What is a conversion rate?
A conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who take action on an offer presented on the website. This action converts visitors into customers and holds huge importance for businesses to boost their returns. Depending on your website, the desired action on an offer can be signing up for a trial, downloading an e-book, making a purchase, subscribing to a service, downloading an app, booking a demo, etc. One of the most common examples of conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who buy one or more products on an e-commerce website. Suppose an e-commerce website observes 100,000 visitors in a month out of which only 3,000 visitors purchased a minimum one item from the website. Here the conversion rate of the website would be 3%.
As conversion rate indicates the success of any business, it is important for marketers to offer lucrative web design with appealing offers to gain the attention of the potential audience. Website conversion rate is one of the most important metrics used to measure and improve any website’s performance. Usually, it is calculated by finding a percentage between the total number of defined conversions and the number of website visits. However, depending on the aim of a website and its business type, a conversion rate can also be calculated by using a segregated number of visits aimed at the targeted segment.
Different types of conversion rates
One of the best features of conversion rate is that marketers can use it specifically to measure and improve the desired data and examine any kind of website performance. Some examples of conversion rates that are commonly used by different businesses are as follows:
- Overall conversion rate – measures the website performance in converting traffic from any source.
- Marketing channel conversion rate – evaluates the rate at which traffic from different advertisement campaigns such as AdWords or Facebook Ads is likely to convert.
- Campaign conversion rate – Based on the different campaigns used by a business, this conversion rate helps to analyse if the targeted campaigns have been successful in improving the desired outcomes.
- Page-level conversion rate – used to evaluate which webpages perform better in converting traffic to leads.
- Keyword conversion rate – This conversion rate analyses which keywords perform better than the other keywords. It also helps find out the most used keyword which the audience uses to discover a specific product or service.
- Individual ad conversion rate – Based on the different types of ads, using an individual ad conversion rate, businesses can evaluate the types of ads which bring in more qualified traffic.
While these are some of the widely used conversion rates by different types of websites, a business can define their own conversion rate based on their analysis and areas of improvement. However, businesses who fail to use conversion rate are likely to lag behind as this is a critical metric for understanding the performance of every aspect of digital marketing. Moreover, instead of focusing on getting more clicks on a website or webpage, businesses must focus on encouraging website visitors to take action which is favourable for the business.
How to track conversion events
Depending on a business and its goals, conversion events can be tracked by counting the number of website visitors who take the desired actions. Usually, there are two options used to track the conversion events: counting a specific visitor only once, regardless of the number of purchases made within a given timeframe or by counting each time a person makes a new purchase. However, to maintain consistency, after determining the appropriate rule, businesses must ensure to follow the same type of tracking method for counting the baseline number of visitors. Higher conversion rates indicate the remarkable performance of the website and also show how efficiently a website performs in developing its strategies and addressing its audience.
Furthermore, conversion rates can vary considerably depending on the type of business, industry, products, services, traffic quality and the conversion action used for tracking. Thus, rather than judging your conversion rate based on someone else’s protocols, you must identify which events qualify towards good conversions rates for your business. Based on these events you can specifically design your marketing campaign.
What do conversion rates mean for a website?
For websites, converting visitors into potential customers and potential customers into actual customers is not an easy task. It needs thorough planning and well-established strategies to bring leads to a website and convert them into customers. Conversion rate helps marketers understand the performance of a website and improvements which they can bring to make the most out of a website. A number of factors which often go unnoticed influence the conversion rate of a website.
Thus, when a website is unable to generate enough clicks and conversions, it means that there are some loopholes in the marketing strategies and the website layout that need to be addressed. Some of the factors which greatly influence the conversion rate of websites are as follows:
Undefined goals
Websites who fail to define clear goals often fail to have a significant conversion rate. Depending on the type of your website, you must clearly define the actions you want your website visitors to take. Whether you are trying to sell a product or just want to capture the emails of your website visitors, keeping a clear goal will help you in analysing your conversion rate. However, if you have multiple goals then you can split your goals and create a strategy to prioritise and achieve all your goals.
Offer
For a good conversion rate, websites must ensure that they use an appealing way to offer their products and services to the customers. Since the internet is flooded with different products and services, it becomes difficult to offer something innovative and exceptional. Keep your target audience in mind, list the benefits of your products & services and tell visitors how your brand is different from your competitors.
User-friendly layout
Websites must ensure to provide a user-friendly layout which is easy for visitors to navigate. Encouraging visitors at every step of the sales funnel to reach the final stage can have a significant impact on your conversion rates. Additionally, having a responsive design that helps your website display properly on different screen sizes can significantly increase your conversion rate.
Quality of traffic
Although getting more traffic is a good thing, getting quality traffic which can easily be converted into leads can improve your conversion rates. Instead of wasting time and effort on irrelevant traffic, websites must focus on quality traffic and reduce the bounce rate. Your chances of converting visitors into customers are more likely to increase when a visitor is interested in your product or service. Thus, continuously keep a check on the quality of traffic to ensure a good conversion rate.
Conclusion
Conversion rate is an ever-evolving process and can work differently for different businesses. Thus, it’s important that websites understand which factors influence their conversion rates and which strategies will work best to improve their conversion rate.
Moreover, focusing on your goals while upgrading your website as per the latest trends and adopting appropriate strategies will eventually help you in increasing your conversion rate.
