Just getting traffic to your website is not everything. The basis for success in online marketing is the optimization of the conversion rate, thanks to which you maximize the number of people who achieve the assumed goal. In this way, optimizing your conversion rate can increase your revenue and return on investment. Find out what conversion optimization is, how to start optimizing website conversions and what actions to implement.
Conversion rate optimization – what is it?
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? It is the process of optimizing the website in such a way as to increase the likelihood that users will take specific actions to achieve the goal. Website improvement is usually based on hard user behavior data from analytics tools. Conversion optimization can mean many activities, e.g. acquiring subscribers to a mailing list, downloading a free e-book posted on the website or even playing a video. In practice, most often, conversion rate optimization consists of activities that will encourage users to add a product to the basket, purchase and finalize the transaction.
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How to calculate the conversion rate?
Why calculate a conversion rate for your website? If you know the exact indicator, you will find out what resources you need in the CRO optimization process, as well as check what effects your website or online store generates. How to calculate the conversion rate and what data is needed for this? This can be done by dividing the number of total website conversions by the total number of visitors. Multiply the result by 100 to get the percentage. However, remember that you first need to determine what action is a conversion for you. It can be the number of people subscribed to the newsletter, the number of people who finalized the transaction. If the number of newsletter subscribers in a given month was 500 and the number of users on the page was 5000, then your conversion rate can be calculated as follows:
500 (number of subscribers) / 5000 x 100% = 10%
Optimizing the conversion rate and increasing conversion in the online store – benefits
According to our philosophy, the investment in internet marketing must pay off in the form of profit from conversion. The actions that are supposed to lead to this are collectively known as conversion rate optimization. Google Ads or positioning is not enough – even the most visits per day from positioning will not help, and a million likes on Facebook will not help if there is no purchase as a result of these activities. Unlike traditional marketing, internet marketing is a quantifiable activity. You can study its effects in great detail, analyze and compare a wide range of data, and then convert this data into money. Why is it worth investing in conversion rate optimization and what benefits does it bring?
– CRO (conversion rate optimization) allows you to optimize website functionality while helping you understand why and how visitors behave.
– Conversion optimization helps you increase your return on investment in your online marketing activities.
– CRO improves the quality and speed of experiments conducted on the website.
– Thanks to conversion optimization, you will get higher revenues with the same traffic.
– By optimizing the conversion rate, you get to know the expectations and needs of users better, and thanks to this you can improve the UX of the website and provide a personalized message.
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What areas does conversion rate optimization cover?
Depending on the type of website, conversion optimization can cover different areas. Different actions will be necessary to increase conversion in the online store, and different for the service website of a company that operates on the local or international market. However, conversion rate optimization typically focuses on the following:
– UX and UI of the website (now often referred to as SXO),
– customer path,
– website graphics,
– content marketing,
– type, language, readability and content of texts on the website,
– usefulness of the website in the after-sales service process,
– the operation of forms,
– operation of sales, payment or booking systems.
What is a good conversion rate?
Is there one conversion rate that is considered “good”? Unfortunately not. The size of the conversion rate should be assessed taking into account the industry in which you operate, location and popularity of the product or service. If the competition is high, the conversion rate will likely be lower. If your product is niche and little known, you also have to take into account a small percentage of buyers at the beginning. Remember that you can get conversions on different pages – on the blog, landing pages, from offer and product pages, so it’s worth optimizing each URL for conversion.
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How to increase the conversion rate? Conversion rate optimization in practice
Conversion optimization covers a wide range of activities. Below, we’ve outlined some of the important elements that will help you increase your goal achievement on different types of websites and e-commerce sites.
Landing page design and conversion rate optimization
Conversion rate optimization begins at the stage of building and designing a website. The greater the aesthetics and intuitiveness of the project, the greater the chances of achieving goals by users. How to optimize conversion through website design?
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– Put all important information on one page.
– Make sure the buttons are visible.
– Make the user have one goal to accomplish on one page (e.g. add a product to the basket, use the registration form).
Optimization of the conversion rate of the registration form
The rule is simple – the more fields to fill in, the greater the risk that the customer will leave the website, and the conversion rate will be low. A good idea to increase conversions in the online store and on the website is to determine which customer data is necessary. Maybe just an email address is enough? Do we really need to know the NIP and address of the company that submits the inquiry? For our clients, for whom we have significantly shortened the forms, we have observed an increase in the number of conversions already in the first weeks after optimization.
Facilitating contact access in conversion optimization
This point especially applies to service companies. They focus on the aesthetics of the website, forgetting about contact details. It happens that the data is available “deep” on the website, e.g. in the regulations or in the privacy policy. We assume that every potential customer wants to know what company they are dealing with – to know the name of the company, its location, telephone number. Many people still make the mistake of providing only the application form on the contact page. They do not provide an e-mail address, telephone number, or the name and seat of the company. This can make potential customers distrustful. We always recommend our clients to place the “contact” button in a visible place on the home page, and additionally place the company’s details in the footer of the page. These should be visible on every subpage, not just on the main page.