In my final blog I want to talk about conversion. Conversion can easily be defined as when a visitor takes an action you want them to take (on your website). It is all about making the most out of the traffic already present on your website,, it is thus not about getting as many people as possible to your website. I personally think that conversion is a very interesting topic. I am running my own web shop for a short while and I very interested in what conversion can do to my page. In this blog I will explore the world of conversion, please fasten your seatbelts.
Conversion can mean all sorts of things. It all depends on which action the page owner wants its audience to take. This can be a subscription to a newsletter, but it can also be a call to action (buy this product now!). For example: I sell headwear and want to get as many visitors as I possibly can to buy one of my products. In order to do so, I want to optimize my conversion rate. But first of all; what is conversion rate? Your conversion rate can be found when you divide your total number of visitors with the total number of conversions (those that did whatever is defined as converting). I am going to discuss how you can optimize this conversion rate.
What numbers should you be looking into?
There are several statistics that you should have a look at in order to find out how well your website is doing. Bounce Rate is one of these statistics. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing just a single page. A high bounce rate is therefore a very undesired thing. It indicates that your visitors are not finding what they are looking for. Furthermore, you should look into your Exit Rate. You can find a specific exit rate for each page on your website. Your exit rate shows you the last page that your audience has been visiting before they left your website. Knowing your exit rate can help you identify problems on your website. You should also have a look into the average time spend on your website. Usually a high bounce rate means that the average time spend on the website is rather short. You want your audience to stick around long enough so that they end up doing whatever you want them to do. Lastly, it is a good idea to look into your average page views. This shows how many pages the average visitor goes through before leaving. Many page views can be a good thing, as it can imply that there is a lot of engagement, but it can also mean a lack of clarity on your website. I strongly advice you to look into the aforementioned.
There are several reasons on why one should look into conversion:
- Its free
- Paid advertising is becoming more costly
- Helps you to maximize your profits
- You become more valuable to affiliates
- It will help you get the ‘right’ kind of costumers
The conversion funnel
I think that any website owner should start by putting themselves in the shoes of their clients. The website owner should go through each step or pathway that users experience on a website. This pathway is called the conversion funnel. The website owner should go through each step and analyze where conversion might go wrong. There are several barriers that could lie in the way to conversion; these are a couple of those barriers:
- Call to action is not easy to find
- Your website doesn’t show that security is of the upmost importance to you
- Unnecessary text that distracts the audience
- Your website is not clear enough
- No costumer testimonials
- Landing page does not show the right content
In the end it all depends on your website. Every website has different goals. If you want to improve your conversion funnel you ultimately have to ask your visitors about certain barriers that prevent them from taking the desired action. I think that every website owner should look into conversion rate optimization. I know for a fact that I should have been looking into this quite some time ago. While writing this blog I actually convinced myself to do so. I hope that I have also convinced you to look into conversion. This has been my last blog post. I hope you have enjoyed my articles, I sure did enjoy writing them!
Here is some additional information on conversion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnMRzbdrTmw
https://qualaroo.com/beginners-guide-to-cro/what-is-conversion-rate-optimization/
http://www.wordstream.com/conversion-rate-optimization
My own website:
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