Whether you have a lead generation (lead gen) site, an e-commerce site, or a hybrid of both, chances are you’re looking to generate more leads and sales from your website. In this article we’re going to look at a five step process that will improve your website, increase your conversion rate, and generate those leads and sales that will help your business grow and thrive.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO, is the process of increasing the percentage of your website visitors who take a desired action on your website.
What that desired action is, is completely up to you. It could be tied directly to revenue, such as completing a transaction or booking an appointment. Or it could be a step along the way, such as adding an item to their cart, registering for a free webinar, signing up for an email newsletter, or even just watching the first 15 seconds of a video.
There are two main ways to generate more revenue from your website:
- Increase the number of qualified prospects visiting your website, or
- Increase the percentage of people who “convert” at your website…moving further down the sales funnel or along the customer journey.
How Do You Calculate Conversion Rate?
If you want to improve your conversion rate, to optimize it, you’ll first have to measure it.
While calculating conversion rate does require math (?), it’s not rocket science. It’s simply the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. If three people sign up for your email newsletter out of every 100 who visit the signup page, your conversion rate is 3%.
What is a Good Conversion Rate?
It depends. (Sorry, but it does.)
If you go online you’ll see “2% – 5%”, “over 10%”, or “between 5% and 15%” in response to this question.
None of these are right…or wrong. Conversion rates differ between industries, between B2B and B2C companies, on what you qualify as a “conversion”, and depending on the length of your sales funnel. If you measure a conversion when someone “adds to cart,” you’re definitely going to experience a higher conversion rate than someone who measures conversions only after checkout.
If you do want to get a baseline, just Google “average conversion rate for [your industry here]” and you’ll likely find some research done by optimization software companies that will put you in the right ballpark.