Margie Barkley: What is conversion ratio optimization?

Your website’s conversion rate is an important success indicator. Learn how to optimize your conversion rate to reach your website goals.

What is conversion rate optimization?

Analyzing and optimizing your conversion rate is one way to measure your success as an affiliate, publisher, or advertiser. Optimizing your conversion rate will ensure that potential customers go through a smooth journey to purchase.

What is a Conversion?

A conversion occurs when a visitor to your website performs a desired action. You may not be aiming for a single goal, but conversions can include more than just purchasing an item. This could be someone adding an item to their shopping cart, signing up for a mailing list, creating a user account, or clicking on an affiliate link. Conversion rate optimization (or CRO) is the process of increasing conversion rates.

What is a conversion?

Conversion rate can be defined as a quantifiable value. It is usually calculated by comparing the conversions on your website to the overall traffic. However, there are many ways to measure it.

Conversion rates are the number of visitors to your site that converts.

Conversions can also be compared to sessions for one user. If someone visits your site four times, it’s four sessions. If they make a purchase during two of those sessions, then that’s two conversions. This would give you a conversation rate of 50%.

To find the conversion ratio for all sessions, divide all conversions.

It is possible to compare unique conversions with unique users. This is because a user might return to your site after converting. This means that a user may visit your site hundreds upon hundreds of times, but only one conversion will count.

You can choose how you measure conversion rate. Use what makes sense for you and your audience. You can divide total conversions by total visits to determine a percentage in affiliate marketing.

What is a good rate of conversion?

For affiliate marketing, conversion rates between 0.5% and 1% should be considered average.

B2B or finance companies have higher conversion rates than e-commerce businesses. However, conversion rates for e-commerce businesses can be as low as 2% to 6%.

This varies from one industry to the next. Fashion, gift, health and gift brands have higher conversion rates than ecommerce. They average close to 5%. Consumer electronics averages just 1%.

The traffic source can also affect the conversion rate. Display advertising has a low conversion rate (0.7%), while organic site visitors have an average conversion rate of 2.9%. Conversion rates for mobile site visits are lower than those of desktop sites, with tablet conversions somewhere in the middle.

Planning for conversion optimization

Conversion rate optimization is about understanding your audience to determine what needs to be improved in order to get them to take the desired action. This could be the UX of your website, how it works; it could also include how your brand is promoted on your website.

Let’s look at some of the best ways to optimize conversions.

Quantitative data

It is a good idea to have data that can guide you in your decisions, so you are not making guesses about what should be done.

Analytics tools provide valuable information about your content’s performance and your audience’s behavior. You can track the entire journey of a visitor with the right setup. This includes seeing which link brought them to your website, where they went, and what point they left. Advanced tracking allows you to see which device your customers are using to browse and click through, as well as where they completed their sales. This can help you tailor your offer across different platforms. SingleView provides multi-touch attribution across all digital channels, giving you a complete view of your marketing activities and responses.

This information will help you identify trends and strengths as well as weaknesses in your approach. For example, you can see which pages are the most popular and most likely to encourage conversions. You can then prioritize these pages.

Qualitative data

Data analysis can be used to communicate with your audience and gain insight into their decisions and behavior. While data analysis can provide the what, where and when, it cannot tell you the why. When it comes to optimizing conversion rates, qualitative analysis is equally important.

After you have done quantitative analysis, you will know the audience segment that you should target. Then, you can reach out to this segment by sending them a survey asking about their experiences with your brand.

Find out what your customers think about your product and business. There may be certain features you need to focus more on. It is possible to discover that your website copy isn’t as compelling as your competitors’ or that the design and UX are not easy to use.

This feedback will help you to identify areas that need improvement in order to appeal more to your core audience.

A/B tests

A/B testing is a great way of comparing two approaches to see which one performs the best. A/B testing involves changing one variable, but keeping all other variables the same and then monitoring the impact.

You could, for example, test the differences between two pieces of copy, one more casual than another, or two images of your product. Your A test might focus on the ease-of-use and convenience of your product while your B test may be focused on quality and value. This could be as simple a headline announcing a special deal without disclosing the sale price.

After doing some analysis, you will have a clear idea of the areas you should focus on. Running A/B tests can help you refine and define your approach to these areas.

Strategies for optimizing conversion rates

Notifications about abandoned carts

You can send abandoned cart messages via email, mobile notification or on your website to draw people back to your site and complete transactions. This approach isn’t meant to be irritating, but it is a way to give your customer a friendly reminder and remind them why your product is important. You know that they are interested in your product if they have already added it to their cart. Now you just need to close the deal.

Exclusive Offers

Conversions can be achieved by offering special offers, particularly if they are exclusive. This is possible with display advertising. You can make special offers that only those who click on the link will be able to access. The link can take the user to a landing site where they can receive a discount code or a free trial.

Email marketing is another excellent place to give exclusives. This will encourage users to sign up and may even lead them to make a purchase. Lead flows are another way to do this. These pop-ups appear on your site when certain actions are taken.

CTAs

The easiest thing you can do for your website to convert is to include strong calls-to-action (CTAs). CTAs can appear in your blog’s body, on landing pages and as standalone buttons. You can choose to be as simple as “Buy Now” and “Get a Free Quote”, or you can be more enticing with “Start Saving”, “Learn More,” or “Explore Discounts.” CTA buttons are often the last piece of text that someone sees before clicking through to your affiliate link. It must be attractive.

UX and site structure

It is important to ensure that your website’s user experience (UX), is easy and accessible. Customers don’t want a maze of pages to purchase products from your site. Make sure that your website is well-organized and provides a clear path to conversion. You shouldn’t overwhelm every page with text and images that could distract from the end goal. Unorganized websites can be distracting and may also affect the speed of your website. This could negatively impact conversion rates.

Publisher tools

Website publishers have access to tools that will help improve conversion rates. ShareASale’s publisher tools make it easy to ensure your site is successful. These include the Custom link tool which converts regular links into affiliate affiliate links, and ShareASale Product Discovery Bookmarklet browser extensions, which allows publishers to join affiliate programs, create custom links and URLs, as well as other tools that promote easier and more powerful.

Any publisher, merchant, and brand should prioritise conversion rate optimization. The ultimate measure of success is conversion rate. Whatever your conversion goals, optimizing your online experience will increase conversions.

What is conversion rate optimization? .