For B2B websites and eCommerce businesses there should only be one metric that you’re concerned with and that’s the conversion rate.
How many of your website visitors commit a valuable action such as make a purchase, complete a contact form, or sign up for your newsletter? If you don’t know the answer then you need to find out! Conversion rates are crucial if you want to successfully forecast ROI and evaluate which marketing channels/opportunities to pursue.
For example, if you know your website converts 10% of it’s visitors into customers, and you’ve been offered the opportunity to send a sponsored email-blast, costing $300, to a mailing list that guarantees 2,000 visitors. You can be confident that you’ll generate 200 new customers from sending the sponsored email. This is especially important for those who operate Shopify and WordPress stores as the data will be readily available in both for you to gain insight from.
You can then calculate the profitability of this venture based on your average order value (e.g. $20):
$20 (AoV) x 200 (new customers acquired) = $4,000 (revenue generated)
$4,000 – $300 (cost of sending the email) = $3,700 (net profit)
$3700/$300 = 1233% ROI
Makes sense right? Well, what if we told you there was a way to boost the profitability of the whole sponsored email without having to do anything differently? It’s possible with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)!
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
CRO is the process of improving your website to get more people to commit valuable actions while visiting. It’s a small initial investment which will boost the profitability of all future marketing activity.
Using the above example of the sponsored email blast, this is how the profitability changes based on improving the website’s conversion rate:
15% conversion rate = 300 (new customers acquired), $5,700 (net profit)
20% conversion rate = 400 (new customers acquired), $7,700 (net profit)
Implementing CRO best practises is a great investment into your business as it quickly pays for itself. Think about the daily sales that you’re missing out on because your site isn’t converting as many of it’s visitors as it could be.
What is a good conversion rate?
A recent study by WordStream analyzed conversion rates across thousands of websites in a wide variety of industries and found that the overall average conversion rate is 2.35%. Wordstream also goes on to mention that the top 25% of performing websites are achieving a conversion rate of 5.31% or higher.
Ways to improve your conversion rate
Exit Intent Pop-Ups
Pop-ups have come a long way since their infamous and wildly annoying introduction back in the late 90s/early 2000s. Modern pop-ups are non-intrusive, look great, and come with game-changing exit intent technology.
Exit-intent pop-ups monitor the visitor’s interaction with your website, when it detects that the visitor is about to leave it triggers the pop-up. This allows you to speak directly to the visitor and entice them to stay on the site for longer.
These types of pop-ups work best when you offer the visitor a valid reason to stay, such as access to exclusive content or a discount on their next purchase. When used correctly it’s a powerful tool to boost conversions from people who otherwise would likely leave your site never to return.
Multi-step Forms
Credit: BBBootstrap
Be honest, how many times have you been interested in a service, gone to the application form on their website, and then decided not to complete the form because it’s too darn long?
Multi-step forms are used to break-up form fields into smaller more manageable sections, they’re a quick and easy way to boost conversions on your website.
What makes multi-step forms so successful is that they leverage the psychological principle that “people want to finish what they’ve started”. Once somebody has made an initial time investment into the process they’re much more likely to see it through. With that in-mind it’s best practice to begin your form with easier questions and leave the tougher ones until right at the very end, when the submit button is insight. If you need help setting this up, our custom web development team would be happy to help!
Clear Calls-To-Action
This one is simple but criminally neglected across many websites. The main reason that your website isn’t converting visitors into leads/customers is because the visitor isn’t entirely sure what you want them to do.
Now it might seem obvious to you, you want them to join the newsletter or buy a product but the truth is most visitors probably won’t unless you give them a little push or keep reminding them to do so.
Having one single CTA on the page tucked away somewhere that doesn’t grab the visitors attention isn’t going to generate leads. Having CTAs in all of the key positions on your website is the best way to steer the visitor into doing what you want them to do. You need to have CTAs:
Above the fold
Next to every product – particularly on category pages
Embedded within written content
At the end of each page
The key is to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to hit your CTA button at any moment throughout their interaction with your website.
Testimonials and Reviews
Word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing because it lets your consumers do the talking for you, it creates an actual human connection that resonates with people much more than any corporate statement could.
Not only that, testimonials and reviews highlight your success stories and give potential customers a glimpse at what their lives could be like if they buy your product/service. Showing them how you can solve their problem will go a long way to easing any concerns they may have about investing in your business.
Testimonials and reviews have been around for a long time, and that’s because they work. Leverage positive and relevant reviews to your products around your website to constantly remind the visitor that you’re the right choice.
Bonus tip: Use SEO to attract the right page visitors
A common misconception with search engine optimization (SEO) is that it’s only purpose is to grow traffic to your website – this isn’t entirely true. It’s purpose is to drive targeted traffic from your ideal audience to your website from search engines, like Google.
If your website is getting a good amount of traffic but not converting any visitors into leads, despite implementing some of the techniques mentioned above, the only remaining explanation is that you’re targeting keywords not related to your niche and the resulting visitors aren’t interested in your product or service.
By investing in keyword research and an SEO audit, you’ll be able to identify what search terms your target audience is using to find products or services similar to yours. From there, all you need to do is optimize your web pages for those keywords and begin building traffic to those pages.
This will allow you to regularly capture the “low-hanging fruit” customers who are directly searching for the services your business provides and are looking to make an immediate purchase.
If you need help identifying keywords used by your target audience and whether your website is currently ranking for them or not, reach out to Atomic! We’ll put together a plan which generates more organic traffic to your pages from people who are directly looking for your products or services.
Conclusion
Conversion rate optimization makes your website work harder to get you customers! Converting the traffic you’re already receiving is likely to be much more cost-effective than investing in lead-gen campaigns that will drive more traffic to your site.
To add to that point, if you’re actively promoting your website and haven’t already optimized it for conversion, then you’re wasting that campaign budget as your site isn’t operating to it;s full potential. CRO is a compounding investment, once your site has been optimized it’ll keep generating more leads every week. Stop letting easy sales pass you by!
Increase the conversion rate of your website with Atomic! This article only scratches the surface of the CRO techniques we can implement to get you more conversions. Reach out today to let us fix your website and make you more money.
