The sole purpose of every advertiser is to get buyers at a higher rate. Achieving this can be a piece of cake, but it has to do with first finding the middle ground to engage and convince the larger number of your prospects to take action.
According to recent research, 25% of businesses rate themselves to be so okay with their conversion rates, my guess is right, you won’t be reading me to this point if you are satisfied with the conversion in your funnel.
I like to assure your that this article answers all the 21 questions you have about improving your conversion rate to earn higher and have the edge over competitors in the marketplace.
This complete guide to a good conversion rate and how to improve its answers your first question What is a good conversion rate? conversation optimization; ways to improve and boost landing page optimization; and insightful takeaways.
What is a good conversion rate?
Current wisdom says that a good conversion rate is somewhere around 2% to 5%. If you are sitting at 2%, a boost to 4% seems like a massive jump.
You doubled your conversion rate! wow! congratulations, but you are still stuck in the average performance bucket.
Earning a good conversion rate speaks well of your company, placing it in the top 10% of global advertisers, which makes your conversion rate far better than the average conversion rate.
So what exactly is a good conversion rate? About 1/4 of all accounts have below 1% conversion rates.
The median was 2.35%, however, the top 25% of accounts have double that – 5.31% – or higher.
Check out the far right red bar, the top 10% of Google Ads advertisers earn account conversion rates of 11.45%.
Remember, this isn’t for individual landing pages – these advertisers are realizing 11.45% conversion and higher across their entire accounts.
Clearly; this is perfectly possible to climb to that height in your conversion ladder. If you are currently getting 5% conversion rates, you are outperforming 75% of advertisers but you still have a ton of room to shatter the glass ceiling above you and grow.
You should be gunning for 10%, 15%, or even higher, putting your conversion rates 3x to 5x higher than the average conversion rate.
What is Conversation Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a set of marketing plans for improving the percentage of your website traffic that makes a conversion.
It uses the psychology of persuasion in design to motivate people to take the desired action. CRO often includes multivariate, split, and A/B testing.
Or put differently, CROs are that great moment when a casual visitor to your store finally buys one of your products or service.
And, on a much smaller scale, conversions are happening all the time leading up to that moment, too.
For example, conversion on your homepage might mean having a user click through to a product.
A conversion on a product page might mean a visitor clicking Add to Cart. Conversions can be entirely dependent on the goal that a specific part of your website serves.
Common website conversions for eCommerce brands include:
#1. Online sales
#2. Visitors adding products to the cart
#3. Visitors adding items to a wishlist
#4. Email signups
But you aren’t bounded to the above examples alone. You can track and optimize for any key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics that are specific to your business.
Conversion is a broad subject because it impacts many different aspects of your website and digital marketing platforms.
To boost conversions to an online store, you need to be frequently testing each aspect of your website.
Ways to Improve and Boost Landing Page Optimization
Optimizing your eCommerce store isn’t a one-and-done solution for online marketing, it’s an ongoing process that will help you always learn more about your audience and how you can better serve them.
It’s not a plan with an endpoint—it’s something you should always be doing to get constantly.
As mentioned earlier, website conversion rates average around 2 percent.
This means for every 100 visitors, you can expect to only get 2 customers. And quite frankly, that’s a pretty good conversion rate.
A lot of websites only have a 0.1 to 0.2% conversion rate. By implication, out of 1000 visitors, you get 1 customer.
So how do you improve your conversions so you can get more customers with the traffic you already have?
I am going to suggest to you my best tips of all time that will move your conversion rate from sad figures to good conversions.
#1. Add a pop-up to your site
Pop-ups on websites are annoying, we should agree on that and get past it.
But there’s a reason they are still used on websites—they work.
The top 10 percent performing pop-ups have a huge 9.28 percent conversion rate, according to a Sumo finding.
Despite how annoying pop-ups can be (when used wrongly), they are remarkably effective at driving conversions, improving email lists, and encouraging visitors to convert.
When used correctly, pop-ups aren’t annoying; they are so beneficial.
#2. Add testimonials, reviews, and logos
Social proof is one of the oldest marketing strategies in the playbook, literally.
Back in 1760, Josiah Wedgewood used royal endorsements to advertise his high-quality pottery and chinaware.
In the early 1900s, cigarette brands featured entertainers like Harry Bulger in promotional ads.
And in the 1940s, Red Rock Cola endorsed Babe Ruth as their official drinking partner.
But social proof has made much improvement or progress since these early examples of celebrity endorsements.
One could only imagine the creative ideas ol’ Wedgewood might have put forth had he only had access to a landing page, right?
Today, PPC agencies and conversion optimization experts have found dozens of data-backed ways to infuse their landing page designs with social proof and testimonials.
And conversion rates have never been higher because of it.
#3. Remove distractions
There’s nothing more annoying than visiting a website that throws many distractions your way to deal with.
Your landing page should be clear and easy to navigate. If it’s not necessary, don’t include it. Stick with what your visitors need to know and stop at that.
#4. Make the first steps into your funnel very easy
There’s a psychological principle that humans like to finish things that they start.
So, when it comes to your offer, the first steps should be extremely simple for your visitor to walk through.
Rather than asking for a complete form to be filled out. simply request an email address to start the steps.
From there, you can spread the rest of the form in hopes of securing additional information. But even if you don’t, you still have the user’s email.
The easier you make the first steps, the greater chance there is of your visitors taking action and following through that path to the end.
#5. Color your CTA copy
Generic CTAs like “Start trial” and “Sign up” won’t give you the conversion rates you are looking for.
A few minutes spent shaping the edges of the copy will give you an easy conversion rate win.
Begin with a CTA that starts with the word “Yes.” It’s highly effective psychologically because it colors the offer in a positive light.
try something like “Yes! I Want My Discount”
#6. Add live chat to your site
More than 30% of customers expect live chat on a business’s site while only 9% of brands provide live chat support, according to surveys.
Live chat is a powerful sales tool. Conversions can improve by 45% when live chat is on a website.
When visitors come to your website, a live chat box is a powerful way to engage with them. You can respond to their questions to make them more confident in a purchase, you can help existing customers with your product, or you can offer helpful information if they are early in their buying journey.
Regardless of the reason, a live chat offers a custom, personalized interaction for them, which is a good customer experience when done right.
On top of this, many live chat tools let you collect some basic customer contact insights, so you can follow up with them — boosting sales and improving customer retention.
#7. Offer a money-back guarantee
As marketers, you know consumers avoid risk. They don’t want to put their money at stake unless they are reasonably sure they will get what they paid for.
A money-back guarantee helps suppress fears and move past objections.
#8. Include a countdown timer
Countdown timers enable you to show landing page visitors the amount of time they have to claim an offer.
You can also utilize countdown timers to count down to a product launch or sales period like Black Friday.
Including a countdown timer on your landing page is an excellent way to engage your audience.
Because attention spans are fleeting, a countdown timer can hold it long enough to convince users to take action.
Countdown timers are also ideal for building a sense of excitement and urgency. Visitors are more likely to act if they know they have limited time left; they won’t want to miss the slim chance to save money.
#9. Try another offer
Don’t pay so much attention to your landing page copy, design, and related factors that you ignore the importance of choosing the right offer.
This has one of the biggest impacts on conversion rate, as your offer must be fascinating to your market.
If your conversion rate is low, cycle through various offers until you find something that resonates with your audience.
It may not be the first, second, or even third offer that clicks with your market. But if you continue to experiment and track your results, you will eventually find a winner.
#10. Use Remarketing/ Retargeting as a CRO Tool
On average, 96% of the people who visit a site will leave without converting to a lead or sale. Remarketing and retargeting help you get in front of these people with targeted, relevant messaging as they take part in other activities around the website, like email, watching YouTube videos, using social networks, or searching for information.
Conversion Rates By Industry
Online conversion rates of e-commerce websites were the highest in the food and beverage industry, at 4% in early 2022.
Sites operating in the haircare and health and beauty industry followed, with conversion rates of 3.2 and 3.1%, respectively.
For comparison, the average conversion rate of eCommerce websites across all selected industries stood at 2.2 percent.
Key Takeaways
We have covered a lot of grounds, I mean we have in great detail touched on all I promised to put you through.
What have you taken away from this detailed walk with me? I hope you can get the following to stick and use these tips to guide a more holistic, good conversion rate optimization strategy – the type that will not only improve your conversions but bring better lead quality, as well.
Aggressively focused and strategic landing page optimization brings 3-5x the conversions and improves lead quality.
In some industries, even 5% conversion rates aren’t that impressive. If you’re stuck in the 2-5% conversion rate bucket, you have a ton of room to grow.
Get creative with your offers and test multiple different offers to find the one that resonates best with your audience. If you want to get crazy (you know you do), find different offers that can help you qualify leads in the process.
Identify the obstacles keeping prospects from converting and get those roadblocks out of the way by changing the flow. Test different variations to find out exactly which path to conversion works best for your audience.
Use remarketing to recapture people who showed intent but didn’t convert.
Test smarter, not more often. You need to test 10 unique landing page variations to find 1 top performer, but this goes far beyond changing a font color and calling it a landing page variation.
Trim the fat in your account and ditch your lowest performers. Focus your energies on the top 10% of landing pages that earn 80% of traffic.
Always, always keep your eye on the prize, which is making more sales or generating leads most likely to convert to sales. Don’t let high conversion rates take precedence over lead quality or you’re going to spend more qualifying leads. You need to find the sweet spot where everything works like a well-oiled machine.
Now go forth expectantly, young marketer, to slay competitors and wow prospects with your newfound conversion optimization proficiency.
