Getting traffic to your business website is the main priority of a lot of business owners. It is usually assumed that more visitors to your website means more online enquiries. This is true in most cases, though one thing that is often overlooked is getting the most enquiry from your website traffic.
Conversion rate optimisation is the practice of optimising a website to increase the number of sales, enquires or leads generated from a particular page. In simple terms it means analysing your website traffic and figuring out why or why not people contact your business.
Conversion rate optimisation is a very important aspect of website design. It is often forgotten by business owner as most people don’t ever think about analysing and adjusting their website once it’s built. When done correctly, conversion rate optimisation can improve the return on investment on marketing campaigns and dramatically improve online sales and enquiries.
The Importance of High Conversion Rates.
A typical website generally has a conversation rate of 1 – 2%. This means for every 100 website visitors; the average website will get about 1 to 2 sales or online enquiries. A website that has been optimised for conversions generally has a conversion rate of 6 – 8%. This may not seem much of a difference, but over time the results add up.
For example, take a website that gets on average 10 visitors a day (3,650 per year). If the website has a 1 – 2% conversion rate it will receive 36 – 72 online sales or enquiries. If the website has a 6 – 8% conversion rate it will get 219 – 292 online sales or enquiries. As you can see from this example, improving conversion rates by only a few percent can almost triple the number of online sales or enquires in a 12-month period.
Process of Conversion Rate Optimisation
The conversion rate optimisation process is generally broken down it five steps.
Analyse
The first step in the conversion rate optimisation process is to analyse the websites current performance. We use Google Analytics to investigate a website performance. The metric we look at are:
- Percentage of people visiting the contact page.
- Where website visitors are coming from.
- How long they stay on each page.
These metrics tell us a lot about user habits. For example, the amount of time spent on pages will give you a good indication of whether that page provides valuable information to the visitor. The longer a visitor spends on a page the better. So, if your visitors are spending more time on some pages but not others its important to find out why.
The percentage of people visiting the contact page is another good metric. It is important to see what pages people are visiting the contact page from. The pages on your site that generate the most traffic to the contact page are the ones that should be duplicated.
Hypothesis
Once you have had a look at these metrics, the next thing to do is it figure out why they are the way they are. Things to consider are:
- Written content: your website must have engaging written content. Your content must provide users with the information they are looking for. It is best to ensure your pages contain information about the frequently asked questions your customers make. Visitors are more inclined to leave a page if they can’t find what they are looking for quickly.
- Website Quality: A high quality, professional website is always going to impress people. Your website reflects your businesses brand so if your website is of poor quality you will create a poor impression. It is important to have your website rebuilt every few years by a professional designer.
- Page Load Time: Your website pages need to load in less than 7 seconds. Any longer than this, there is a 50% chance visitors will leave your site. Website speed optimisation is the practice of improving your website load time. You can learn more about speed optimisation in this article. How to improve website site loading time.
- Call-to-Action’s: Your website must contain a call-to-action on every page. The call-to-action on the page must be relevant to when the page is about. Some common call-to-actions include online quote forms, online booking forms, contact forms, email opt-ins and lead magnets.
- Mobile Friendly: Now days your website must be mobile friendly. With more than 50% of all internet usage being on mobile it essential your website works on mobile phones. A website that doesn’t work on mobile is likely to make visitors leave your site.
Research
The next step is to research why the big companies in your industry are doing on their website to increase conversion rates. Often companies that rely on online sales have an I.T. team working on their website. It always pays to look at what your competitors are doing for ideas.
In addition to researching you competitor’s websites, it is a good idea to do some general research for ideas. For example, you could search in Google phrases like “how to increase sales on my online store’.
Experiment
Once you have a few ideas on how to improve your conversion rates it’s time to test them. It is important to document how your site is performing before you start making changes, so you have a reference point.
A good way to test what works best is with A/B testing. A/B testing involves comparing two versions of a web page to determine which on performs better. Optimizely provides great software which allows you to experiment and test pages on your website.
Review
Once you have implemented the changes it is important to regularly review the results. The process of conversion optimisation is never ending. The process should be repeated to ensure the best conversion rates are being achieved.
