Conversion rate optimization is important because it allows you to lower your customer acquisition costs by getting more value from the visitors and users you already have. By optimizing your conversion rate you can increase revenue per visitor, acquire more customers, and grow your business.
There is always room for improvement when it comes to increasing conversions, and the best companies are constantly iterating and improving their sites and apps to create a better experience for their users and grow conversions.
Forget about best practices and quick hacks: to increase website conversion rate, your best move is to understand your visitors, users, and customers, and give them what they need.
- What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
- How do you Optimize Conversion Rate?
- What does Optimize for Conversion Mean?
- What is Conversion Rate Optimization in E-commerce?
- Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important for SEO?
- Why is a Conversion Rate Important?
- What is Another Commonly Used Term for Conversion Optimization?
- Why is Conversion Rate Important in Retail?
- How to Increase Conversion Rate in Retail
- How can Customer Conversion Rates be Improved?
- What is a Conversion Rate in Marketing?
- What is a Good Conversion Rate?
- Why is Conversion Important in Digital Marketing?
- What is a Sales Conversion Strategy?
- What is a Good Conversion Rate for Digital Marketing?
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of conversions from a website or mobile app. CRO typically involves generating ideas for elements on your site or app that can be improved and then validating those hypotheses through A/B testing and multivariate testing.
Read Also: Building Brand Awareness
Standard definitions of CRO, like the one we just wrote above, place their focus on conversion percentages, averages, and benchmarks. This emphasis on a numerical approach comes with a downside—the more you look at spreadsheets full of conversion data points and actions, the less you think of the individuals behind them.
Here is an alternative, more holistic and user-centric way of defining CRO: think of it as the process of focusing on understanding what drives, stops, and persuades your users, so you can give them the best user experience possible—and that, in turn, is what makes them convert and ultimately improves your website conversion rate.
Why do we think this second definition works better? Because focusing on the final action—the conversion—is obviously important, but in reality, a lot happens before that point:
- Specific DRIVERS bring people to your website
- Specific BARRIERS make them leave
- Specific HOOKS persuade them to convert
When you’re working to improve conversions, not every problem is quantifiable, backed by hard numbers, and with a clear-cut answer. Yes: sometimes, an obvious bug is blocking 80% of your users from doing something, and fixing that one bug will save your entire business; other times, your website functions perfectly and yet people still are not converting.
When this happens, you’ll need to dig deeper to understand the why beyond the data you have—you’ll need, in other words, to focus on your users first. And that’s what we at Hotjar think CRO is actually about.
Whether you own an e-commerce site or manage online marketing or SEO (search engine optimization), CRO will constantly be a top-of-mind topic to help your organization grow.
How do you Optimize Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate optimization requires time and resources and, if you’re doing it right, testing. Nonetheless, it’s more than worth your while to familiarize yourself with the basic principles and metrics of website conversion optimization, so you can maximize the chances that a potential customer who arrives at your site from a search engine becomes a qualified lead or a paying customer.
There are a number of things you can do to increase your conversion rate, among them:
- Write compelling, clickable PPC ads that are highly relevant to the keyword/search query and your intended audience. All the better if you’re targeting high-intent mid-tail and long-tail keywords that indicate a searcher who is late in the buying cycle, as those consumers are more likely to convert.
- Maintain a high degree of relevance between your ads and corresponding landing pages. Your landing page should deliver on the promise of your ad (the call to action) and make it easy for the searcher to complete that action, be it signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper or making a purchase.
- Test your landing page design. Conduct A/B testing to find the right layout, copy, and colors that push the highest percentage of site visitors to fill out your form, call in, or otherwise convert to a valuable lead or customer.
Start with the Right Keywords
When you start thinking about conversion rate optimization, it’s tempting to fiddle around with buttons and forms and other low-in-the-funnel design elements that might make or break the sale. But remember that part of optimizing conversions is getting the right visitors to your site in the first place:
- High web traffic is useless if none of those people convert.
- With search marketing, increasing your qualified traffic is a matter of bidding on and optimizing for the right keywords.
- Better keyword traffic data means you can make better decisions about your website and ad copy and better target the right customers.
Landing Pages and Conversion Rate Optimization
The quality of your individual landing pages can have a dramatic effect on conversion rates. Think about it – a prospective client stumbles across your page as the result of a specific search query. If the content and offering of that page aren’t relevant to what they were looking for or expecting to find, they will return to their search and you will lose that lead.
And the negative effects don’t stop there! Poorly constructed landing pages can also cause your Quality Score to drop, which will in turn raise your cost per click, cost per action, and reduce your ad rank so that it’s harder to win spots in Google’s ad auction process.
So, what makes a good landing page? Common best practices for page design include few key elements:
- Compelling headline – Create a striking headline that is relevant to your PPC keyword and compels prospective clients to remain on the page to fulfill your desired action.
- Concise, targeted copy – The content of your page should clearly communicate your offering, and speak directly to the keywords associated with that ad group. Use bulleted lists to prevent copy from becoming too lengthy or overwhelming.
- Eye-catching, clickable call-to-action (CTA) – Make sure your CTA button stands out visually, appears clickable and uses short, gain-focused text.
- User-friendly lead capture form – A good form includes all the fields needed to fulfill your offer, but not so many that prospective clients are visually overwhelmed. Think carefully about what information is truly necessary to capture as you build your form.
- Attractive overall design – Landing pages should be clean and uncluttered, which conveys both trustworthiness and professionalism to prospective clients. Design should also be consistent with your brand in order to prevent a disjointed browsing experience for visitors.
Adhering to these best practices will keep your landing pages relevant and high-quality, which will lead to a valuable boost in both CRO and Quality Score.
What does Optimize for Conversion Mean?
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of enhancing your website to increase the number of leads you generate. CRO is achieved through content enhancements, split testing, and workflow improvements. Conversion rate optimization results in highly-qualified leads, increased revenue, and lower acquisition costs.
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, like completing a web form, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product.
A high conversion rate means your website is well-designed, formatted effectively, and appealing to your target audience. A low conversion rate could be the result of a variety of factors related to either website performance or design. Slow load times, a broken form, or copy that doesn’t convey the value of the offer are common reasons for a poor conversion rate.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization in E-commerce?
E-Commerce Conversion Rate Optimization ** (CRO) is the process of improving your e-commerce conversion rate by making small, incremental improvements. A better user experience (UX) on your site naturally leads to more conversions, so UX and CRO are closely linked.
Understanding how your customers think, feel, and behave leads to better user experiences, which helps you maximize the number of conversions you bring in.
To start with, data from one of our quantitative studies also underscores the reasons people have for shopping online, instead of offline. Two of the reasons — better selection and living too far away — are beyond the scope of our conversion rate optimization tips, but the others offer clear insights into where you should focus your optimization efforts.
There is not one conversion rate that can be deemed as “good” across all industries. Good conversion rates are the result of hundreds of small design decisions — and that can feel really overwhelming.
If there are other things on your to-do list than “Improve UX for the website,” it can be easy to put off the fixes that will make a big difference in your site’s profitability and brand loyalty.
But one thing we can tell you with certainty, having worked with many of the biggest names in e-commerce, including Nike, Amazon, Etsy, and many more: No site gets everything perfect – our UX research confirms this.
Improving conversion rates is an ongoing part process for any company — from the smallest niche purveyor to global mega brands.
The goal of each incremental change should be to make it easier for your buyers to find the items they want, add them to their carts, complete a seamless transaction, and return to buy from you again.
When you systematically work through the problems that make it harder to complete a transaction, you’ll see fewer cart abandonments and more sales.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important for SEO?
While not necessarily directly related to attracting organic website traffic or ranking on a search engine results page (SERP), conversion rate optimization has distinct benefits for SEO. Those include:
- Improved customer insights. Conversion rate optimization can help you better understand your key audience and find what language or messaging best speaks to their needs. Conversion rate optimization looks at finding the right customers for your business. Acquiring more people doesn’t do your business any good if they’re not the right kind of people!
- Better ROI: Higher conversion rate means making more of the resources you have. By studying how to get the most out of your acquisition efforts, you’ll get more conversions without having to bring in more potential customers.
- Better scalability: While your audience size may not scale as your business grows, CRO lets you grow without running out of resources and prospective customers. Audiences aren’t infinite. By turning more browsers into buyers, you’ll be able to grow your business without running out of potential customers.
- Better user experience: When users feel smart and sophisticated on your website, they tend to stick around. CRO studies what works on your site. By taking what works and expanding on it, you’ll make a better user experience. Users who feel empowered by your site will engage with it more — and some may even become evangelists for your brand.
- Enhanced trust: In order for a user to share their credit card, email, or any sort of personal information, they have to genuinely trust the site. Your website is your number-one sales person. Just like an internal sales team, your site needs to be professional, courteous, and ready to answer all of your customers’ questions.
Why is a Conversion Rate Important?
Conversion rates are an effective way of comparing and contrasting the performance of multiple advertising channels. As with the example above, conversion rates are particularly important when running mobile user acquisition because they can measure the success of each campaign. They can also be used to set ROI expectations when scaling a campaign.
Conversion rates don’t always have to refer to clicks – they can also refer to conversion events further down the funnel. For example, it is possible to calculate the percentage of users who went on to install an app or complete an in-app action. This is important for advertisers and marketers alike because it helps them to identify valuable users. This information can then be fed back into the funnel to aid targeting and optimize campaign performance.
When used correctly, conversion rate analysis can reveal which channels are most effective for promoting a particular app, helping an advertiser to determine the effectiveness of their copy and use it to guide strategic decisions.
If your data shows that a conversion rate is lower than expected, they can also be used to spot issues with an app’s UX (for example, when users are having problems signing in) and highlight other areas of improvement.
There isn’t a single conversion rate that can be used to define success across the mobile advertising industry, but research into industry benchmarks and vertical-specific conversion expectations can help. You can use this research to compare these figures with the performance of your in-house advertising campaigns across a selection of channels and advertisers.
What is Another Commonly Used Term for Conversion Optimization?
Conversion optimization is typically part of the full spectrum of the conversion rate optimization services which can wary based on the element we want to optimize. But there is a lot of different definitions that cover this field.
Time is also one of the things that are defined by what the term will be. For example how long should you let your conversion optimization experiments run on average depends on the element you want to optimize and traffic or visitors you have towards it. Low traffic and CRO won’t work.
Why is Conversion Rate Important in Retail?
In retail operations, conversion is the process of turning store visitors into paying customers. Businesses often measure their conversion as a rate that compares these two groups. This is an important metric to track and it can tell retail managers how effective their processes are at bringing sales to their establishment.
Knowing the rate at which visitors make purchases can give retailers valuable insights into their processes, marketing and customer base. Managers often look at sales numbers to understand how successful they were on a given day. Knowing their conversion rate can help put their sales numbers into context by showing them the number of potential sales they could make.
Conversion rates can help retail managers understand whether their store layout and marketing are effective at convincing visitors to make purchases. It may also give them insight into whether their inventory is appealing to customers. This information can help retailers recognize inefficiencies in their stores and improve them through better marketing, store layout or improved inventory.
This is an example of how a retail store might calculate its conversion rate:
The store’s foot traffic counters indicate that 250 customers entered the store on Thursday and it processed 75 transactions. To find the number of visitors to paying customers, the manager divides the number of transactions by the number of visitors, which yields a result of 0.3. To express this as a percentage, the manager multiplies 0.3 by 100, which gives a conversion rate of 30%.
Here’s the equation the manager used:
*75 transactions ÷ 250 visitors = 0.3 transactions per visitor*
*0.3 x 100 = 30% conversion rate*
How to Increase Conversion Rate in Retail
Consider these steps to improve your store’s conversion rate:
1. Improve store appearance
A store’s appearance is often the first thing that customers notice when they enter, and attractive spaces can help convince customers to stay and make purchases. There are two key elements of a store’s appearance, decor and layout. A store’s decor includes its color scheme, lighting, signs and furniture.
When choosing these elements, it’s important to ensure that they all reflect your brand identity and fit comfortably together. Many designs can be successful, as long as they project the same message. Some brands may have a bright, colorful palette, while others may be more muted and austere.
The second element of a store’s appearance is its layout. It’s often a good idea to reduce stock on the floor to create an open space and to make it easy for customers to locate items. Consider placing important displays in areas that shoppers are likely to pass. Many retail professionals refer to the space just inside of a store as the decompression zone. It’s often best to remove most items from this area, as customers may not notice them.
2. Greet customers
Greeting customers is a good way to let them know you’re aware of them and are happy to see them in the store. It can also let them know your staff is available to help them locate items or answer questions. It may be helpful to ensure your employees greet every customer who enters the store within a few seconds. Customers who feel valued are more likely to make purchases.
3. Match your store to your advertising
If your store pursues extensive online, social media or physical advertising, it may be important to align your messaging with your physical location. The color palette and design elements of your store should match the graphics of your advertisements. This can help your customers feel more comfortable when they’re shopping. Having the products you’re currently advertising available can also help to avoid customer disappointment.
4. Attend to customers quickly
By ensuring that your employees respond quickly, courteously and knowledgeably to your customers, you can create an environment that they want to come back to again and again. It can be helpful to train staff to ask shoppers if they need help and then give them space until they have questions. This allows customers to feel supported but not pressured.
5. Match stock with demand
A store’s stock levels can be very important for increasing customer satisfaction and conversion. It’s important to keep enough products in stock and to ensure that the right products are present. Consider maintaining high stock levels on your most popular items and lower stock for other items. This can increase customer satisfaction and ensure that you have enough space to maintain a stock of in-demand products.
If your company is advertising new products, be sure to have them in the store. If your company has seasonal product changes, it can be helpful to ensure that your stock turns over to new products in a timely way. Holiday seasons may require having special items, so being especially aware of stock levels during these periods can be important.
6. Increase staff training
A store’s staff is often an important component when increasing conversion. Having friendly staff can increase customers’ comfort and enthusiasm for your business. One way your staff can be more effective is by ensuring that they maintain a positive attitude during every shift. It may also be helpful to conduct extensive training with new employees to ensure that they can locate all items in the store and respond helpfully to any customer’s questions.
You can also help train your staff so that they have the tools to make sales. Consider training your employees to ask questions of customers and determine what they want to purchase. Once they know what the customer wants, they help them find it. You might incentivize your employees to make sales by offering prizes or bonuses to staff members who excel.
7. Plan for shortages
Even if your store is well-stocked, you may occasionally encounter shortages of some items. It’s often a good idea to have standard procedures ready for when this happens. You can offer different benefits to customers who cannot find what they want. This might include discounts, coupons, free shipping or store credit. These steps can prevent customers from going to other stores and ensure that they return.
8. Hide lines
Many customers become unsure about visiting an establishment if they see long lines at the checkout counter or outside the store. There are several ways you can improve your checkout efficiency and make lines less obvious.
Ensure that enough staff is available at all times to help customers check out quickly and optimize your POS system so that payments move quickly. To make lines less obvious, you can place your checkout area near the back or side of the store.
9. Increase staffing
Having sufficient staff on the floor to attend to all customers helps them feel welcome. Adequate staffing can also prevent wait times and give customers a sense that the store has good management.
This can be especially important during busy times and holidays, and it may be helpful to optimize your scheduling to support high-traffic periods. In order to incentivize your employees, you can consider offering bonuses or other rewards for those who work extra hours, holidays or busy times.
10. Analyze your conversion rate
To maximize your store’s potential, consider examining your conversion metrics to learn what could improve most. Certain days and seasons might be slower for some businesses. To find your slow periods, consider measuring your conversion rate daily. Once you determine your slow times, you can develop strategies to improve your foot traffic. Consider offering sales, promotions or hosting store events to increase your profitability during these periods.
How can Customer Conversion Rates be Improved?
If you’re seeing great homepage traffic and still not getting the conversions you expect, you can fix it. Start by knowing what a good conversion rate looks like to make sure your goals are reasonable.
Next, we’ll talk about 9 solid conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies.
1. Use a CRO planner.
Getting started with conversion rate optimization can seem like a daunting task. The first step to improving your conversion rate? Use a CRO planner.
With a CRO planner, you’ll be able to analyze and develop a strategy for increasing your conversion rate.
For example, with HubSpot CRO planner, you’ll find instructions on how to conduct a site audit, identify areas to improve your conversion funnel, understand users on your site, and go through the process of A/B testing and experimentation.
CRO planners can be helpful because they take through the entire process from A to Z.
2. Shorten your forms.
One reason that users don’t convert is because there’s friction in the process. For example, if you have a long-form, visitors might be hesitant to fill it out.
It’s your job to eliminate hesitation, not create it. By shortening your forms, you’ll create trust among your audience. Plus, it takes less time to fill out so users are more likely to complete it.
3. Include social proof.
Did you know that 89% of consumers check online reviews before making a purchase? The Canvas8 study commissioned by Trustpilot also found 49% of consumers consider positive reviews one of their top three purchase influences. Without a doubt, your reputation and online presence impact your conversion rate. That’s why you should include social proof on your site.
You can link to your Yelp or any other directory page where customers have left reviews.
Additionally, you should also add testimonials and reviews right on your site so visitors don’t have to go to a third-party site. It should be apparent that your customers have enjoyed using your product or service. If it isn’t, your conversion rate will suffer.
4. Track how people interact with your site.
It’ll be hard to improve your conversion rate if you don’t understand how users are interacting with your site.
But how can you see where visitors are getting tripped up? With website analysis tools, you can see screen recordings of users on your site. You’ll see what they click on, if they skip over an offer, or if they stop filling out a form in the middle.
Additionally, these tools should include heat maps of your site, so you can see what elements stand out and what draws the eye.
A tool like Crazy Egg or HubSpot’s website grader can help you see what you’re doing well and diagnose what areas of your site you need to improve. You should also calculate your conversion rate and analyze why visitors aren’t converting on your site.
5. Add live chat.
When a web visitor doesn’t convert, they might have a question or concern about your product or service.
To avoid losing potential customers, you should consider adding live chat to your site.
With live chat, your customer service or sales employees can alleviate concerns of prospects who are on the fence.
6. Test your offers.
Sometimes it can feel like you’ve checked everything — you’ve written a strong copy, included social proof, and have optimized your forms … but you still aren’t converting.
When this happens, it’s time to check your content offers. Do they align with your audience? Are they creative and compelling? Do the offers make sense for the page they’re on?
Think about your current offers and answer those questions.
For example, offering a free trial or consultation is fairly generic. Instead, you could offer something like HubSpot’s Website Grader. With this offer, the customer is getting a lot out of it. They’re getting actionable advice, for free, and they don’t need to clear out time on their calendar to get it.
Tangible and compelling offers always perform better than a generic offer. To improve conversions, you need to analyze and test your content offers.
7. Conduct A/B testing.
It’s not always easy to know what’s working and what isn’t. When that happens, you should conduct A/B tests.
See what types of headlines, colors, copy, layout, and CTAs work for your audience. Get creative with your experiments.
For example, you can try testing an entirely new type of CTA or completely changing the format of your copy.
8. Increase trust and remove friction.
Users don’t convert if they don’t trust your brand or experience friction in the process. So, how can you increase trust?
You can use several tactics, including money-back guarantees, updating your site content regularly, avoiding spammy links, and making the site easy to use.
If it looks like you haven’t posted a blog in two years or there are a lot of broken links — that’s friction and it creates distrust.
Additionally, you can include team bios so your audience knows who they’re getting information from.
What is a Conversion Rate in Marketing?
Your conversion rate can be defined as the percentage of users or visitors that complete a specific action. The action can be anything – new signup, a new purchase, a download, etc.
The rate is displayed in percentage and can be very volatile. Plus, it may differ from page to page and product to product.
Let’s say you sell shoes and decide to run a marketing campaign on Facebook that attracts 1,000 visitors. According to the campaign, your conversion rate is 2 percent, which means about 20 of your visitors actually made a purchase.
A good conversion rate is between 2 percent and 5 percent.
The thing with conversion rate is that even a jump of 0.5 percent can be a big deal. Moreover, we must mention that the top brands enjoy better results.
Conversion Rate by Industry
Let’s find out what is a good conversion rate for an e-commerce website. In order to truly understand your customers and how to best serve them, you need to track your conversion rate closely legaldrop identify areas where improvements can be made. By doing so, you can unlock new opportunities that may not have otherwise been apparent.
Here’s a small breakdown for a complete understanding of conversion rates in different industries:
| Bottom | Middle | Top | |
| Ecommerce | 1.84% | 3.71% | 6.25% |
| Legal | 1.07% | 4.12% | 6.46% |
| B2B | 2.23% | 4.31% | 11.70% |
| Finance | 5.01% | 11.19% | 24.48% |
As you can see, e-commerce conversion rates are very low especially when compared to finance, especially when you look at the top tier. Similarly, B2B website conversion rates are on the higher side.
The rule applies to all tiers, however. Let’s think about legal – if you’re around 4 percent then you’re in the average, if you’re around 6.5 percent then you’re in the top tier, and if you’re around 1 percent then you’re doing poorly.
This chart can help you figure out where you stand. But, we must mention that an e-commerce store with a rate of 3.71 percent might be making more money than a company that offers legal services and enjoys a conversion rate of 6.46 percent.
This is because legal is a niche that does not attract a lot of buyers. E-commerce, on the other hand, may attract more users.
Retail Sector ad Conversion Rates
According to this 2020 report, the industry’s average is 3 percent; however, some industries may enjoy a higher or lower conversion rate based on competition and demand. Here’s a breakdown:
| Industry | Conversion Rate |
| Consumer Electronics | 1.4% |
| DIY & Tools | 1.7% |
| Automotive | 2.2% |
| Home Furnishing and Decor | 2.3% |
| Major Chains | 2.3% |
| Jewels and Cosmetics | 2.9% |
| Sports | 3.1% |
| Others | 3.4% |
| Apparel and Footwear | 4.2% |
| Health and Pharmacy | 4.6% |
| Gifts | 4.9% |
This shows how conversion rates may differ for e-commerce. A store that sells gift items may enjoy a higher conversion rate than a store that offers sports goods.
A big e-commerce store that offers multiple products may have different rates for different sections.
Traffic Source and Conversion Rates
According to this Episerver research, conversion rates greatly differ based on source. This is why it is important to know how to calculate conversion rate.
The rate for some pages may be higher or lower than the average website conversion rate. This happens because users who reach your site through a specific channel might be more interested in what you have to offer than users who land on your site randomly.
Here’s a small breakdown:
| Traffic Source | Conversion Rate |
| Display | 0.7% |
| Social | 2.1% |
| Direct | 2.2% |
| 2.3% | |
| Referral | 2.6% |
| Organic | 2.8% |
| Paid | 2.9% |
As evident, paid traffic tends to convert better. This is why a large number of businesses buy ad space.
Device and Conversion Rates
We know that a large number of users use mobile devices to browse the web, hence it’s important to know how the rate changes from device to device.
Here’s a small breakdown:
| Device | Conversion Rate |
| Mobile | 1.82% |
| Tablet | 3.49% |
| Desktop | 3.90% |
This might come as a surprise to some but mobile users do not convert as well as desktop users do. Hence, mobile website conversion rates can be slightly lower than the typical website conversion rate.
It’s believed this happens because mobile users are often greatly distracted.
What is a Good Conversion Rate?
The average conversion rate is between two and five percent for all advertisers, from brand names to small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs). Average, however, isn’t what most companies want. They want a top-notch conversion rate to earn a competitive edge in the marketplace. What is a good conversion rate, though? Above 10% — for all industries and company sizes.
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.
Why is Conversion Important in Digital Marketing?
Most online marketing strategies have the same goal: generating revenue. This revenue could be derived from sales, subscriptions or leads, depending on your product or service.
Why? Because conversion marketing is designed to draw value from each visit.
Conversion marketing aims to increase leads and sales by focusing on the visitor’s experience to persuade them to convert. This “conversion” could be any action or actions that you want a user to perform on your website. From making a purchase, to signing up for an email list, completing a form, subscribing or clicking a “call now” button. Every time a user takes that action, you’ve made a conversion.
Same traffic. More revenue.
Since the goal is to increase your conversion rate by moving a visitor closer to becoming a paying customer, you can see why conversion marketing or conversion rate optimization is crucial.
This approach uses behavioral research, persuasion science, and data to determine how best to make your website a vehicle for success.
Understanding what your current and potential customers need is important in all aspects of marketing. But understanding how we can change the behavior of site visitors is of vital importance to conversion marketing. Whether it’s designing, writing, or developing creative website content, the focus is on getting more leads, increasing the number of transactions, increasing order value, etc.
If increasing conversions is not enough, then consider these reasons:
- Improve the Quality of your Conversions: Bigger shopping carts, returning customers, better quality leads, lower cart abandonment rates.
- Don’t let your hard earned (or paid for) traffic go to waste. Make every visitor count. You vested time and money on your social media channels, paid ad campaigns and organic efforts. Convert each and every one of these prospects/opportunities.
- Increase Profit Margins by lowering cost per acquisition.
- Let Conversion Marketing Metrics be your alarm system. Quickly identify issues to discover and implement a solution.
- Identify the low hanging fruit (where you will get the most bang for your buck) by measuring conversions or truly know your customer and leverage personalization strategies that convert.
What is a Sales Conversion Strategy?
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.
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.
What is a Good Conversion Rate for Digital Marketing?
Figuring out your conversion rate is easy. All you have to do is take the number of people who interact with a particular piece of content, like an email or a page on your website, and divide the number of conversions by that total. The total you divide by depends on the type of content you want to find the conversion rate for.
For example, imagine that you just sent out an email campaign to announce the upcoming release of your new product to 10,000 customers who have bought from you before. Of those 10,000 email recipients, 500 clicked through to sign up for pre-order. Your e-commerce conversion rate on that email is 500 divided by 10,000—5%.
Your conversion rate tells you, in no-nonsense terms, the efficacy of your public-facing content. If 6% of your website visitors join your mailing list or make a purchase, your website is 6% effective.
Read Also: How to Reach Out to New Customers
But here’s the thing: That’s actually very good. In fact, a “good” website conversion rate falls between 2% and 5% across all industries. Industry-specific conversion rates vary quite a bit more.
Some industries, like industrial equipment, have very low-performing websites. Others, like those that sell electronics or business services, tend to have higher average conversion rates. So if you’re inclined to see where you fall, do some research and make sure you’re not comparing apples to cars.
A good conversion rate means a strong ROI, or return on investment.
Let’s say you spend $2,000 per month on content that ordinarily gets you 20,000 readers and 500 click-throughs. You now have a conversion rate of 2.5%. You’ve also essentially spent $4 for each of those conversions.
However, if you manage to get 800 click-throughs the next month, your conversion rate will have increased to 4%. And if your budget hasn’t changed from $2,000, each conversion has only cost you $2.50, compared to $4 the month before. You’re in a better place because you’ve gotten more revenue without increasing your spending.
If your conversion rate decreased, on the other hand, your ROI would likewise decrease. Each conversion has become more expensive. If this happens, it might signal the need to change your marketing strategy.
