For online marketing the conversion rate is an extremely important parameter. The conversion rate can help marketers and online shops to evaluate how successful a recent campaign has been. Usually, it’s all about motivating the customer to a certain action which could be the purchase of promoted products or to register for an event. If the customer carries out the wanted action, it’s a conversion. In general, conversions are measured by invisible tracking pixels on the confirmation page. The conversion rate describes the relation between visitors and conversions. What exactly is understood as a conversion has to be determined in advance, depending on the action the customer is wanted to carry out. If 10.000 users click on a link in an email and 100 fill out the registration form in the landing page, the conversion rate amounts 1 %.
Even small changes of the conversion rate can have a significant impact on business results, especially for online shops. An improvement of the conversion rate from 1 % to 2 % can potentially lead to a doubling of revenues.
Consequently, working on the conversion rate can be extremely effective and useful. Therefore, we show you 5 ways how to improve your conversion rate.

1. Optimize the Customer Journey by Getting to Know Your Customers Better.

The customer journey describes the sum of all touchpoints on which a customers has contact with a product, a brand, or a company before converting. The kind of the touchpoints can be different. Apart from direct contact to company owned channels, rating platforms or communities can represent touchpoints as well. To optimize the customer journey it’s important to know in which context touchpoints stand to each other and how frequently they are being touched. Therefore, it has to be analyzed which touchpoints are touched by the customer in every certain phase of his purchase decision and how they move from touchpoint to touchpoint. By knowing that, you can work on optimizing the ways leading the customer to the purchase act and provide the right information to the customer at every touchpoint. However, it’s not easy to know what’s the right information in the right moment. To find out you need to know your customers. How do they behave, are there certain patterns in their behavior, what’s their values, their demands, or their notion of good service? To get a deeper insight it is necessary to talk to your customers and, apart from collecting data on the website, doing some qualitative research. Do interviews, via email, by telephone or in best case face-to-face. Additionally, you can work with web and exit surveys. Find out about commonalities in the customer’s expectations, their aims, reservations, and their requirements on the product. The results can help you to optimize your supply and match your customer’s requirements and eventually improve your conversion rate.

2. Use A/B Testing to Find Out What Really Helps

A/B testing (also called split run test or bucket test) is a method to measure an advertising means’ efficiency which should definitely be done before changing the landing page. For this purpose, two (or more) test groups are being made out of the target group. One of these groups is directed to the original landing page; the other group opens the varying version. Afterwards, the results of both groups are being compared, i.e. in regard to the conversion rate. The version with better results should be used for the final landing page.
A/B testing helps you to base your decisions on an empirical foundation. Nevertheless, at the beginning of every test you should know what elements of your website should be tested and come up with a hypothesis in which you write down your objectives, several KPI, and your website’s intention as such. Having determined your objectives, you can start programming sample pages and test them.

3. Personalize your Website

Another step to increase the conversion rate can be to personalize your landing pages to offer your visitors an unique experience which is focused on their needs and wishes. Instead of displaying standardized content, every user can get his own individual content. Customers who feel personally spoken to are usually more likely to visit a website and (in the best case) become a customer. Like for the A/B testing, it is crucial to know what elements of your landing page you want to personalize and who your target group is. From the call to action button to the whole landing page, theoretically anything can be personalized. Therefore, there are many attributes which build the basis for personalization. Among others, this is:

  • geolocation
  • used devide
  • used browser
  • source of the traffic
  • session data
  • transaction data

These information can help you to understand what kind of person your customers are. Optionally, you can ask registered users for further (personalized) data. By comparing the user data of different users you can find out about similarities and create segments via algorithms. The belonging to a certain group eventually determines what individual content a visitor to your website will be able to see. Nevertheless, after personalizing the content A/B testing should be undertaken here as well.

4. Keep Your Website’s Usability and Layout Up-To-Date

It is always recommendable to keep your websites and landing pages as simple as possible in order to guarantee a high usability. Nobody likes annoying clicking until he has finally found the content he was looking for. It only motivates visitors to check out your competitors offers. Potentials to optimize your website can be detected through so called usability tests. Furthermore – and even if that might sound trivial – you should try to keep your website’s look up-to-date and appealing. An outdated layout quickly creates impression of untrustworthiness and inability which can have negative effects on your business. Additionally studies have shown that just the color scheme alone can have an impact on user’s behavior. Photos can have a positive effect, too, even though you should keep the currency in mind as well.

5. Pay Attention to the Checkout

For online shop operators it is extremely important to optimize the checkout process. If you lose a customers that is close to the purchase, it is particularly annoying. To prevent that, you should always keep two things in mind. Firstly, you should keep the ordering process as simple as possible. Too many clicks and the request of too many personal data can frustrate your customer and make him doubt the purchase. Just ask what you really need to know. Furthermore, it can be helpful to integrate test seals or customer reviews and make as a proof of your trustworthiness and to strengthen you customer’s confidence in your shop.

We can conclude that the conversion rates are of enormous meaning and even small changes can have great influence on your business results. At the same time, there are luckily many ways to improve the conversion rate. As all websites are different, different offers and target groups require varying measurements, and every action will always lead to different results. However, even if not every action will lead to immediate success, the 5 explained actions can be an effective way to prepare your business for the future and to positively influence it in the long run.