Three Steps to a Higher Conversion Rate
Websites with high conversion rates don’t happen by mistake. These sites follow three key steps to converting higher than their competitors. According to fireclick index, the average conversion rate across all vertical markets is 2.3%. That means 97.7% of visitors to your website are leaving without buying anything or becoming a lead. Depending on site traffic, just a 1% increase in conversion rate could mean hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in increased revenue.
So how do you increase your conversion rate? By following three steps:
- Define your websites goals
- Set up site analytics
- Create an environment of constant improvement
Define Your Websites Goals
Jack Canfield states in his book The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, that one of the main reasons people don’t get what they want is because they haven’t decided what they want. The same concept applies to your website. If you want your website to convert at a higher rate you first must define what equals a conversion, or in other words, what you want from your website.
Start by looking at your website as a whole. Define the purpose of your website. Does your business have a website to generate leads, sell your products online, or inform your prospects and customers?
Now that you defined your sites purpose, you should define your best online prospect. Who are they and how do they become a customer? Does this customer buy the product online or are they converted offline by you or your sales staff.
Next look at your website’s individual pages. Create a primary and secondary goal for each page of your website. Decide what each pages purpose is and how that page fits into the sales funnel. For example, the primary goal of your home page is generally to engage the visitor and convince them to click deeper into your website. The secondary goal may be to have the visitor subscribe to your email list or download your brochure (make sure they have to submit their email address to get the brochure so you can follow up later).
Set up Website Analytics
The only way to track your websites conversion rate, and the many factors that contribute to it, is through the use of site analytics. The real power of the web lies in the ease of tracking visitor data. At the very least your analytics should have a way to track:
- Number of visitors
- New vs returning visitors
- Landing page
- Conversion rate
- Traffic source
- Keywords (if traffic source is a search engine)
- Bounce rate
- Page specific performance
In my opinion, the best product for most businesses is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an enterprise level client-side analytics program. What does that mean? It can produce over 100 reports and since it is client-side a basic install is easy to implement and has virtually no IT overhead. Simply copy and paste a small amount of code and you are up and running. You can create a free Google Analytics account here.
Create an Environment of Constant Improvement
High conversion rates rarely happen on the first try. I like to say that web design never ends. What works today may not work tomorrow, what doesn’t work now needs to be changed, and what works best for your competitors may not work for you. The only way to know for sure is to commit to getting better. You do that by constantly testing and measuring results.
The first step to creating this environment is your analytics software. The second is a good testing platform. Don’t guess what design will convert better, test it and then measure the results. Google again provides a great tool for performing both A/B split testing and multivariate testing called Google Website Optimizer. By copying and pasting some code on your website you can show multiple variations of your site, collect data, and know for sure what design will convert better. Once you have the higher converting design, try to beat it by making more adjustments.
Define your goals, track your visitors, and commit to getting better. Follow these three steps and you will see your conversion rates climb.
