What Is Website Conversion Rate?
In general, website conversion rate refers to the ability of your website to convert leads into customers. This is a simplistic yet generally accepted definition.
However, if you want to truly assess how effective your website as a marketing tool, you need to look at conversion rate as your website’s ability to convert leads or site visitors into doing what you want them to do. It is not just about converting leads to customers; this is too general.
Specific actions that you want to monitor for your conversion rates includes click-thrus, registration, subscription and software downloads. There are available software for conversion rate monitoring. Or, you can use services, such as Google’s Webmaster’s Tools and Analytics.
What Is A Good Conversion Rate?
A good website conversion rate is 2.35%, according to Larry Kim of WordStream. This applies to all industries. If your goal is to have a top performing website, then you should target a conversion rate of 5.31%, which is only enjoyed currently by the top 25% of online businesses. And, if you want to belong to the top 10%, your website has to perform three to five times these conversion rates.
Of course, your conversion rate can only get you so far. It is important to target the people you end up converting.
Take for example a tech company, which seeks to improve its branding and lead acquisition. To do this, it offers a free software download after subscribing to its newsletters. This all sounds good, except that the software it was giving away is mostly used by individuals who are not necessarily connected to the company’s target industries.
In this case, it needs to rethink its content marketing, such that it stays laser-focused on its ideal market.
How to Improve Your Website Conversion Rate
The first step to improving your website conversion rate is to map out your website and know where your pages fall within your sales pipeline. This gives you a good idea of your content marketing. Have you covered all the bases? Are you providing enough information to encourage your clients to move forward in their buyer’s journey with you?
Then, assess the effectiveness of your pages. Are your site visitors responding to your cues? Are they clicking on your links? Do they stay long enough on your page to have read your content? Like what was mentioned earlier, there are several tools to help you do a comprehensive assessment of your website’s performance.
Develop content that improves on what you currently have. Make sure you are clear about what you want to achieve from your individual pages. Likewise, it is important to design an easy-to-navigate website. It also pays to improve the trustworthiness of your pages through client testimonials and web security seals, such as those from Better Business Bureau and Verisign.
Be diligent in your conversion rate monitoring. You won’t get to the ideal, during the first of nth time you assess your content. This is continuous work, and you need to be responsive to the changing commercial landscape.
