As a copywriter, one of the first questions clients with established websites tend to ask me is, ‘Can you help me improve my conversion rate?’
What is a Conversion Rate?
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who arrive at your landing page, who complete the task you want them to. This could be clicking on a link, subscribing to a service, or making a purchase. A conversion rate is calculated over a set time period, usually a week, though it could be tallied over a day or a month. Some websites will look at multiple conversion rates based on a variety of tasks they need to get the visitor to complete. In most instances, creating a dedicated landing page will help you acquire and analyze conversion rates.
The simple logic behind this, is when you make your landing page more persuasive through copy and graphics, you increase your conversion rate. But there’s more to this and we’ll see why.
Why is a Conversion Rate important?
As a business owner, you want to increase your conversion rate to meet your bottom line, which can be increased sales, increased client donations, or increased website referrals. You can do this through pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing, or social media marketing. These do cost money, but the results are well worth the investment. You can also of course turn toward a well-designed landing page. For a small business owner, the latter might indeed be the starting point to gaining higher rankings and a stronger conversion rate.
A small increase in your conversion rates could have a large impact on your profits and while it’s preferable to hire the services of a professional company to help you with this, for starters, you can see the impact your conversion rate has on your business by using Google Analytics or a similar tool.
What factors impact a Conversion Rate?
While you might wonder what a good conversion rate is, it really does depend on a number of factors. Many marketers will tell you that you must have a 2% or a 2.5% conversion rate, but agree to disagree until you’re sure they’ve understood your entire business. Take the following into consideration before you settle on a figure you’re comfortable with:
- Your website design and copy
- Ease of navigation
- Your current rankings
- Your industry competitors
- Your marketing plan, including products, positioning, and pricing
- Other incentives or special offers on the table
- Your call to action
Optimizing your conversion rate is as challenging as it is exciting. Really simple differences, like a color or font tweak can make a big difference. Clients have known to see their website audience numbers grow when they changed their headline copy or reworded their guarantee so do not underestimate the power of professional assistance. Your first point of contact for research will be your customers, followed by your competition. Include industry tested best practices, which are tried and true techniques that get results.
What’s your end objective?
In most instances, your end objective will be to increase sales and make a profit, be it through promoting an ezine or getting clients to make a direct purchase. As you fine-tune your website, you’ll find it easier to achieve these end goals by getting clients to do what you want them to do; your conversion rates get higher and you see more profits. Can conversion rates be used in isolation? Marketing is a team effort and you’ll find you reach profitability in all areas as soon as you begin to combine two or more marketing elements – for example an SEO website with a PPC campaign, or linked articles with press releases.
Is your conversion rate increase viable? Of course it is. Should those who do not convert be dumped? Most definitely not. In fact while some marketers focus only on conversion rates, it’s important to make a note of those who have not responded. They might not be part of your current customers, but they do have the potential to convert at a future date.
