How to increase your website conversion rate?

Over and over, you hear terms like “Conversions” or “Conversion rate” regarding website performance and analytics.  What do they mean?  And how you can use the information to improve your website? The conversion rate is not as complicated as it may sound and “Conversion” should be the primary goal for your website.

What is Conversion rate?

A conversion rate is an equation which is used to compare the total number of website visitors to the number of your achievemented website goals.  There are various types of website goals. Your goals may include product purchase quotas or a certain number of membership registrations in a specific period of time.  It could be a newsletter subscription quota, a specified number of software downloads, or it could be related to the number of people who read a specific blog article or clicked to your partner website.

The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired goal-related action.

The most frequently asked question about calculating a conversion rate is whether it is better to use the total number of all visitors or unique visitors in the calculation. A unique visitor is the one who has entered your site with a particular IP address and no matter how many visits he makes, if it is on the same device and same browser, only one unique visitor is counted.  If the same IP address accesses the site more than one time, it only counts as one unique visitor. Be sure you are consistent and use the same rule during all measurement periods.

The same rule applies for counting the goal achievements (desired actions). If you choose to use the number of unique visitors you should only count a specific person once when counting desired actions, even when the person takes more than one desired action during the same measurement period.

The conversion rate of your website depends on several factors, such as:

• Attractiveness of the website – Impressing visitors of your website at first glance does not guarantee success, but it can certainly keep them interested.
• Attractiveness of the offer – Did you know that more than 90% of visitors that come to your website are not actually ready to buy your products? Statistics show they are likely doing their pre-purchase research. Do your competitive homework and be certain your offer’s competitive advantage and presentation is obvious and compelling.
• Interest level of the visitor – Attracting your visitor’s attention right away is crucial, as visitors will click away in less than 8 seconds, if it isn’t interesting to them.
• Quality and ease of navigation system – It is of great importance to ensure that your visitors can easily reach the information they want – without having to think about it. Your navigation and flow must be engaging and intuititve.
• Speed of loading – Did you know that only a 1 second delay in your website speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions? If your page load hesitates in any way, it is worth the spend to have it optimized.

How to Increase Conversion Rates?

No matter how good your current conversation rates are, they can always be better.

We’ve provided some useful tips to help you improve:

• Attract the Right Traffic – Part of increasing your conversion rate is bringing users who are interested in what you are offering. You can achieve that by using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). How your SEO has been implemented can affect how users perceive your website. Targeting the wrong keywords and terms can ruin your business by generating low quality traffic. On the other hand, use of keywords that are not related to the main theme of the website is also meaningless. Not only will users immediately leave your website, these bounce rates will negatively impact your search engine rankings. Search engine optimization can help increase the amount of visitors who are ready to take the desired action, while minimizing visitors that are not interested in what you have to offer.
• Keep Customers Engaged and Connected – There are a lot of possible actions you can use to engage and connect with your visitors. By offering whitepapers, webinars, videos, and blog posts you can create and engage interest in your business until they are ready to purchase, join or take that next action. There is as much value in being known as an expert who provides value and creates connection as there is in the conversion.  Loyal followers tell others about you and don’t forget you when they are ready to purchase or convert.
• Make your website mobile friendly – Mobile web usage is rapidly growing and it can have a massive impact on your business. Google already announced that more searches take place on mobile devices than on lap tops or desktop computers. If your website is not mobile responsive, visitors who try to access your website via a mobile device will quickly lose interest and choose another high-search-ranking competitor. In addition to losing the business, your company is harmed further because lacking mobile responsiveness allows your loyal followers to experience your mobile responsive competition. Simply having a mobile friendly website can produce a significant increase a website’s conversion rate.
• You should do an A/B testing – A/B testing involves having two versions of the same element A and B. In order to determine which is better, both versions are released simultaneously in the same environment. A/B testing reveals which of the two versions was most successful. Continuing to make one distinct change to the best performer prior to each A/B testing will help you develop the best performing website, product page or ad possible, leading to increases in your website’s overall conversion rate. 

These are the elements that are usually tested:

• The wording, size, color and placement of your call to action
• Headlines or product descriptions
• Layout, navigation and style of website, page or ad
• Product pricing and promotional offers
• Images on landing and product pages
• Amount of text on the page

Below is the list of additional metrics that you should track to ensure and increase the success of your website:

1. Overall traffic is the most important and easiest metric to track is the total number of visits to your website.
2. Traffic sources reveal the source of every visitor. There are several types of traffic sources:

• Organic Search (traffic coming via the search engines)
• Referral (traffic from another website, such as a blog or social channel)
• Direct (visitors who enter your specific domain into the browser)
• Social (traffic from social media)

3. Bounce Rate is the measurement in percentage of how many people leave your website after viewing only one page. This page is usually the entrance or landing page – it is a generic term for the first page a visitor sees when linking to a A high bounce rate typically means that the landing page is not relevant to what visitors are seeking.
4. Exit Rate – Every page has an exit rate and it is the percentage of people who leave after viewing the page. Exit rate shows which pages were most often the final page in a session. An exceptionally high exit rate on a specific page should be a matter of concern, unless it is the landing page after the visitor completes the desired call to action.
5. Average Session Duration is a metric that records the average length of a session in hours, minutes, and seconds. It is an engagement metric also known as Time on Site, and shows how long people stay on your website.
6. Pages/Session is also called Average Page Views and it is an engagement metric that shows how many pages the average visitor goes through during a session. Ideally, your average page views should be close to the number of pages required to complete a conversion. 

Final Thoughts

I’ll bet you didn’t know that within your current site there is a goldmine of conversion opportunities that can drive more traffic, convert more visitors and sales for you. Never assume you have exhausted your conversion optimization opportunities.

Consider the data your analytics provide – every day.  Your customers are giving you the information you need by virtue of their onsite behavior to continue making improvements, better their user experience and drive more conversions.

Pick at least one of the tips we provided and explore the opportunity to increase your leads, traffic and conversions.  If you find you simply don’t have time, give me a buzz or shoot me an email.  You’ll be glad you did!