Can a website be good at converting leads? The short answer: Yes!
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an evolving discipline but knowing exactly what “counts” as a conversion, how to track website conversions, why you need to track website conversions, and how you can use those results to inform other marketing decisions can play a crucial role in improving your overall website performance.
A website conversion occurs when a visitor to your website completes a desired action: signing up for a newsletter, submitting a website form or making a purchase, for example. A “conversion rate,” then, is the total number of visitors that convert. Conversion rates are measured as a percentage of the total number of visitors who complete the desired action. This data can be collected using website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics.
Conversion actions can result in sales and revenue for your business, so optimizing conversion rates through a structured conversion rate optimization process can improve the rate in which website visitors reach out for more information about your products or services.
Conversion rate optimization is the method of using data to improve the performance of your website. At its most basic level, CRO consists of identifying what problem it is that individuals need help with when they visit your website and giving them the clearest path to solving it.
Evaluating what merits being considered a conversion action is not always easy, particularly if business leaders are unaware of the customer journey. Finding which actions create value for your business is a prerequisite to conversion optimization testing.
Understanding who and how many individuals are completing the site actions that drive your business allows you to gauge the success — or failure — of your website or mobile app and make the necessary adjustments.
So, what is considered a “good” conversion rate? How can you improve the conversion rate of your website? Both questions must be answered with, “it depends.” Your industry, website condition, and other factors will play a major role in improving conversion rates. However, we can offer a few tips to get anyone interested in conversion optimization testing started.
Top Conversion Optimization Testing Steps:
- The first step in generating more leads from your website is understanding your customers’ journey. Who are they, how do they find you, what do they expect and desire from interacting with your website? Providing a good user experience to your potential customers requires an understanding of the difference between expectations of someone coming to your website through a newsletter compared to someone who found you through search engine marketing.
- The second step is to maximize the opportunity for visitors to convert. This means evaluating your website landing pages and reducing the difficulty for users to find what they want and contact you. Examples of this include; adding contact forms to high-traffic landing pages, offering gated resources (such as success stories or white papers), and allowing users to sign up for future information (even if they’re not looking specifically for anything in that moment). A great trick for this is to look at some of the most viewed pages on your website and count how many clicks it takes before making direct contact with a sales or customer service representative. As a rule, the fewer the clicks or tasks a user must perform, the better.
- The third and final step is to track and optimize. Determine which lead generators are performing the best. Which could be swapped out for something more effective? Knowing how your customers interact with your website at any given step of the buyer’s journey can help business owners tweak certain landing pages or adjust the user interface, for example, to optimize conversion rates. Even minor tests between microcopy can yield interesting results. For example, you could test if a contact form performs better with the text, “Get Your No Obligation Quote” or “Claim Your Free Quote” or “Get Help with Your Product Needs.”
However, conversion optimization cannot be a cure-all for low website conversion rates. Improving traffic relevancy increases the likelihood that buyers — who are in the right stage of the buyer journey and may consider your product or service — visit your website.
For example, a low website conversation rate is a sign of a poorly targeted Google Ads campaign. You may be choosing the wrong keywords or targeting too broad or too narrow of an audience. Regardless, working with a Google Partner agency, such as GREENCREST, can help to optimize your Google Ads campaign for improved website conversion rates. Consider this: 74 percent of conversion rate optimization efforts increase sales.
However, if your site drives a large amount of organic traffic for relevant keywords to education resources on your site, a lower conversion rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Keeping users engaged with your brand as a resource for your industry is valuable. Ensuring you do not miss out on reconnecting and reengaging with those users can help improve retention or convert users who aren’t yet ready to purchase.
Shortening your website submission forms is another step in the right direction towards improving your website’s conversion rate. Business-to-business buyers are more impatient than ever before, so make sure your website submission forms ask for the least amount of information required. Seeing a simple form that’s quick to complete will encourage people to do so. Still, it’s important to ask for information that will help the business owners take the proper next step to converting a prospect to a customer.
Finally, it’s important to note that 40 percent of marketers cite a conversion rate of less than .5 percent. Get ahead of the curve. Contact GREENCREST, a top Google Ads agency, to improve your website’s performance today.