What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Do you need more traffic to your website? The obvious answer could be wrong. More traffic doesn’t help your business if your audience doesn’t convert. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an ongoing process to enhance your website to increase the volume of leads you generate.
Your business growth is not about more traffic. You can spend your entire ad budget getting more paid traffic to your website and still not generate new leads. Your business will grow when you get your existing traffic to take action on your offers.
What does CRO look like in the real world?
Let’s imagine that your average customer opportunity is $1000. Each month, your website gets 1000 visitors. On average, ten shoppers make a purchase. That’s $10,000 of top-line revenue with a 1% conversion rate.
Here’s where the power of small numbers makes a big difference. Let’s grow your revenue by 2%. How would you do that?
You could buy ads on search, display, mobile, or social. Another approach could be sending postal flyers. You could also buy local television ads for cable and streaming services to reach your target buyer.
What if you don’t have the budget to create campaign materials to promote your offer? Moreover, if you don’t have data to attribute to why people click, more ad expenditures won’t help you find out what’s working.
Conversion rate optimization provides a sustainable path to growth with existing and new visitors to your website. By addressing the issues that block website conversions, you’ll improve your overall Digital Brand Experience. That makes your current and future growth easy to predict.
Web Design Factors that Impact Your Conversion Rate
A significant factor that contributes to low conversion rates is poor website design.
- Site speed. Slow load times will cause visitors to leave before they see your offer.
- No CTA. Ambiguous calls to action are also a low conversion rate culprit.
- Words Matter. Poor copywriting that doesn’t communicate your value may be killing your deals.
You often need to fix more than one thing to improve your CRO. Think of CRO as multiple links in a chain toward your desired outcome. Improve your CRO by reinforcing each weak link in your chain.
Well-designed websites create a high conversion rate. The site structure and visual format all drive your audience to convert. Excellent copy that speaks in the voice of the customer is more appealing. Invest in your Digital Brand Experience to improve your CRO.
How do you calculate your conversion rate?
It’s a simple math formula. Divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors to your landing page, and multiply that by 100 to get your conversion rate percentage.
Conversions/Traffic Volume = Conversion Rate
Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy!
Add time to this formula so that you can make period comparisons. For example, you can measure your conversion rate for a day, week, quarter, or year. Over time, you will be able to compare periods between years to see how effective your inbound marketing campaigns are.
Let’s take a simple example of getting new subscribers to your email list. In one month, you had 200 people signup for your newsletter. Over the same period, you had 10,000 visitors to your website.
Your conversion rate for the month is 200/10000 = 0.02 or 2%
Ask Better Conversion Questions
Getting more conversions from your existing traffic has a more significant impact than acquiring more visitors. A 1% increase adds another 100 contacts to your list for prospecting. Now, you can start to ask better questions with CRO:
- What’s the conversion rate of email subscribers to customers?
- What’s the average deal size per customer?
- How does a 2% conversion rate increase affect my revenue?
Let’s suppose your email list has 500 contacts. You have a 3% conversion rate to an active customer. Your average deal size per customer is $2500.
500 x 3% = 15 Customers
$2500 x 15 = $37,500
A 2% conversion rate increase would add $25,000 to your revenue, a 40% increase.
500 x 5% = 25 Customers
$2500 x 25= $62,500
That’s the power of small numbers making a massive impact on your revenue.
Where to Start Improving Website Conversions
Conversion Rate Optimization should prompt a mindset shift in your website design. Think of your entire website as an evergreen campaign. Make every page on your website a landing page. That means you’re creating an opportunity to convert at each touchpoint in your Digital Brand Experience.
What parts of your website need conversion rate optimization?
- Homepage
- Landing Pages
- Forms
- Mobile Experience
- Page Speed
Make doing business with you easy. Conversions happen naturally when your audience doesn’t have to think. Get clear with your messaging so that your prospects pay attention.
Stop Promoting Your Lazy Website
Let me be clear. Websites that don’t convert are useless. There are like a hose pipe with leaking holes. Stop the leaks with conversion rate optimization.
CRO improves your efforts across your three media channels: owned, paid, and earned. Keep these thoughts in mind as you begin improving your conversions.
- Improve your website for SEO and CRO together.
- Track your conversions to measure your return on ad spending (ROAS).
- Document your customer journey for each conversion point to remove friction.
- Remove clutter and bad copy from your website.
Here’s your homework! Visit the websites you do business with for inspiration. Review their conversion pages. What are they doing well? What tactics can you adopt for your website? Implement them tonight.
