Simple Conversion Rate Formula
For instance, if each month you have 3000 visitors to your site and 30 of them actually buy something from you, then, your site conversion rate will be 30/3000, or 1%. If each sale results in a profit of $100, then your company has made $3000.
However, by making strategic adjustments, you can significantly boost your conversion rate. In the above example, just increasing the conversion rate an additional percent would yield $3000 more in profits without spending additional resources on driving more traffic. With an identical visitor count, your profits have soared from $3000 to $6000!
Key Factors to Consider Producing Higher Conversions
Simplicity and usability is a critical factor to increasing conversion rates. Countless studies have proven that web users prefer simplicity. The more sophisticated the design, the harder it is for web users to concentrate. Large images or fancy flash animations can often result in more harm than profit. Web users today have little tolerance for bulky, slow loading graphics that detract from load time.
Quality content that allows customers to get to know your company and your products is another key element to achieving a higher conversion rate. The fundamental principals of good business have not changed with the advent of the internet. Potential customers want to know about you and your business and about benefits of becoming a customer or a member.
Web users are notorious for impatience. Having them read through pages of content and decide for themselves why they should purchase your products will only turn them away. Make sure that the benefits of your services and products are highlighted in a comprehensible fashion and supported with trustworthy web content. You may be surprised at the impact this simple change can have on your conversion rate.
In short, your website must be extremely beneficial and relevant to your target customer. At the same time, you must have a conversion plan as the website owner. You should have a well-defined purpose for your website and then design every page around that purpose. Ultimately, successful websites are adept at combing a positive experience for visitors while also achieving their own website purposes and goals.
Call to Action – Take Your Visitors Where They Want to Go
In order to convert visitors to customers, you must ask them to take an action. A majority of websites lose their potential clients along the way because they simply don’t ask the visitor take any action. Every sales page should call for action – either to purchase a product or service, subscribe to your newsletter, or to contact you for a quote.
Effective navigation helps. Determine where on your site you want your visitors to go. Make their path to that page smooth and easy. If you’re an e-shop, include a link to the shopping cart on every page rather than forcing shoppers to search for it. It’s amazing how many conversion problems you can find when you approach your website from the visitor’s point of view. Take a trial run through the ecommerce functions on your website as a visitor would and you’ll quickly see what makes it easier or harder for visitors to buy from you.
Pay per click campaigns are an effective way to increase traffic to your site. However, many business owners overlook their landing pages. It is extremely important to direct the customer to a page that clearly offers what the visitor expected to find based on their keyword search terms. If the customer found you for the keyword “Atlanta Car Dealer,” then it is critical that your visitor lands on a page specific to Atlanta car dealers. This small improvement can really make a difference in your conversion.
Once you’ve improved your conversion rate by enhancing your website, it’s time to develop a new web promotion strategy to generate even more traffic to your site. Now you’ll enjoy an even higher return on investment for every marketing dollar spent. Going back to our previous example, if you were to increase website traffic from 3000 to 5500 unique visitors per month, you would make:
5500 visitors at 2% conversation = 110
110 buyers x 100 bucks per sale = $11,000
What a difference between the $3000 in profits you started with and the $11,000 you realized after optimizing your website and increasing your traffic.
Increasing web traffic won’t do your business any good unless visitors become shoppers. The average website conversion ranges between 2% and 4%. Is your website converting visitors at a rate you’re satisfied with? If you’re serious about growing your online business, contact Systematic SEO today to discuss a customized search engine optimization strategy designed to maximize the potential of your website.
