It can sometimes feel like a struggle just to craft a website that will catch the eyes of potential customers (and Google, too). But that’s only half the battle. We’ve all gone onto a website, read an article or blog post, and then clicked away. While it’s great for that site to get traffic, we didn’t convert into paying customers, become clients, or take the action desired by the website’s owner.
That’s where conversion rate optimization comes into play.
While SEO (search engine optimization) gets your site noticed by Google and increases its ranking on the SERPs, conversion rate optimization improves your site’s ability to turn casual visitors into paying clients.
At Hennessey Digital, we focus on your digital marketing as an entire package. Our SEO team will help get your website in front of more eyes, and our CRO team will help ensure that those eyes turn into wallets. Or, well, you get the idea.
How Do You Optimize Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate optimization can be optimized in a number of ways, but they’re all tied to deep analytics. Our team will assess your website, learn what’s working and what can be improved, and run a variety of tests to see what best turns visitors into customers. This can mean doing things like:
- Trying out long-form and short-form content
- Adjusting the location of your contact form
- Revise landing page copy to have more urgency
- Target the language and design of your website to fit the audience most likely to convert
How Does Conversion Rate Optimization Work?
CRO is a process, and it can take a while to implement. But, at its core, it works through multivariate and A/B testing. These tests involve running different campaigns with slight alterations of your website to see what works and what doesn’t. Then, you keep what works! Over time, this results in better and better conversion rates, turning more and more of your site’s visitors into serious, consistent customers.
Let’s take a look at a simple version: the A/B test. Our team might develop two different pages: one with long-form content and another with sparser words and more images. Then, we analyze the results. Did more visitors take your desired action when there were more images? Or, did people tend to convert into customers more frequently when provided with lots of content (articles, blog posts, etc.)? When we have our answer, we can create a strategy to make sure all your website’s pages use the optimal design for conversions.
CRO will look different for different industries, since there can be a variety of “desired actions” you want your site’s visitors to take. Here are a few ideas:
- Law firms might want site visitors to become clients or schedule a consultation.
- Retail outlets might want site visitors to make purchases in an online store.
- Media companies might want site visitors to click on ads or sign up for subscriptions.
Whatever your goal, our team will work with you to make sure it is optimized.
Why Is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
Money.
No, but seriously. If you are spending your hard-earned dollars on creating a fancy new website, bumping up in the Google SERP rankings, and making your business a household name in your area, you want a return on investment.
CRO helps you lower your cost-per-client ratio, generating more bang for your buck.
Let’s say, for instance, that your current website has a conversion rate of 5%. It gets 10,000 visitors per month (for simplicity’s sake, let’s use nice, round numbers). That means you’re getting 500 customers every month, consistently. After CRO adjustments, you’re able to bump that conversion rate up to 10%. This results in a jump up to 1,000 customers per month. That 5% increase in conversions has led to a 100% increase in your monthly clients!
Yeah, CRO is pretty important.
What Is a Realistic Conversion Rate?
Conversion rates depend on your specific industry in a lot of cases. Generally, the average rate for a website is roughly 2% to 5%. Reports vary, but the top 10% of businesses across the globe have conversion rates of around 11.45% and higher. Remember: a seemingly small increase in your site’s conversion rate results in an exponentially larger increase in the actual number of customers.
How Do You Calculate Conversion Rate?
Luckily, the calculation of conversion rates is simple. There’s no need to be a rocket scientist for this. You just need two numbers: the amount of visitors/interactions on your website and the amount of times that your desired action was performed (i.e., the amount of consultations, sales, or subscriptions in our examples above). Divide the second number (your conversions) by the first number (your visitors/interactions), and you have your site’s conversion rate.
Let’s say you attracted 1,000 visitors to your website last month, and your online store had a total of 20 sales. That’s a conversion rate of 2%. No calculus or trigonometry involved!
Ready to get started increasing your conversion rate? Get in touch with Hennessey Digital today so we can show you the difference good CRO can make.
