It is no secret that customers are the lifeblood of your business. The goals of every business owner must be to establish customer loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases to earn higher monthly sales and return on investment (ROI). While maintaining your clientele base is challenging, acquiring new clients and converting them into loyal paying customers could be even more challenging.
What Are Conversion And Conversion Rate?
In the world of internet marketing, conversion represents any action performed on your website. For instance, when a visitor completes a specific action, including:
- Views of marketing videos
- Visiting key web pages (time of visit, repeat visits, number of pages visited)
- Signing up for a subscription (email, newsletter – either free or paid)
- Webform completion and submission (gen lead form, contact us form)
- Phone calls
- Views of maps or directions page
- Membership registration
- Downloads (white paper, eBooks, software trial, mobile app)
- Engaging with online chat
- Upgrading their service
- Making a purchase
Other synonymous terms for conversion include lead, goal, upper-funnel action, lower-funnel action, and event.
Calculating Your Website’s Conversion Rate
Did you know that the average conversion rate of a Facebook Ad is 9.1 percent, a B2B Ad reaches an impressive 10.63% while average website conversion rates lag at 2.35%?
Conversion rate, on the other hand, is the total percentage of your target audience visiting your website that converts into sales. A high conversion rate means a successful marketing strategy and an exceptional web design. It also indicates that your target customers want the products and/or services you offer to them.
Several factors affect your website’s conversion rate. This include:
- The Level of Interest of the Visitor – Optimized your visitor’s interest by matching the right product/services to their needs.
- The Appeal of Your Product/Service – Includes product/service value and presentation to connect it with the potential buyer.
- The Ease of the Buying Process – Depends on the usability of the website (e.g. ease of navigation and page speed.
Tracking your website’s conversion rates helps business owners to monitor the performance of your web pages and apps. Understanding your conversion rate makes it easier to measure the success of your website or app and analyze which areas require improvement. Without knowing the conversion rate, it will be hard to identify the elements of your website or marketing strategy to improve.
Improving your conversion rate does not only boost website traffic but increase your sales, as well. For instance, investing $1,000 per month on advertising drives 1,000 target customers to your website. Doubling your monthly conversion rate can basically raise your ad value twice. Thus, high conversion rates help reduce your investment and get the same benefits.
Calculating your conversion rate is relatively a quick and easy process. Simply divide the number of conversions acquired in a given period of time by the total number of website or landing page visitors and multiply it by 100%.
Conversion Rate = (Conversion / Total Visitors) x 100%
For example, if you had 17,500 website visitors and 2,400 conversions in the previous month. Your website conversion rate is 13.17%.
What is great about conversion rate is it allows you to be specific or broad as you want it to be. Here are several types of conversion rate you can use and how you can use the data to measure your website performance:
- Overall Conversion Rate – Determines how effectively your website converts traffic
- Marketing Channel Conversion Rate – Checks if Adwords or Facebook Ads converts traffic
- Page-Level Conversion Rate – Identifies which web pages are better at converting traffic
- Campaign Conversion Rate – Analyzes if changes in target improve traffic
- Individual Ad Conversion Rate – Helps you analyze if you need to change your ad copy and if it can help drive more qualified traffic
- Keyword Conversion Rate – Pinpoints specific keywords that deserve more investment
Obviously, the conversion rate is an effective metric for assessing the performance of your digital marketing strategies. Driving click is great, but if they don’t do something beneficial for your business, then it is high time to find a new strategy.
Data-Driven Solutions to Boost Conversion
The old saying, “What gets measured, gets done,” is applicable in conversion. When you have all the necessary data to measure the performance of your website, you can easily focus on what needs to be improved. While having access to these data allows you to optimize your campaign and maximize results. However, this data can be overwhelming because it also exposes you to irrelevant data. Although you can view all the clicks you get from your email, you should know how to implement them properly to impact your strategy.
Data-driven marketing has become a significant factor in the marketing toolkit over the years. It increases conversion rate and minimizes the acquisition cost while you boost your return on investment (ROI).
Here are several popular methods that are derived from data which effectively improves the conversion rate of your website:
- Keep Customers Moving through the Purchase Funnel
Does your purchase funnel data show a number of visitors, but only a few make a purchase? Offering limited-time sales and discounts to customers is a highly-effective solution to drive more conversions. This helps create a sense of urgency and, at the same time, an opportunity to liquidate inventory.
- Keep Big Spenders Coming Back
How well do you communicate with your customers? One way to improve customer segmentation and personalization is through evaluating and analyzing their purchase behaviour. Make sure to give your best clients the special treatment and engage them in loyalty programs.
- Identify Inactive Customers
What can you do to customers who have not purchased in a while? Fortunately, you can easily drive conversion from your existing clients than winning new ones. Also, the application of Bigcommerce Analytics helps identify inactive customers so that you can entice them with special offers, such as free shipping or rewards towards their next purchase to win them back.
- Identify Trending Products in Real-Time
What products are selling the most and how can you use it to attract new customers? Trending products drive the most conversions, making them an ideal solution for new customer acquisition campaigns. Make sure to feature your best products/services on your homepage, emails, and paid social ads to entice new customers and influence their purchase decisions.
- Acquire More Lookalike Customers
Do social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, bring you new customers? Which customers spend the most? Once you have the answers, optimize your marketing budget and pay more attention to channels that matter the most. Use your best-selling items to spearhead your social campaigns or use them to introduce seasonal favourites.
Increasing our website’s conversion rate may be a daunting process. You may need the right knowledge, skills, and experience to understand how it works and how to choose a strong advertising approach for your small business. Oftentimes, working with a professional helps you achieve your business goals. For best results, make sure to choose wisely which company to work with.
Author:
Louise shares a passion for creative writing, and enjoys being detail-oriented in her work. Working as an SEO specialist and copy editor has increased her ability to meet new challenges with an open mind.
A degree in Industrial Technology (Major in Computer Technology) also made Louise “tech savvy,” and she prides herself on her ability to recognize the latest trends and technologies in the digital industry. She hopes to someday visit many of the best dessert places across the globe. She’s also a proud “parent” to six beautiful cats.