How do you know if an online shop or rental site is doing its job? Look at the conversion rate. This value indicates a low or, on the contrary, a high efficiency of the site.
In the article Advertising and marketing agency Internet Icon you will learn: what is conversion, what formulas exist for calculating this indicator, how to determine good and bad conversion, and also what methods you can use to increase the effectiveness of your site.
Conversion – what is it?
When you develop a landing page, you expect users to take certain actions. For example, register for a concert, download an app, buy a product, leave an email or phone number. Anything that will turn a visitor to your site into a potential customer for your business. These actions are called conversions and demonstrate the effectiveness of the site.
Ways to calculate conversion
Before making any calculations, it is important to determine the result that the landing is driving the user to. This could be signing up for a newsletter, downloading training material or creating a service request.
Understand what action you need and apply the formula:
[users who took an action] / [all site visitors] = conversion rate.
That is, count how many people left contact information or bought a product and divide by the total number of visitors to the landing page.
Calculating conversion using a gym website as an example
The owner of a gym had an idea to increase his customer base. He developed a landing page with an advertisement for the gym and a gift – a free checklist with a 7-day training programme. The checklist is available to any visitor who leaves a phone number or email.
As a result, users get a useful list of exercises and the gym gets a customer base to contact and send promotional offers.
In this example, conversions are people who agreed to leave contacts in exchange for a gift. Let’s say 760 people visited the landing page during the month and 30 of them sent an email.
Let’s use the formula to calculate the conversion rate, what it will show:
30 / 760 = 0.039 or 3.9%.
Conclusion: the figure for last month is 3.9%.
Good conversion rate – what it means
The effectiveness of the marketing strategy is easy to understand from the conversion rate that the website shows. If the figures are high, the business is thriving, if they are low, there is an urgent need to optimize and improve the results.
Good and bad conversions – what are the indicators? There is no single answer. The value depends on the business, the characteristics of the audience, the goals set by the company and sometimes the location of the organization.
Indicators help us to understand how effective we are and to choose the right strategy. They motivate to achieve new successes, the main thing is to set real numbers.
Marketers have defined average figures for good conversion – it is 2-5% for organizations in the healthcare, financial and hi-tech sectors. For e-commerce, the requirements are lower – 1.8-3.7%.
The calculation should be done with a large number of visitors, otherwise the interpretation of the values will be distorted. For example, six people visited your site in one month, two of them ordered a service. The conversion rate was 33% – an incredible number, but it does not determine the real effectiveness of the sales page.
Tip: first attract traffic to your website, then calculate the conversion rate.
Website statistics
You don’t need to manually count users and keep track of which of your guests took the desired action. Google Analytics 4 is a service that connects directly to your website.
Properly configured, GA4 allows you to set conversion goals and track their achievement. The service offers many interesting and useful tools, including visitor metrics.
Methods to increase conversions on your website
There are a number of ways you can optimize your business and increase sales:
- Landing page development. A one-page sales website contains specific details about the product or service and does not distract the potential customer with unnecessary information.
- Call to action. A call-to-action button grabs attention and encourages the user to take action. Examples include: “Leave a message”, “Order now”, “Subscribe to newsletter”.
- Improve usability. The landing page should be understandable to the visitor, i.e. have intuitive navigation, a pleasant interface and clear text. Ease of purchase improves the user experience and increases conversion rates.
- Add a mobile version. Many people search for information on their mobile phones, so a mobile site or app should display perfectly on smartphones and tablets. Fonts need to be legible and buttons easy to click.
- Display reviews. Positive customer reviews add credibility to your business. This encourages visitors to take the desired action.
- Communication and support. Live chat allows you to communicate with users in real time, quickly answering their questions and advising them on products. By helping people, you win their loyalty and encourage them to be more likely to engage.
