Calculating your Website Conversion Rate

To start with, conversion rate optimization is the method of acquiring a feedback or responses for a website using a tracking tool or directly from users in order to improve its performance. In much simpler terms, it is the rate in which your website is effective with conversion. Conversion on the other hand is the act of turning (or converting) casual visitors or traffic, into paying customers.

In a recent podcast, Creative Thirst‘s conversion marketing expert Bobby Hewitt talked about how to calculate your website conversion rate. The subject elaborates on the brief definition of conversion rate, calculating conversion rates, and the important steps towards optimizing your conversion rates and getting higher profits. Read on and find out if you are calculating your website’s conversion rate correctly.

Defining Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO

In a brief definition, a conversion rate is the percentage of unique visitors who completed a desired action upon visiting your website. Mathematically conversion rate is expressed as a percentage and is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors that completed your goal by the total number of visitors that started your goal; and then multiplied by a hundred in order to be expressed as percentage. Conversion rate of a website is one of the most significant parts of marketing campaigns with the goal of converting visitors into sales.

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Optimizing Conversions

Optimizing conversion for greater returns should be at the top of everyone’s priority list. However, greater returns can only be achieved through well optimized metrics. There are several ways to increase conversions and retention, but before jumping into that plan, you have to consider the necessary metrics that requires improvement such as;

• Incoming traffic sources
• New and old website visitor
• Visitor’s interactions
• Cost of conversion
• Visitor bounce rate
• Pages resulting exits

These metrics are all crucial in maintaining efficient CRO. These metrics are also all measurable through A/B testing. But these metrics should drive you to make changes to improve your website for your users. According to Michael Lyke Aagaard’s Behind The Content,

Conversion rate optimization really isn’t about optimizing web pages – it’s about optimizing decisions and the page itself is a means to an end but not an end itself

Ways To Improve Conversion Rates

Increasing your conversion rates is a fundamental objective. The better conversion rate, the higher sales volume. Improving conversion involves numbers of elements and strategies particularly the testing process. Moreover, here are few important tips to improve conversion on your website;

1. Understanding the “why” behind the actions of your visitors by measuring each individual funnel and each individual channel independently. This is also the first step towards optimizing your conversion rates and getting higher profits.
2. Include buying something, subscribing to your website to become a member, submitting a sales lead, downloading free article or whitepaper, or even reviewing a key page on your website.
3. Expend enough amount of time on a particular page or some other measurable activity. The devil is in the details, and you do not want to miss the smallest detail.
4. The key factor to remember is to start small. Measure and continue to optimize and improve your returns during these difficult times.

Now you know the methods on how to improve your conversion rates, make sure to implement a testing system in order to measure the outcome of certain changes. Convert A/B testing provides precise reports of successful and unsuccessful occurrences so marketing experts or agencies can make necessary changes and improvements. Tools such as KissMetrics, CrazyEgg and Unbounce are also advisable for gathering users’ data, website interactions and page testing. For more information about conversion rate optimization and A/B testing, you can visit us at Convert.