Conversion Rate Optimization – How to increase Conversion Rate, Sales & Leads

A recent meeting with Google Australia has revealed vital insights into the capabilities of Google Adwords in analysis and optimization.

Websites for all businesses should be treated as an investment. Like any investment, its continuous maintenance & evaluation can help it grow and mature; with the ultimate aim to achieve 100% conversion rate.

 

What is Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate can be generally defined as the percentage of visitors who has taken the desired action defined by the website owner. The desired action is identified by the purpose of the website including sales of a product, registrations, downloads, inquires (lead generation), or reading the information presented.

The conversion rate of a website depends on a variety of factors such as the call to action, attractiveness of the offer or the ease of the process.

 

How do I increase conversion rate?

Knowing your website’s conversion rate is possibility the most important matrix for e-marketers, yet 60% of marketers do not know how well their website is converting visitors. It is also important to remember is that the conversion process starts as soon as someone lands on a website, thus the significance of this ‘landing page’ is vital to bettering the rate of conversion. Keeping this in mind, I always recommended a comprehensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) phase to bring the potential customers to the product or information they are searching for.

Once the visitor is on your website, whether or not they convert is ultimately how your landing page is designed. Depending on the website, there can be millions of different layouts and messaging combinations; should it say ‘Buy Now!’, ‘Buy Today’ or just ‘Buy’? Should the product image have a different background colour? Left or right aligned? Etc…

Conversion Optimization is the technique of creating a variety of pages to test the affects each element (change) has on conversion, thus forming an optimal landing page that visitors will be more likely to convert. There are several ways to test landing pages:

·         A/B Testing

·         Multivariate Testing

·         Path Testing

·         Multipage Multivariate Testing

It is important in your next website design project to ensure the web developer has the ability to generate testing pages so that you can capitalize from increasing conversion rates.

 

Steps to Increase Conversion Rate

1.       Drive the relevant traffic to your site

2.       Measure and analyze your website activity

3.       Test changes and find winners

4.       Repeat 1-3 until conversion = 100%