Many times, most marketers focus on increasing traffic to the site and focus less on turning website visitors into customers. In other words, we somewhat forget about the conversion rate on the site. There are various ways to improve website conversions, which we have compiled in the following article. So how do you get your users to enter credit card details and make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter? Let’s get started!
What is a Conversion Rate?
In the world of digital marketing, conversion rate refers to the percentage of users who performed the desired action you defined (submitting contact details, purchasing, downloading a guide) out of the total number of people who visited your website. For example, if 25 people purchased a certain item out of 100 people who visited your site, your conversion rate is 25%. The higher your conversion rate, the higher your profit.
A good conversion rate for an ecommerce site should be around 2-3%, and a good conversion rate for lead generation should be around 7-14%.
Examples of conversion types
- Form submissions (leads)
- Phone call
- Product purchase
- Newsletter signup
How to start improving the conversion rate on your website?
First of all, before we dive into the technical tools that can be used to do this, it is important to know a few great tips that can help you improve your website’s conversion rate.
Tip 1 – Analyze the advantages of your products and place them where they belong – at the top of the page.
Tip 2 – Often the product is not the real problem, but rather the way you present it. Ensure you have engaging and attractive microcopy, the kind that will make your customers show interest in the product and click on it. Surprisingly, these words have a huge impact on conversions. Beyond that, make sure to add as much information as possible about the products you sell in your ecommerce store for the simple reason that once a customer has all the information they need, they will feel more confident making the purchase. Of course, adding reviews from customers who previously purchased the product will build high trust with the customer and motivate them toward a purchase.
Tip 3 – Customers get tired of filling out details that aren’t necessarily relevant. Try to avoid unnecessary fields as much as possible when asking for details, and avoid marking fields as mandatory whenever possible. Try to imagine yourself submitting a CV on a company’s website that requires you to fill out tons of information, some of which is already in your CV. Would you continue the process? Probably not, unless the job is an absolute perfect fit for you.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) - How to do it?
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing your website or landing page experience, based on visitor behavior, to help improve the probability of a visitor taking desired actions (conversions) on that specific page, i.e., improving the conversion rate on the site.
Conversion rate optimization can be viewed as a four-step process:
- Analyzing your website data and understanding visitor behavior
- Implementing tools to make improvements to your website’s conversion rate
- Implementing tools to increase sales on your ecommerce site (we will expand on this in another article)
- Building a loyalty program for returning customers (we will expand on this in another article)
Step One - Analyzing your website data and understanding visitor behavior
Think of this stage as the foundation stage, where you essentially understand what problems on your site are causing visitors to abandon it or decide not to perform the desired conversion action.
At this stage, there are several tools you can use:
Website analytics tool – Understanding what is happening on your site is an important part of conversion rate optimization – without knowing what is going on (or what is going wrong), you won’t know where and what needs improvement. Website analytics tools collect quantitative data about your site and its visitors, and they can help you find answers to questions like Are visitors abandoning the landing page? Where are my website visitors coming from? For example, if visitors arrive at your landing page but do not convert into leads or customers, these analytics tools can help you understand what happens once they reach the landing page so you can identify flaws causing abandonment and fix them.
One of the most common and best tools for this analysis is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics tool, installed on most websites worldwide. Google Analytics helps you track traffic patterns, traffic sources, and real-time conversion rates. You can also track common metrics and identify which pages your users are abandoning the site from.
Another option is Yandex.Metrica, a free analytics tool that helps obtain visual reports and video recordings of user activity (heatmaps), track traffic sources, and evaluate the performance of online and offline advertising.
User Behavior Analytics Tool – Understanding why your site visitors behave in a certain way is an important part of conversion rate optimization – without knowing what your visitors want, you won’t be able to meet that need. User behavior analytics tools collect data on how visitors use your site and why they behave in certain ways on it. Behavior analytics tools can help answer questions such as Why are potential customers abandoning their shopping carts? Are visitors able to find what they’re looking for? Why do visitors leave the landing page without performing the requested action?
One of the best tools for analyzing your visitors’ behavior is Hotjar. It is a behavior analytics software based on heatmaps of your site that helps measure and track user behavior and feedback. The tool can help you identify pain points that customers experience on your site – such as website bugs, confusing design, or broken links and elements.
Another tool is Lucky Orange, with which you can see exactly how many people are on your site right now and how they found you. Additionally, you can see which keywords, locations, etc., bring traffic to your site, and everything can be filtered by behavior tags. Furthermore, you have the option to look at heatmaps, and the platform will automatically create a recording of every visitor on your site. You can quickly filter and segment recordings so you can see exactly why certain users do not convert and at what stage users abandon your site.
Another tool you can use in this context is Crazy Egg, which includes an option to run A/B tests and will help you analyze visitor behavior on your site, what exact journey they go through, and what the weak points within it are.
Step Two - Implementing tools to improve your website's conversion rate
Once you’ve understood the gaps on your site, you need to implement tools that can improve the customer experience on your website and consequently boost the conversion rate.
There is a wide variety of tools that can help you do this:
A/B Testing Tools – An important part of conversion rate optimization is testing and measuring changes you make on your website. Once you’ve identified potential improvements, testing tools help compare and measure changes to see which versions generate better conversions. For example, website and user behavior analysis yielded several insights, one of which is that the high bounce rate of the landing page might be caused by placing the call-to-action button in the wrong place. Using the following tools, you can test different placements for the call-to-action button to understand which one converts better.
One of the best tools for conducting comparative tests is Google Optimize, which is an experimentation and testing platform that integrates with Google Analytics. With it, you can run A/B tests to measure the performance of each page.
Another tool is VWO, through which you can create and run A/B tests so you can examine new designs and understand which one increases conversion rates.
Tools that allow you to interact with users on the site – An important part of improving conversions on the site is guiding your users toward the desired actions.
For example, you can create pop-ups that notify visitors of a newsletter signup option, thereby increasing the chances that they will perform this action. You can do this by using Poptin. Their product allows you to embed custom-designed pop-ups on your site. You can try their free plan before deciding to pay for the product. Paid plans start at $19/month, depending on the number of domains you have.
Summary
Improving your website’s conversion rate is critical for achieving the goals you set for yourself. The best thing you can do is experiment for a certain period of time with the variety of tools we presented, as well as those not mentioned, and then check which tools truly made a significant difference and stick with them. You will be surprised by the improvement in conversion rate once you understand what was missing most for your website users.
In the next article in the series, we will explain how to improve sales on your ecommerce site – stay tuned!
About the author
Rotem Blum, 26, Project Manager at Fialkov Digital.
