8 Conversion Rate Optimization Techniques You Can Roll Out Today

What is a conversion rate?

The conversion rate is the percentage of people who take the desired action, such as filling out a form, signing up for a service, or buying a product.

A high conversion rate indicates that your website is designed well, formatted in an effective manner, and is appealing to your target audience. A low conversion rate can be caused by a variety of factors that are related to either website performance or design. Slow load times, a malfunctioning form, or copy that doesn’t clearly state the value of the offer are all common reasons for a poor conversion rate.

What is a good conversion rate?

How successful a conversion is depends on many things, including what industry you’re in, what your niche is, what your goals are, what kind of traffic you’re getting, and who your audience is. For example, in the third quarter of 2020, the average conversion rate for ecommerce sites around the world was 2.17%. That’s down from 2.37% the year before. In the United States, though, the conversion rate was higher, at 2.57%.

The average conversion rate for ecommerce sites differs by year and country, as well as by niche. For example, the average conversion rate for food and beverage sites is 5.5%, while the average for hair care sites is 3.5%.

If your conversion rate is not where you want it to be, it might be time to change your approach. This could mean trying new methods or strategies, especially if your current ones are not meeting your goals or expectations. Conversion rate optimization can help you figure out what’s not working and how to improve it.

optimize each location on your website to convert website visitors into paying customers

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

To calculate the conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors, then multiply the number by 100 to get a percentage.

As long as you know how you want to define a conversion, then calculating your conversion rate will be easy. You would just need to plug in two values and multiply by 100.

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of newsletter form submissions by the total number of website visitors and multiplying it by 100.

Divide the total number of conversions by the number of visitors to the page where the offer is listed to calculate the conversion rate.

You can also find your website’s conversion rate by taking the total number of conversions and dividing it by the total number of visitors.

Where to Implement a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) Strategy

There are four areas of your website that could be improved with conversion rate optimization.

Homepage

CRO is a great opportunity for homepages. Not only is it a chance to make a first impression on visitors, but it’s also a chance to keep them on your website and guide them further.

Make it easy for customers to find information about your products, have a sign-up button available, or have a chatbot available to answer any questions customers may have while they are looking at your website.

Pricing Page

A website’s pricing page is important because it can help convert visitors into customers. CRO can help by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g. price-per-year vs. price-per-month), describing the product features associated with each price, including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote, or adding a simple pop-up form.

A company called Hotjar added a popup form to their pricing page that allowed people to sign up for emails. In just three weeks, they gained over 400 new leads.

Blog

A blog can be a great way to generate leads for your website. By publishing content that is helpful and insightful, you can use CRO techniques to turn readers into leads.

The process of lead generation often includes adding calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout an article or inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email addresses in exchange for an ebook or industry report.

Landing Pages

Since landing pages are designed to get people to take an action, it’s no surprise that they have the highest average conversion rate of all signup forms, at 23%. You can optimize an event landing page, for example, with a video from last year’s event to encourage this year’s visitors to register. If you’re offering a free resource on your landing page, you can optimize it with preview content from that resource, to encourage people to download it.

8 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips to Boost Your Rankings

Tip 1: Add Site Search to Your Website

If a search box is offered, 30 percent of visitors will likely use it. However, 84 percent of companies do not optimize their on-site search to meet user expectations.

If your website doesn’t have a site search, it’s time to consider adding one.

site search can improve user experience by providing insights into what users are searching for.

You can use this information to create content that meets your audience’s needs or to add new pages to your website to fill any gaps.

The search terms that users use can help you to identify which part of the funnel they are in. This information can help you customize the website experience to their needs by providing answers to the most common questions and addressing pain points.

If you use WordPress, you can add a site search by using a widget. If you use Webflow, you can actually customize it. Wix and Squarespace make it easy to add site search.

Tip 2: Ensure Forms Are Easy to Fill Out

68% of people will not finish filling out your form.

There are many different types of website forms, each serving a different purpose. Some forms are used to sign up for newsletters, while others are used to collect leads or inquire about a product or service.

Making a form easy to fill out will result in more people completing it.

The average form has around five fields, and forms that are A/B tested see conversion rates about ten percent higher.

In my experience, simple is better.

Tip 3: Improve your CTAs

CTAs are a good way to improve conversions. The average CTA click-through rate is just 4.23 percent, but many factors can impact what helps your CTA convert.

If you make your CTAs more personal, you can improve your conversion rates by more than three times.

It is advisable that you regularly test your CTAs to determine what requires improvement. It may come as a surprise how rapidly user preference can change!

Start by testing these CTA elements:

copy
colors
placement
button shape
button size
page placement

Consider testing different types of CTAs as well. Here’s how CTA types convert, according to a study by Vye Agency:

button CTAs have an average CTR of 5.31 percent
text CTAs have an average CTR of 2.06 percent
designed CTAs have an average CTR of 3.53 percent

Colors outside of your branding palette might make your CTAs more noticeable.

Tip 4: Run User Testing

If your online business has poor usability, it’s likely to fail. Seventy percent of businesses fail because of poor usability.

Making design and flow improvements to the user checkout process could increase e-commerce conversion rates by 35 percent.

User testing can help you get more conversions by providing valuable data. Therefore, it is important to start the process as quickly as possible.

Heat maps are one of the most common ways to test UX. They work by showing how users navigate your site and what interactive elements they’re clicking on.

You can tell if users are looking at your links, navigation bar tabs, and CTAs by using a heat map. Some heat maps even use eye-tracking software to show where users look first.

Tip 5: Add More (Better) Social Proof

A large majority of consumers, 77 percent, always or regularly read online reviews before purchasing an item.

You should try to take advantage of customer loyalty as much as possible. This is because it can help market your brand and exposure it for free. Additionally, good reviews can lead to more revenue.

than those with fewer than average reviews. The average business that has more than average reviews earns 54% more annually than businesses with fewer reviews.

It is also easy to create.

Social proof is a way of using other people’s opinions to make your own case. This can take the form of positive reviews and ratings, creative social media posts shared by customers and influencers, user-submitted content like photography, and more. It’s an easy way to make your brand more relatable and credible.

The more social proof you have on your website, the more likely other users are to trust you. Credibility is a big factor when it comes to converting users.

To add more social proof, try:

Send a follow-up email asking for reviews.
Host a contest with a branded hashtag on social media.
Include a card with a branded hashtag when shipping physical products.

automate your social media posts consider using HotFomo and OptinMonster

Tip 6: Add Chatbots or Live Chat

You can’t add more people to your team to answer the phones because it’s not feasible. Wouldn’t you rather get an answer to your question quickly? Chatbots are designed for this purpose. Even if your customer service is excellent, sometimes phone lines can get busy. You can’t add more people to your team to answer the phones because it’s not possible.

The good news is that users like chatbots. The average satisfaction rate of chatbots is 87.58 percent. They can also reduce customer service costs. One study predicts that chatbots will save businesses $8 billion in customer service costs by 2022.

There are a few ways to use chatbots to make an instant connection with customers, which makes them more likely to purchase your product or service.

answer FAQ
qualify leads
suggest related products
troubleshoot common issues
share information about new products
increase your email list

To find the right chatbot for you, I recommend looking for ones that integrate natively with the channels you want to use.

If you’re looking for an app that integrates with a lot of different platforms, Landbot is a good option. It has chat features that work with web, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and API.

If you want to integrate with Facebook Messenger, Chatfuel is an affordable solution.

The chatbot you choose should help you achieve your business goals.

Tip 7: Review Customer Persona and Adjust Your Messaging

Personas are used to target a business’s ideal customer and give them a human face. They help increase leads, conversions, and shorten the sales cycle.

MarTech states that creating a persona can increase email click-through rates by 14 percent and conversion rates by 10 percent.

You may think you know who your ideal customer is, but you may be wrong. The gap between your ideal customer and your actual customers may be bigger than you think.

For example, if the women you are targeting as customers are businesswomen in their early 30s but your actual customer base is primarily homemakers in their 50s, there will be a big disconnect in how you approach your target audience.

Here are six steps you can take to make sure you are targeting the right customer personas:

Make a list of your highest value customers.
Use a customer persona template to create a new persona.
Start adding details from your highest value customers. Start with demographics like location, age, budget, education, etc.
What channels do your highest value customers use to find you? Add that to your persona as “methods of communication.”
Look at the content they consume—what does that tell you about their motivations? Add those to your template.
Repeat the process for every product or service you offer.

It’s important to align your customer personas with your messaging, sometimes as frequently as every two or three months. In some cases, this could mean tailoring your brand approach altogether to connect with new target audiences.

Tip 8: Use Targeted Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a free resource that you can give to people in exchange for their contact information. It is usually a PDF or video, but there are other types of media that you could use as well.

The best part? They work.

Fifty percent of marketers say that having lead magnets has increased their conversion rates.

Lead magnets that are specific and creative are more likely to be effective.

You could create more interactive lead magnets, like quizzes or online calculators. According to LeadQuizzes, the average quiz has a lead capture rate of 31.6 percent.

How you target your leads via magnets will depend on what your product or service is. If you’re catering to a specific geographical area, then it would make sense to target your potential customers based on location. On the other hand, other websites might target leads based on the industry they’re in or how they came across the site.

Here are a few other targeting options: