of the store and should be measured within a specific time-frame.

An example of this is increasing monthly sales volume by 10 percent by the end of the month. The retail store will then measure their monthly sales volume and compare the increase to the target of 10 percent.

What is a Good b2b Sales Conversion Rate?

B2B sales processes are complex, with myriad stakeholders and prolonged decision cycles. That’s why it’s hard to know from the top of your head what’s working and what’s not. Fortunately, we have Salesforce, where we can track lead sources all the way to closing the deal.

Lead to opportunity—13%; Opportunity to deal—6%

Overall, our analysis shows that on average, 13% of leads convert to opportunities and the average time for conversion is 84 days. Conversion rate from opportunity to deal is even lower — only 6% of opportunities convert to deals, but it takes only 18 days, on average, to convert.

The most important metric, leads to deal, shows one clear winner. 3.6% of employee and customer referrals convert to deals, higher than any other channel. This is followed by the company website and social. Among the worst performing channels are lead lists, events and email campaigns with less than 0.1% lead to deal conversion rate.

Another important insight is that employee and customer referrals, company websites and social also tend to have the fastest progression from lead to deal. It takes only 40 days, on average, to convert a lead coming from social to a deal.

Website leads take around 75 days, and referrals take 97 days to convert. Lead lists, email campaigns trade shows, and webinars have the lowest conversion rate and the highest lead-time.

Webinars: only 2.5% opportunity to deal conversion rate

When we break the conversion rate into two parts — leads to opportunities and opportunities to deals — we see a few surprises. Webinars, for example, have the third-highest conversion rate from lead to opportunity (17.8%); however, it has one of the lowest conversion rates from opportunity to deal (only 2.5%).

The company website has the highest conversion rate from lead to opportunity (31.3%), probably because sales reps are very optimistic when inbound inquiries are coming from the website. However, only 5% of website opportunities actually end up as closed-won.

Company Events: mostly closed-lost opportunities

Another interesting insight is the ratio of closed-won versus closed-lost opportunities. It seems that some channels deliver opportunities that consistently fail to convert to deals. Less than 20% of company events, lead lists, and partner referrals end up as closed-won.

This is especially surprising — sales reps only open opportunities after they qualify leads. Still, even after qualification, it seems that these channels hardly produce opportunities with the potential to close.

Final Thoughts

A lot has been said on how you can boost your sales conversion rates with different strategies and tips you can implement. Now is time to get to work.

Immediate action is needed on your part if you are to get the results you desire, if you properly implement them, you will notice your sales and profit increase. So get to work.