Website traffic is great, but it means nothing without conversions. In online marketing a conversion rate is the ratio of total visitors to visitors who performed desired actions. Internet business in every industry employs many methods to improve conversion rates because higher the conversion rate more is the return on investment. Internet business measures conversions on the basis of the nature of the business and goals.
For example: an online publisher will consider successful conversion when a visitor is submitting a form on their subscription page on the other hand an online retailer will measure conversion rate by number of clicks to the “add to cart” button.
Conversion rate is one of the biggest metric which tells whether or not our work as a marketer is successful. Every other metric like bounce rate, traffic source etc is nothing but number that tells us where we are succeeding or not in increasing the conversion rate.
No matter how good is your conversion rate but there is always a scope to improvise for more. As improving your conversion rate will automatically increase the profit.
IMPORTANT METRICS TO INCREASE THE CONVERSION RATE
There are several ways to increase the conversion rate. But before that we should know which important metric we should track in order to increase the conversion rate.
Here are few of the important metrics:
- TRAFFIC SOURCES: There are three important sources of traffic.
- DIRECT VISITORS: The one that visits your website by directly typing the url in the address bar.
- SEARCH VISITORS: The one that visits your website based on the search query.\
- REFERRAL VISITORS: The one that visits your website because it was mentioned on another site or placements.
- NEW OR UNIQUE VISITORS CONVERSION: The way a first time visitor interacts with your site is very important. To improve first time visitor conversion rate you have to determine how your loyal or returning visitors interacted with your website and what did they see when they visited your website at first.
- INTERACTIONS PER VISIT: Even if your visitors didn’t convert it is important to monitor their behaviour with your website. What exactly they are doing, how can you make it a conversion? Example: page view rate, time spent etc. Our main goal should not only be in increasing the interaction rate but also on how we can make these increased interaction a successful conversion.
- COST PER CONVERSION: Cost per conversion is one of the most important metric. It doesn’t matter if you have a high conversions and high value per visit if your costs are so excessive that your net income is zero. So while increasing your conversion keeps your cost per conversion margin in mind.
- BOUNCE RATE: Bounce rate is the rate at which new visitors visit your site and immediately exit without doing anything. A high bounce rate indicates weak or irrelevant sources of traffic and landing page that aren’t good enough for conversion. So our goal should be keep the bounce rate as low as possible
- EXIT PAGES: To maximize conversions you need to find out at what stage the visitors is exiting the site and optimize the page or process accordingly.
HOW TO INCREASE THE CONVERSION RATE
There are several different ways and techniques to increase the conversion rates. Few of them are as below.
CALL TO ACTION: Call to action refers to a button or link that makes visitors to take a certain action. So one way to increase the conversion rate is to experiment with different Call to action buttons like try it placing in different places on the page and check which one is performing better apart from that try different CTA text or icons on the button as well.
LANDING PAGE: It gives information to motivate user to get converted and guides them in right direction. Layout, style, functionality are the important part of a landing page. So best practice is to have a landing page with good images, precise content which delivers your message easily and quickly without confusing the visitors.
SOCIAL PROOFS: Adding a customer’s testimonial or a review to your website increases the trust and in return increases the conversions.
CONTACT INFORMATION: Clearly showing the contact information like phone number, email id, live chat or address increases the conversion as it gives a confidence to customers that your company is real and is there to answer any query.
CONTACT INFORMATION: Clearly showing the contact information like phone number, email id, live chat or address increases the conversion as it gives a confidence to customers that your company is real and is there to answer any query.
HEADLINES: The headlines on your website are the first thing which is visitor reads and which compels them to read more or exit. Hence, one right headline can dramatically increase your conversion rate.
KEEP CONVERSION ELEMENTS ABOVE THE FOLD: Opt-in boxes and there conversion element should be above the fold for better results.
MEET THE EXPECTATION OF YOUR PPC VISITORS: If visitors are coming to your landing page via a PPC AD, make sure your ad copy is relevant to your landing page content.
So the best way to attract customers and keep them linked is by improving current websites and adopting a conversion rate optimizing strategy.