As a marketer, you’re well aware of how important it is to get new eyeballs on your webpages. You also know how crucial it is to get those new visitors to convert into leads.
And when it comes to conversions, the last thing you want is to be in the dark about how effective your teams’ initiatives are. You need a concrete way to see how well your overall efforts are working out. This is why conversion rate optimization is so important.
In this article, we’ll explain what conversion rate optimization is, and how you can improve it.
What is a conversion rate and how to determine it
First of all, let's dive into the idea of a conversion rate and explore ways to determine yours.
A conversion rate is essentially the proportion of total visitors to those who perform a specific action, such as making a purchase, submitting a form, downloading a whitepaper, and more.
To calculate a conversion rate, use the following formula:
For example, if you have 14 conversions (i.e. users taking an action) out of 170 visitors, the formula would look like this: (14/170) x 100
Which means that in this case, your conversion rate would be 8.2%. To be sure you’re calculating the rate accurately, ensure that the visitors you count in the equation were on the right page and/or had a chance to convert.
What kind of things impact conversion rates?
It’s not easy to give a blanket statement to why a website might have a high or low conversion rate. However, here are some common things that could be a factor.
Reasons a conversion rate could be high
Reasons a conversion rate might be low
Slow website/load times
Content that doesn’t suit the right audiences
Widgets that don’t work
Weak copy that doesn’t correctly point out the reasons why the desired conversion, e.g. a sign-up or a form-fill, would be beneficial
Now that you know what a conversion rate is and how to calculate it, it’s time to learn how to optimize it.
What is conversion rate optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the way in which a company goes about increasing the number of conversions, i.e. website visitors who take an action such as filling out a form.
CRO includes, but is not limited to, areas such as UX design, website analysis, A/B testing, content production and optimization, performance tracking and conversion funnel optimization.
The reason why CRO is so important to any business with a website, is because it increases the number of leads, quality of leads, and potential overall revenue.
How do you increase conversion rates?
There are plenty of different ways to boost your conversion rate, and depending on your unique strengths and deficiencies, some will work better than others.
Implement multi-step forms
Most people are familiar with single-step forms, but multi-step forms have recently proved to be vital, especially when it comes to boosting conversion rates. Multi-step forms are more user-friendly, giving visitors an easier path to inputting important information.
The multi–step form can increase conversion rates by maximizing the chances a visitor will be willing to start and complete a form-fill.
Create insightful content
There are all types of content we as marketers can release into the digital wild. Opportunity is plentiful, but from this opportunity there’s the risk of failing to truly connect with visitors. When this happens, it is as if our entire efforts have been for nothing. After all, getting a conversion is one of the most important end results of creating content.
To avoid this, it’s important we make our content insightful. To do so, consider the following questions before undergoing your next piece of content:
Who is the target audience?
This needs to be understood before pen hits paper (or finger hits keyboard). Are we writing to a general audience? What types of industries will our readers come from? How would we best connect with them?
Does the content set up a CTA?
Not every article has a firm call-to-action necessarily, but for those that do, how seamless is the inclusion of said CTA? Will it look clunky and out of place within this specific blog post?
Make sure blogs and articles don’t ‘dead end’ on visitors
Sometimes, all a visitor to your blog post wants is a nugget of information, and then they’re on their way. Of course, we want to be the ones to give them that valuable info, but we also don’t want to incentivize them to instantly quit our page after finding it.
So how can we balance answering the intent of a specific search and boosting our conversion rate?
As we already mentioned, a powerful CTA can work wonders. But also, consider your internal linking practices. When an important concept comes up in a blog, be sure to link to a relevant landing page.
The last thing you want is for your blog to be a one-stop location for visitors, in which their buyer journey never even begins.
A/B test your pages
A/B testing gives companies a concrete method of measuring and comparing the performance of two or more types of content, elements, webpages, and more. The results are invaluable, because they can provide businesses with data about the most effective approach for generating more conversions and leads.
This takes a lot of the guesswork out of optimizing a conversion rate, as it backs up processes that are functioning well, and shines a light on ones that aren’t. As a result, teams can pick and choose which processes to use or not.
Republish what works
Visibility is the mother of all marketing dreams. It’s clear that our most effective content needs to be the most visible. And in order to make this a reality, we need to follow effective republishing practices.
Keep in mind – this doesn’t mean you should simply evaluate your blog posts, find the best ones, and change the publish date to a more recent one.
For example, let’s say we have a blog post that converts well. It has a good clickthrough rate and has the lion’s share of our blog’s traffic.
It’s time to optimize this piece of content, and you’ll need a variety of strategy options to do so. Consider the following:
Re-evaluate the current SERP landscape for this particular topic.
Chances are, when you wrote this particular article, you attempted to answer the search intent. However, things may have changed since you published it. Google to see if what you wrote still fits.
Make changes as you see fit.
Remember, a republish is pointless (and potentially penalized by Google) if nothing has changed within the article. Spruce it up, adding and/or removing sections, changing tone when applicable, and whatever else you find to be important to change.
Update images.
We often use images that don’t fit with current changes to our brand makeup. When that’s the case, a republish is the perfect time to change the imagery into something that fits with the colors and themes of the recent blog posts.
Closing thoughts
A conversion rate is one of the most helpful ways to measure marketing success. If you have the right tools and processes in place, you’ll be able to optimize your conversion rate effectively.
Staying informed about your conversion rates is crucial, so monitor them continuously and respond accordingly for ongoing improvement. Remember, prioritizing CRO can unlock greater ROI and sustained growth for your business, so make sure to seize this opportunity.