Conversion Rate: What Is It and How to Improve It?

Clicks. We all want them. How do we get them? More to the point, how do we turn clicks into conversions?

But first, what is a conversion?

A conversion is the moment when a targeted individual responds to a call to action.

A call to action (CTA) is what you want people to do after receiving your marketing message. The CTA should be clear, and tells you what to do next: learn more, contact us, shop now, follow us, sign up, get 15 percent off, etc.

CTAs can be different at any given time, stage of campaign, and of course dependent on the product or service. In general, the goal of each conversion is to bring a person one step closer to becoming a loyal customer. This process is called a funnel.

How is conversion rate measured?

Conversion rate is clicks divided by actions.

Person sees Facebook ad, person clicks on Facebook ad, person signs up for 15 percent off their first order by offering an email address. That’s an example we, as consumers, see all the time. That’s a conversion: clicks divided by actions.

Another kind of conversion is initiated when a person types what they are looking for in an internet search box, hits return, and your product shows up as a result of their search, either as a search result or an ad. In this sense, they have found you, so they already might feel an inkling that your product is a good fit because they’ve gone looking for a thing they already think they might want and that is what has led them to you.

A conversion can also be, and often is, driven by targeting existing customers, people with whom there is a prior relationship, with a new product.

What’s a good conversion rate?

A good conversion rate can vary depending on various factors. What industry are you in? What type of conversions are you tracking? What platforms and channels are you using?

It’s difficult to say what a universal good conversion rate is – it all depends on your specific business and its activities, but here are some general benchmarks:

The average conversion rate across Google Ads is 4.40% on the search network and 0.57% on the display network.
The average conversion rate across Facebook Ads is 9.21%.
The average conversion rate across e-commerce businesses is 1.78%.
The average conversion rate for emai l marketing is 15%.

As a starting point, a good conversion rate is one that is better than the one you had before.

How to improve your conversion rate

To increase conversions, you need to have an idea of who to target with your message. At Rumblr, we employ a number of ways to understand and find the people you want to reach, the folks who might be interested in your product or service. Above all, make sure your strategy is fully aligned with your goals:

Define your goals. What is your benchmark for success?
Collect and analyse user data.
Create customer personas
Analyse competitors
Assess and adjust your conversion funnel
Clearly define your Value Proposition, and ensure all your copy highlights it simply & quickly
Review optimisation of web page layouts and intuitive ease of navigation
Killer copywriting
Showcase reviews and testimonials to build trust
Ensure your website is fast, efficient, and obsessively tested

So where do we start?

Message testing offers an opportunity to experiment with different calls to action, to see what message is sticking, and to optimise your messages moving forward with the calls to action that get the best response. You can also test multiple versions of copy, creatives and/or colour schemes to see what performs best.

Look at who is responding and what message is resonating, at which point we can broaden our campaign in two ways: lengthening and widening.

By lengthening, what we’re doing is creating content that is going to continue to engage so we can have as long a conversation as possible to get people invested for however long it takes to convert them to a customer.

By widening, what we mean is once we have discovered the characteristics of the person interested in your product, we can expand our targeting by reaching out to Lookalikes – more people who match the characteristics of those who are already converting.

What’s vital is to take the time and effort to understand your users and customers as you grow and learn. We recommend obsessing over your customers. They are the people who matter to your business and have the answers you need to improve it. Fixate on their needs and desired outcomes, learn as much as you can about their concerns and hesitations, and then deliver the solutions that address them.

Remember the golden question: what problem are you solving?

Other tips to boost conversion rates

Lots of A/B to F testing of key site pages and landing pages
Build your email list – it’s an oldie but a goody: email still returns the strongest ROI of all sales channels
Put the email address field high up in ordering forms – even if a customer exits the site, you have generated a strong lead that you can put to use in drip campaigns
Keep web forms simple
Screen popups with simple, attractive offers help build an email list
Ensure your business goals align with your customer goals, and that it is stated clearly and easily on your website
Get rid of any image sliders and scrolling banners – they are conversion rate killers
Design simple, direct, highly-targeted landing pages that convey key information quickly
Simple, easy-to-see site buttons that allow customers to cut to the chase
Countdown timers on your add-to-cart
Thank you pages and exit surveys – thank you pages offer an opportunity to build loyalty as well as to upsell; exit surveys offer a chance to ask a customer why they are abandoning their checkout. Again, keep this message short and sharp, don’t ask for too much from them, and don’t insult them.

Invest in understanding and learning from your customers. Be willing to shift and adjust to what the data tells you. Conversion rate optimisation is a forever-evolving process. Use the insight to continuously maintain a long-term strategy of constantly improving your value proposition.

At Rumblr, we can help you grow your conversion rates. Get in touch with us.