What Is Conversion Rate Optimization & Why Is It Important?

With billions of online stores currently active, calling the level of competition between them tough is an understatement. Many business owners struggle to keep their shop afloat, but not everyone knows what they should pay attention to.

First, you’d look at your revenue, and see if your gains outweigh the costs. But when the finances aren’t what you expected, you then need to take a look at your store’s conversion rate and see how well you’re doing in that department.

If that’s all seems old news to you, then that’s great! But unfortunately, not everyone sees things so clearly. Many business owners blame lack of notoriety or advertising as the direct cause of their failure, and launch campaigns meant to bring in more people to their websites. But spreading the word is the easy part; it’s making sure you convert someone from a first time user to a paying customer that’s the problem.

What’s the solution? Well, the answer is as simple as it is complicated. It’s called conversion rate optimization. If that’s the first time you hear about it, then you probably need the help of a conversion rate optimization agency. Until you get in contact with one, here’s what you need to know about it.

Converting What?

Conversion, in the case of an ecommerce store, means getting a regular user that visits your website to complete all steps of the purchase, from browsing the catalog to adding items to their cart and making the payment.

And it’s the conversion rate of your store the critical element you should pay attention to during this process. This number tells you how successful you are in selling your products. For instance, let’s say that in three days you get 5000 visitors to your online store. Of all those users, only 100 bought something from you. To calculate conversion, you take the number of buyers and divide them by the total number of visitors, which in this case reaches 0.02%.

So, of the 5000 visitors, you only convinced 0.02% of them to buy from you. Most people would think that increasing the number of visitors would automatically increase the conversion rate, but that’s not the case. It can increase the number of sales, but if you go one step forward and calculate the conversion rate, there’s a high chance you won’t be seeing any significant differences.

Why You Need Conversion Rate Optimization

If you want to get more people to visit your website, then you’ll most likely have to spend a few bucks on marketing to increase traffic. But without doing anything extra to increase your conversion rate, you ultimately affect your Return on Investment. In other words, you may be just throwing money down the drain.

Any savvy conversion rate optimization agency can tell you that even small increases in conversion rates can translate into thousands of dollars in revenue. Plus, it’s strategically a smart move to target those who already have visited your online store and convince them to buy than it is to bring in more people and hope for the best. It’s already difficult enough to get potential customers to trust you enough to spend money on your product. So, why not nurture the relationships you’ve already started instead of keep looking for more people?

What You Need to Do

Conversion rate optimization enables you to increase the chances of a user completing a purchase. It’s not exactly a magical solution that can guarantee business will boom from now on, but put in place with other processes, it can genuinely get you better results (and more money.)

The first thing you’ll need to do is to analyze your website’s performance. Go to your analytics page and check out some of these basic ecommerce KPIs

• Total conversions;
• Conversion rate;
• Bounce and exit rate;
• Average time on site;
• Average page views.

All this information tells the tale of how users behave on your website, and they might let you know where your problems lie. For instance, if the Exit Page is very high on one specific page, it means something there is making people close the tab and move on. Analyze that page to see what it may be.

Then, once you see how users are behaving, and signal out a few key issues, you can create a game plan for optimization. The process itself can have many different steps, depending on your particular case. It can be anything from:

• Improving website copy;
• Speeding up website load time;
• Changing your store’s purchasing process, etc.

How you do conversion rate optimization can take many different shapes, but the absolute first thing to do is gather data. Without relevant information on user behavior and website performance, you’ll just be going in blind and hoping the new headlines might improve your conversion rate.

You Might Need the Pros

The actual steps of conversion rate optimization may be done in-house. But, since the data component is so critical, you may want to consider bringing in an expert team to take a look at your website.

Here’s what a good conversion rate optimization agency can do:

• Single out the broken parts of your website and how they might affect your sales;
• Do a competitive audit and analysis to see what other stores in your branch are doing, and single out the success stories;
• Make a list of everything that needs to be fixed on your website;
• Prioritize which issues are time-sensitive, and which are not;
• Conduct AB testing and analyze results.

With these services, you can significantly increase your odds of improving website conversion, because the data they can collect is very accurate.

To Sum It up

If your business isn’t doing that great, chances are the problem is reflected in the conversion rate. Increasing traffic won’t necessarily do much to change things, and you’re better off nurturing the visitors you already have, instead of bringing in new ones.

So, you need to optimize the conversion rate, and to do that you’ll have to gather a lot of data about your website. Without it, it’s unlikely anything you’ll do will have visible results on your conversion rate.

Are you looking for a conversion rate optimization agency? 

We can take a look at your website and tell you precisely what makes your visitors leave your site without buying. Get in touch now or fill out the form below, and start increasing your revenues!