Marketing teams face fierce competition in quest of highly relevant web traffic that will convert into leads. Eventually, your sales team will close those deals and convert qualified prospects into sales. Once the process begins and delivers results, you crave more traffic and more success.
Though this is how marketing leads convert into sales, very few managers and business owners get it right. That’s when conversion rate optimization is needed.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a process that enables people to take action upon visiting a website. Businesses can augment their chances of converting visitors into leads and customers by modifying and designing certain elements.
Websites are designed with the purpose of converting visitors into customers. Conversions can happen all over the site – the landing page, homepage, price page, blog, etc. You can optimize all these pages to increase your chances of conversion. Conversion rate optimization is all about optimizing the process and conversions.
The conversion rate is also a metric, a percentage, displaying the number of website and/or app visitors completing an action out of the total number of guests visiting your website.
Hence, improving your conversion rate demands selective and specific ROI-focused strategies targeting different stages of marketing as well as the sales funnel.
The average ROI of CRO tools is 223%.
There is no one optimal conversion rate for business. It varies across channels and industries.
Important marketing channels for effective conversion
In marketing, you have to master the art of moving potential users through the funnel and converting them into customers. To do that, you need to select the appropriate marketing channels and target specific stages of the sales funnel. However, the conversion rate of the channel may differ across the many stages.
Source: blog.hubspot.com
Here’s an example: Say you want more visitors to your website and your conversion goal is to increase views. In this case, you can leverage guest blog posts and add backlinks to your site. Tools like Curately can help with blogging. Likewise, you can also consider pages on social media and paid Google AdWords ads.
However, if you want to convert your visitors into qualified leads, which mean lead generation is your conversion goal, you can use chatbots, demo forms on websites, CTAs in blog posts, etc.
Newbies – How to achieve a good conversion rate
All web elements and stages of the funnel are useful when it comes to CRO. Here’s how different pages play a different role in the process.
Homepage
CRO benefits homepages. Besides creating the first impression on guests, the homepage should be used as an opportunity to retain visitors and further guide them into the website. To do this, you can emphasize links to your offerings, product information, a free signup button, a chatbot, or some feature that can help visitors with the browsing experience.
Landing page
A landing page is crucial because it conveys your business values, gains trust, and converts website visitors into leads. In fact, these are inherently created for visitors to take action. However, most marketers are still struggling to understand the performance and benefits of a landing page.
Source: blog.hubspot.com
According to Unbounce research, the best landing page conversion rate varies across industries. Similarly, the median conversion rate was in the range of 3% to 5.5%.
To improve, convey the value proposition of your business. Reduce page loading time. Leverage scarcity and urgency in the copy of the landing page. Reduce the risks of distraction and friction. Test all the elements of the landing page.
Wordstream research shows that adding videos on the landing page can increase conversions by up to 86%.
Blog
Blogs are saviors with mammoth conversion opportunities for business websites. Besides publishing thought-provoking blogs and informative content on your niche, you can also use blogging as CRO and convert your readers into leads.
Adding call-to-actions (CTAs) to your blogs is important. It invites readers to click and learn more about your products by giving their email address in exchange for an industry report or offer.
Pricing page
Being transparent about the pricing of your products is the key to win your leads. It is a make-or-break point for visitors. Conversion rate optimization helps pricing pages convert visitors and leads into customers.
If you simply modify the pricing page, add pricing intervals month and year wise, it can make a difference. However, you must also explain the product features responsible for the pricing difference.
How to calculate CRO
To calculate CRO, divide the total number of conversions generated by a website by the number of people visiting the page. With this, marketers can easily find out the conversion rates of blog posts, ad clicks, landing pages, and websites.
Once you’ve gauged your customer demands, you can figure out how to get maximum returns from the existing website traffic.
Here’s a little help with calculation:
#1: Revenue goal / average sales price = total number of new customers
#2: Total number of new customers / lead-to-customer close rate percentage = lead goal
#3: Leads generated / website traffic X 100 =- Percentage conversion rate
Takeaway: It is not necessary to generate more traffic, though you may want to. Changing your approach towards the goal can make a difference. CRO is all about getting more from what you have and making it your route to improvement.
Tips for beginners: How to get started with CRO
1. Set your goal
- Traffic
- Analytics
- Strategy
Assuming you have good traffic move ahead to data collection. However, on this path, there are a few obstacles:
- Bounce rate
- Exit rate
- Time on page
- Time on site
- Pages visited
- Loading speed
These metrics are crucial to diagnosing problems on a website. For instance, if a page has a low conversion rate with a high bounce rate and slow loading time, you know what to do.
2. CRO tests
Running tests is crucial to see the performance of pages. Some pages would be unique to visitors, whereas others may not. Filtering out the non-performing pages would allow you to work on them, optimize them, and deliver the brilliant result.
Choose pages generating huge traffic, as there is always a scope of improvement. All conversions are valuable to the brand. Hence, traffic should not be the only consideration. You have to identify your conversion goals and choose pages to test.
3. Check incoming traffic
If the important pages of a website are not generating traffic as expected, your CRO strategies are not going to have a great impact. You should aim to get enough visitors to the major parts of your website.
Traffic to landing pages come from search results, both organic as well as paid traffic. Thus, you have to put in more efforts into your SEO endeavor and refine paid advertising strategies to get more traffic.
However, not all conversions may take place on the landing page or the first page users’ visit. In fact, visitors may not be reaching the most important pages after landing on the site. In such cases, you have to optimize those pages to increase clicks through rate.
Use advanced analytics software such as Axis to measure ROI
4. Call to action
CTAs are basic to any page that goes online. With CTAs, you are telling your users to buy products, sign up for newsletters, request a quote, and take action to achieve your conversion goal.
A compelling call to action is an art. You have to test it and optimize on all the pages. Instead of being carried away with minute details like font style or color, focus on testing the changes of the CTA. It should have a genuine impact.
The most important part of CTA is words. How compelling you can make them for users to act!
Placing CTAs at the right place on a page can also have a dramatic impact on your conversions.
CTA included in the content, or surrounded by content, is crucial to prim users to take action.
Most importantly, if users cannot see them, it is useless. So, make your CTAs visible.
5. Forms
Almost every conversion involves filling up web forms. Do not hesitate to use forms for CRO. You can choose Statly to create web forms and get brilliant results.
Research clearly shows that multi-step forms can increase the rate of conversions by up to 300%. It can also improve the quality of leads to pages.
This is a crucial fact because it is not just the number of conversions adding value but also the quality that matters. A lower percentage or rate of conversions from potential customers likely to turn into paid customers is more profitable.
6. Page loading time
Countless studies have proven the negative impact of slow pages. Consider this as the topmost priority.
Though some research shows that page speed is the last on the priority list of marketers, it should be either way. You have to put in all your efforts to boost page speed and stand out in the competitive market. The best place to start is on mobile. Boost your conversion rates with high-speed pages.
7. Offer signs of trust
Make your business trustworthy. There are ways to show that users can invest in your business safely. Before adding detailed trust signals, ensure your site design is topnotch.
Compare the site to the competitor brands in the industry. You would know what your visitors are expecting from the site. You may want a sleeker, modern and professional website that gives you the look of a leader.
Along with that, including customer reviews, expert reviews, influencer reviews, testimonials, awards, and statistics on the website. It essentially builds trust as people’s opinions matter.
Conclusion
Take your optimization strategy to the next level. When you think beyond the pages and optimize the sales funnel, it creates a win-win scenario. Highly optimized web pages improve the buying process.
Get real-time, easy-to-understand, and meaningful marketing analytics that help reduce bottlenecks, increase sales, capitalize on potential opportunities. Book a demo for the new Axis today.