Every day, new ideas surface on the ‘secret trick’ to making websites more appealing. You might hear that “making every CTA red will increase click-throughs by 30%!” but the truth is that there’s no perfect method for improving your conversion rate. Savvy website owners create their own conversion rate optimisation plans – we’re going to help you get started.
What is a conversion rate?
Simply put, your conversion rate defines how many of your customers are doing what you want them to do. This is calculated as the percentage of people who visit your website and become a customer or a lead. That might mean they buy your product, sign up to an email list or complete any other action that you want them to take.
Ultimately, your conversion rate indicates overall how well your value proposition or current marketing campaign is performing. A higher rate of conversion means more leads and more customers. While it’s too difficult to define a perfect conversion rate, industry specialists estimate that 12% is a successful figure.
The benefits of conversion rate optimisation
Increases your advertising budget
Conversion rate optimisation helps you get the maximum return on investment. Successful conversion rate optimisation means not only increased profits, but increased advertising spend. The two are closely connected, because for every visit you pay for that doesn’t result in a conversion, you lose money on advertising. Better quality traffic saves you money and helps your conversion rate keep growing. By increasing your conversion rate, you’re spending less on paid campaigns. That means more money left over to either reinvest in existing channels or branch out to new ones.
Helps you make better decisions
Conversion rate optimisation is a process that helps you identify and build strengths while minimising weaknesses in your website. Making website changes without a well-researched optimisation plan is throwing away valuable business. Your audience have wants and needs that you run the risk of ignoring if you don’t manage your conversion rate and continually try to improve it.
It’s important to remember that good conversion rate optimisation doesn’t just increase profits, it reduces risks. Instead of spending months developing a new feature only to see it fail, make decisions based on data. You can take the guesswork out of making changes. Reduce risks and you’re saving time and resources which you can spend productively elsewhere.
Discover customer insights
Conversion rates are a metric that tells you what’s working on your website. Regularly reviewing the best performing pages shows you where your customers are and what they want. Instead of focusing on increasing traffic, you should focus on the visitors you already have. Pay close attention to your lead funnel and where leads drop out. This is a map that shows you where you can improve your website.
These customer insights are already tailored to the audience you’re trying to attract. Using these insights means you can create a blueprint of exactly what your customers need and want. Customer personas can be built from your data, allowing you to easily visualise exactly who your customers are. Better optimised pages mean increased trust and a better user experience.
Conversion rate optimisation is free
Not only does this strategy help you save money on advertising, it won’t cost you a penny. The only thing a great conversion rate optimisation strategy requires is time and attention. You’ve done the hard work of building your website, so the key is perfecting the resources you already have. In terms of cost-effective strategies, conversion rate optimisation is your best option.
How can you get started?
While there’s no perfect strategy for conversion rate optimisation, this leaves your strategy open for experimentation. Best practice for netting conversions will also depend on the type of company you are. There are, however, some areas businesses of all shapes and sizes should consider. Creating your optimisation plan often includes some combination of:
- Identifying where in your sales funnel you’re losing leads
- Examining your CTAs and how prominent they are
- A/B testing
- Heatmaps
- Creating surveys and sourcing customer reviews for important feedback
- Creating a KPI framework with detailed optimisation goals
Check back for conversion rate optimisation part II, where we will focus more closely on what exactly you need to do to boost your CRO. With simple, practical steps and expert advice to get you well on your way to better lead generation.
At Fifty Five and Five we know the importance of bespoke solutions. Conversion rate optimisation is done best when it’s thoroughly researched and has the user in mind. Find out more on content generation and digital best practices here.