If you book them, they will come. So said the vision of Jim Morrison in Wayne’s World 2. If only it were that simple.
Wayne’s World II
In this guide, I’ll answer these questions. What is conversion rate optimisation? What is a conversion, what can you do to improve conversion rate optimisation, and why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
You have a website; you’re doing all the right things. You’ve put a full digital marketing strategy in place comprising content marketing, paid search, SEO and social media. The trouble is you feel like few or not enough people are carrying out your goal, i.e. they aren’t ‘converting.’
At Made by Factory, we know what it takes to set up an effective content marketing strategy that drives conversions. Our expert team understands the various channels and will ensure that your strategy is tailored to meet your goals.
What is a conversion?
So what is a conversion? The most direct type is a purchase. It’s led straight to profit for your business. There are other kinds of conversions, though — sign-ups to gated content, a lead filling in an enquiry form, or telephoning you.
Sometimes, you must count the number of people who view a certain page or take a specific action. Tracking these kinds of conversions is essential for you to understand what’s working and what isn’t on your website and in your marketing campaigns. It’s important that you track not only purchases but also all other types of conversions.
There are many things that you may classify as a conversion depending on your goals. As a digital agency, when delivering leads to our clients, then a phone call from an ad would be classified as a conversion if the goal was to get the phone ringing.
The point is, for whatever reason you have a website, whatever your goal, the conversion is completing that action.
What is Conversion Rate?
Conversion is measurable. It’s a key metric of your website. In online stores, the Conversion rate is an eye-opening metric, showing how much of your overall site visitors bought something. Ultimately we want this figure to be as high as possible. There are many ways to improve the conversion rate of your website, from design changes and A/B testing to SEO optimisation.
How do you calculate a conversion rate? It’s simply the number of clicks divided by the number of conversions. So if your conversion is a form fill (Lead generation), and you get one form fill for every fifty visitors on your website, that’s a 2% conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimisation
So that’s conversion and conversion rate. You should be able to figure out where I’m going with this breakdown. Conversion rate optimisation, therefore, is the act of optimising your website to maximise the chances of that goal happening.
The annual econsultancy CRO report identifies the key areas of conversion rate optimisation to be as follows.
- A/B and multivariate testing
- Having a structured approach
- Customer journey analysis
- Copy optimisation
- Online surveys/customer feedback
- Cart abandonment analysis
- Segmentation
Let’s look at a few of these in more detail.
A/B or multivariate testing
What is it? In simple terms, you are testing two versions of your site content and putting them in competition with each other. Differences in the page may be very subtle, but differences in conversion rate could be significant.
Netflix continually uses AB testing with their on-screen images advertising the latest shows. They discovered that Images with expressive facial emotion that conveys the tone of the title do particularly well.
You might test the placement of an element on the page, the copy of the page, and what images, colours or fonts you use. You can get more accurate data by keeping your changes subtle. For example, if you have two vastly different pages, and one converts better than the other, that’s great, but you won’t learn what element improved the conversion.
Multivariate testing
Multivariate testing is like AB but with more iterations. This is only worth doing if you get large volumes of traffic. Otherwise, you can’t get meaningful data.
Remember, testing and optimisation is an ongoing process, and you should always continue to test, refine and optimise.
The econsultancy report data says it’s still the most used method for improving conversion rates and two-thirds of marketers carry out this method in conversion rate optimisation.
The Customer Journey
Analysis of the customer journey is another valuable way to improve conversion rates. With over 89% of us in the UK now using the web to access products and services, behaviour has become more varied and unpredictable.
There is no longer a typical funnel. Customers will take multiple steps, such as researching a brand, visiting the website, looking at reviews, engaging on social media, and asking others. This can take place online and offline.
You need to understand your customers and what kind of journey they take. Is your offering want vs need? How much does it cost? If you sell complete turnkey solutions or room-size cutting machines, you know your customers will typically take longer to arrive at conversion than if you sell spares and consumables!
In the last report, over 80% of companies agreed that their revenue increased after analysing their customer journey. Making life easier online for your customers will not only lead to more conversions but more lifetime customer value.
Use data from all possible sources. Combine the data you gather from offline sources, call centres or physical stores. Larger stores still use showrooming techniques, and despite most purchases happening online, customers will still go and look at a physical product before committing to that purchase. A visit to a store is an all-important part of this customer’s journey.
Multi-channel customers are worth four times more revenue than online or offline customers alone.
If you don’t have the right skills to analyse this data and create actionable goals from it, then one option is to hire an expert team like us to do it.
Customer feedback and online surveys.
There are lots of ways to gather feedback. Online and offline. It could even be that your survey is annoying.
Work out your worth by using the Net Promoter Score. Are your customers likely to recommend you to a friend? NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of people who wouldn’t (detractors) from the people who would (promoters)
Companies such as Tesla, Amazon, and Apple have very high NPS. The average company scores much lower, around 5-10%
The overall benefits of conversion rate optimisation
We now know to test and test some more, take a detailed look into our customer journey, and simplify it, making it as painless as possible and making the path to conversion as simple as possible.
A well-optimised website will make the transition for an already engaged visitor much smoother making for happy, loyal customers.
At Factory, our combined wealth of PPC and web expertise means our campaigns are continually optimised to maximise conversion rates.
As an established PPC agency in Manchester, We have more than doubled conversion based on the same marketing spend for clients FR Jones, and this is just one of many successful customer stories.
When working with us, we continue to test what’s working and deliver outstanding results. Co-founded by an Ex-Googler, our team has a high level of training and a track record of client results.
