After successfully creating a website for an online business, you start to see an increase in traffic. But, is traffic alone enough? Certainly not. Traffic is important, but in an online business, there is a more important metric: conversion rate. Let’s see what is Conversion Rate Optimization?
In this article, you will learn about conversion rates, what is good for an online business, and the best methods for optimizing conversion rates ( Conversion Rate Optimization ( CRO).
To start the article, let’s get a little acquainted with conversion rates.
What is the Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate is the percentage of the number of visitors who perform one particular activity of the total number of visitors on a website. A high conversion rate is one indication of a successful marketing strategy and website design.
Conversion rate measurement varies greatly from one industry to another and from one stage of marketing to another.
Social media websites generally measure the conversion rate by the percentage of the number of visitors who create an account, while online stores usually measure the conversion rate by the percentage of the number of accounts and the number of sales.
Each business model has different levels and types of conversion rates. But there is one thing in common: the higher the conversion rate on a website, the more successful the website is in marketing a product, so the more leads it gets.
One concrete example of conversion is when you visit a marketplace website like Tokopedia, you are required to register to start shopping. At that point, you have become part of the conversion (change) from a Tokopedia visitor to a Tokopedia account owner.
After you create an account, you will shop using Tokopedia services. Here, you have also been converted from a passive account owner to an active buyer on Tokopedia.
Now, after understanding a little about conversion rates, let’s discuss why conversion rate optimization ( conversion rate optimization ) is one of the most important things in developing an online business.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
Conversion Rate Optimization is important to do to reduce customer acquisition costs by increasing the interest of website visitors to the company and the products or services offered.
Imagine if a landing page on your website has 3,000 visitors every month with a 5% conversion rate.
From that number, you will get 150 new conversions without the need to do anything actively! In short, by optimizing the conversion rate, the chances of acquiring new clients or customers will increase.
Of course, achieving a good conversion rate requires a lot of research, trial, and error. The following factors affect the conversion rate.
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Factors Affecting Conversion Rate
There are various factors that can play a role in increasing or decreasing the conversion rate of a website page. Here are some of them:
1. Value Proposition for Visitors
A value proposition, or value proposition, is a functional offering that visitors will get if they take an action on your website. The purpose of this value proposition is to show visitors that you are not only offering a product or service but also providing benefits to them.
The benefits referred to here can be in the form of offers, free content, templates, or other things that can be useful for your ideal website visitors. Some examples of the most widely used value propositions are:
- “Get the latest news on social media by subscribing to our email newsletter ”
- “Make your business more profitable with our software”
- “Increase sales 15% in 30 days with our best digital marketing strategy”
- “Download this free ebook to become a social media expert”
- Etc.
2. Relevance to Target Market
Remember, you must create a value proposition with the aim of attracting the attention of visitors with the ideal profile to become a client or customer. By offering a value that matches the ideal customer, the chances of conversion are much higher.
For example, if you sell skincare products, you can offer an ebook on a healthy skincare routine.
Check out an example of a value proposition from HubSpot below. Here, they offer blog post templates that visitors can use to write efficient articles. Instead, you need to enter your email to download the template.
This is because HubSpot targets its products to content marketers, digital marketers, and professions related to digital content who can of course use blog post templates for their work.
3. Clarity of Offer
In CRO, the offer you make must be very clear and detailed. This is to help convince website visitors to take the action they want.
Make sure the message on your landing page is very clear about what is being offered. Check out Backlinko’s example of a landing page with a good value proposition below.
Here, Backlinko offers exclusive SEO tips that are only given to email newsletter subscribers. From the message above, we can conclude that:
Q: What will visitors get?
A: SEO Tips
Q: Why do visitors have to register their email?
A: Because these SEO tips are exclusively for email newsletter subscribers
Make sure your landing page provides a clear offer, so that website visitors also know for sure what you get from doing something you want.
6. Content Quality
The quality of your website content will certainly be one of the parameters for visitors to determine their views about your brand. If the quality of the content on your website is poor, then the possibility of conversion is also small.
Therefore, make sure you only create quality content, both in terms of information, wording, spelling, and readability.
7. Website Design
Website design is one element that plays an important role in optimizing conversion rates. Color combinations, arrangement of elements, choice of fonts, placement of Call-to-Action (CTA), and other visual factors have a significant impact on how visitors interact with your website.
Of course, website design is one of those creative decisions that requires trial and error to find the most effective. You can do A/B testing to find the best website design with accurate data.
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How to Increase Conversion Rate
1. Using Pop-Ups for Websites
A study from Sumo showed that the average conversion rate of pop-up elements was 3.09%. But if done with the right steps, the pop-up conversion rate can reach 9.28%.
Pop-ups generally interrupt your visitors with a field. However, there are a few tips that can drastically increase the conversion rate of your pop-ups:
- Offer premium content for free (ebooks, infographics, templates, and other free products)
- Make sure the pop-up appears at least 30 seconds after the visitor enters the website
- Make sure the button to close the pop-up is clearly visible and easy to access
- Set cookies so that the pop-up appears only once per visitor
- Don’t ask for too much information, just email is enough
If you use pop-ups and apply the 5 tips above, then your conversions will increase quickly.
2. Add Testimonials
If you saw a product that no one else had bought or reviewed, would you buy it?
Most likely, no.
Therefore, post testimonials on the pages you want to increase conversions too. In addition to testimonials for services or products, you can also use the logos of clients who have used your products on the main page of the website.
3. Eliminate the Elements of Distraction
Too many elements on a page can be a distraction for visitors, so the main elements that attract conversions are not effective.
The page that is the focal point of the conversion should be clean, clear, and easy to read. If there are elements that are not essential or only decorative, remove them from the landing page.
Ideally, the elements of a landing page would be as follows:
- Headlines
- Value proposition
- Testimonials
- Offer visuals and writing
Again, the Backlinko landing page is a great example of a clean and focused page.
4. Do a Headline Test
A good headline can determine the success of a landing page. If the headline used conveys the wrong message, many visitors will leave your website without returning.
However, when you are optimizing your conversion rate, the chances of you finding the right headline in one try are very small.
Therefore, you need to do A/B testing to find the headlines with the best results. When testing, there are several variables that can be tested:
- Headline length
- Products offered
- Voice tone (serious/casual/funny/sad)
- Usage statistics
- Use of numbers
5. Add Urgency with Countdown
The use of the countdown to get one offer is a marketing method using FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out – aka, the fear to miss).
This is one of the most widely used marketing strategies in Indonesia (example: flash sale; Eid discount; new year promo, Friday-Saturday-Sunday promo, etc.).
Use this method on offers on your landing page as one of the conversion rate optimization methods.
6. Strengthen Call to Action Writing
Using generic Call to Action writing such as “buy now” or “register now” will certainly not result in a good conversion rate for your website.
Use a specific CTA for each offer such as “yes, I want a discount” or “yes, get a special product offer” so that when visitors read it, they are reminded of what they are getting.
7. Implement Easy Initial Process
To start the process of increasing conversions on your website, make the initial conversion steps as easy as possible.
Do not ask visitors to fill in too many fields such as first name, last name, phone number, and so on. Just ask for an email address.
Too many fields will actually discourage customers from accepting your offer. It is also possible that they do not want to hand over excessive personal information to unknown parties.
Remember, this is for the initial conversion process and building trust in your brand. You can request more data in later stages.
Tools for Testing and Optimizing CRO
We will group the tools that can be used for Conversion Rate Optimization based on their uses. We divide them into three categories below:
Analytical Tools
The most basic and important tool you need to have to increase your conversion rate is analytics. Here are some analytics tools that can provide accurate data to help you plan conversion rate optimization :
- Google Analytics
- KISSMetrics
- Mixpanel
- CrazyEgg
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
User Survey Tools
With data gathered from analytics tools, you can pinpoint the causes of an increase or decrease in conversion rates by conducting user surveys to find out what they like or don’t like about your website.
Here are some tools you can use to conduct a survey:
- Qualaroo
- Survey Monkey
- SurveyGizmo
- PollDaddy
- io
User Behavior Testing Tools
The last category is tools that can provide more in-depth analysis results. These tools can be used to analyze how visitors interact with your website.
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CrazyEgg
In addition to being an analytics tool, CrazyEgg also has eye-tracking technology that allows you to visualize how users come and interact with your website through heat maps, scroll maps, overlay tools, and confetti tools.
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Click Tale
ClickTale is a technology that can provide analysis results in the form of videos. This video will describe the journey of your website visitors, making it easier to digest because it uses visual elements.
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Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a wireframing and mockup tool that allows you to create “friendly” wireframe scripts and is able to prepare hypotheses for testing your website.
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Cacoo
Cacoo can help you compile various diagrams based on analysis reports in the form of sitemaps, flow diagrams, mind maps, frameworks, UML diagrams, and network diagrams.
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Browsershoots
Browsershoots is an online tool that can be used to take screenshots of websites and test them on a number of computer devices to find out how website users experience during their visit and provide input for further analysis.
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Hotjar
Hotjar is a tool that records user interactions on the pages of your website. You can see visual markers of clicks, scrolls, movements, and downloads made by visitors. In addition, you can also record the interactions of some visitors on your website.
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Conclusion
Indeed, increasing the conversion rate of a website requires a lot of investment of time, effort, and even funds. But by optimizing your website’s conversion rate, you will get increased business from your website without the need to actively promote.
Of course, there are many ways to increase your conversion rate apart from the ones we mentioned above, but these 7 methods are the ones that have been proven to be effective.
Mayur Sharma is an Entrepreneur, Youtuber, who also specializes in Digital Marketing. Mayur Sharma is a founder of mayur-sharma.com where he describes his digital marketing services, as well as the blog, has very well known for marketing themes.