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Conversion Rate Optimization

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“What do you think is more important: Increasing web traffic or conversion rate?”

More traffic and more conversions are not the same thing – and it’s more conversions that you need to run a successful business. Conversions happen on your website – after someone has clicked your PPC ad or your link in SERPs! I mean, what’s the point of driving traffic with SEO and PPC only to see those visitors turning on their heels? This can happen when your website is not optimized for conversions.

How did we do it?

Conversion Rate Optimization

What’s wrong with this picture?

Online businesses spend an awful lot of money on getting traffic to their websites: Think about the incessant SEO, PPC, display and video ads, blogs, social media and what not.

Advertisers seldom hesitate from spending money on a high traffic source, but their enthusiasm wanes when it’s time to make sure their website converts visitors into paying customers.

And that’s precisely where Conversion Optimization (also called Conversion Rate Optimization – CRO) and Landing Page Optimization (LPO) kick in – so what exactly is it? How does it work? Glad you asked!

Conversion Rate Optimization

What is a Conversion?

A conversion takes place each time a visitor takes a desired action on your website. That desired action can be anything you want it to be, for example: downloading a white paper, sending a product inquiry through your contact form, calling your business, or making a purchase in your online store.

How can you make sure that your website compels the maximum number of visitors to take the action that you want them to take?

The answer: Conversion Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization

What is Conversion Optimization?

A planned, scientific process for improving your website’s performance
A structured effort based on Analytics, user feedback, and “voice-of-customer” insights
A strategy determined by your website’s target audience, conversion goals, and the type of products or services you deal in
A collection of tactics focusing on your existing traffic and squeezing out the most benefit from it

What Conversion Optimization Is Not…

Depending on guesswork, following hunches, or blindly doing what others are doing
Getting more visitors to your website without considering the quality or the bottom-line results
Doing what your CEO wants you to do

Simply put:

“Conversion optimization is finding why visitors aren’t converting – and fixing it !”

Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization – The Process

Step 1: Establish Your Current Conversion Rate

In order to develop a plan of action for optimizing conversions, a business must measure the current conversion rate and identify the trouble spots that are causing visitors to drop away without converting. You can get these insights by analyzing the data from Google Analytics (or other analytics platform that you use). Here are the metrics that are critical to consider for optimizing conversion:

The Metrics that Matter for Improving Conversions

Total Conversions: These are the total numbers of people who took the desired action on your webpage—subscribed to your mailing list, initiated a download, made a purchase, etc

Conversion Rate: The conversion rate is the total number of conversions in a certain period divided by the total number of visitors in that period. For example, if you have 1000 visitors and 20 of them convert, your conversion rate is 2%.

These are the basic numbers that help us to find out where you stand today. But to find out the bottlenecks and hurdles in your conversion funnel, you also need to answer a few more questions:

What is the average time visitors spend on mission-critical web pages?

Which pages do people visit most frequently while they are on your site?

What do they do on those pages?

The following metrics can help you answer these questions and find out the trouble spots that are pulling down the conversions. These numbers help you form hypotheses about the reasons for low conversions and find out the ways to improve them.

Bounce Rate: The Bounce Rate is the percentage of your visitors who click away within a few seconds of landing on your page. Excessive bounce rate affects your conversion rate as well as SEO rankings, as it depicts that people don’t like what they see on your page, for whatever reasons.

Exit Rate: The Exit Rate is the percentage of people who exit your website from a particular page. Hence, each page on your site has a specific exit rate. A high exit rate for any page may mean there’s something wrong with that page, and if so you better find out what it is.

Average Time on Site: This metric shows how engaging your site is for your visitors. This is the opposite of Bounce Rate. The higher the Average Time on Site, the more interesting and engaging your web page is for your users.

Average Page Views: Another Engagement Metric, the Average Page Views tells you the average number of pages that a typical visitor views before exiting your site. Having more page views means that your website is engaging, but it can also point to problems with your structure and navigation, where your visitors are clicking from page to page, unable to find what they’re looking for.

The above metrics will tell you what is wrong with your site and what you can do about it.

For instance, let’s say you have good traffic. You’re receiving 5,000 hits a day, but only 50 conversions. Although the number of conversions may be sufficient to keep your business afloat or even growing, your conversion rate is only 1%. With the average online conversion rate being more than 2%, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able – at least – to double your conversions!

Conversion Rate Optimization

Step 2: Make changes to your landing pages

What Can You Do to Boost Conversions?

Well, there are tons of possibilities to optimize your website or landing pages for conversions. We have collected over 100 insights, tips, and tricks, coming from the most beautiful minds in the field of Conversion Rate Optimization. We are happy to offer them to you FREE!:

Download our Definitive Guide to PPC Landing Page Design.

63 pages of actionable insights from the top CRO Pro’s!

Conversion Rate Optimization

The Impact of Conversion Rate

Simplified Example : How CRO Boosts Your Bottom Line Figures

Let’s compare two hypothetical, simplified scenarios to understand why Conversion Rate Optimization makes sense for every PPC advertiser.

Scenario 1: Paying only for traffic

Let’s say you have a PPC Budget of $1,000/month, which drives you 1,000 visitors. You have a healthy conversion rate of 5% and a conversion valued at $50. You’re happy because you’re selling 50 products each month and generating a revenue of $2,500. After deducting the PPC cost, this gives you a gross profit of $1,500.

Scenario 2: Paying for traffic + Conversion optimization

Now let’s assume you are investing an additional $500 on conversion rate optimization. Let’s do some quick math:

PPC Budget: $1,000/month Conversion optimization budget: $500 Visitors: 1,000 Value of a conversion: $50 Conversion rate increase to: 6%

In this scenario, you will achieve 60 conversions @ $50 = $3,000 ($1,500 gross profit).

Oops! Looks like we have the same bottom line figure, right? – Well, not really!

The profit is identical in the first month, but what happens in month 2 and subsequent months? Your Conversion budget is a one-time investment, which gives you a lifetime conversion raise of 1%.

PPC Budget: $1,000/month Conversion optimization budget: $0 Visitors: 1,000 Value of a conversion: $50 Conversion rate: 6%

So, from month-2 onwards, you will convert 60 visitors and earn a revenue of $3,000, making $2,000 in profit.

That’s a 33% increase in your bottom line numbers for just a 1% increase in conversions!

Practically, it’s not unusual for clients to double or even triple their conversion rates.

Your landing page continues to convert at 6% for months and years to come, without you investing another dollar in conversion rate optimization.

Real Clients, Real Results: