The Business in Conversion Rate Optimization

The Business in Conversion Rate Optimization

Lemuel Galpo
Written by Lemuel Galpo
April 17, 2015

Conversion rate requires an effective approach to achieve online conversion and for companies to attract online sales. Increasing your conversion rate can be difficult; but if you have an understanding on how to widen your conversion funnel, then you’re on the right track into increasing your conversion rate. This ensures your marketing budget is not spent on wasted traffic that is not converting.

In a recent podcast hosted by Creative Thirst, Bobby Hewitt shared his insights on how to effectively increase your conversion rate, and how widening your conversion funnel and measuring the potential of your return on investment (ROI) can positively affect your conversion optimization efforts. And this is what we, over at A/B testing software” href=”https://www.convert.com/” target=”_blank”>Convert, think your CRO strategy should be.

Business Case CRO

Widen Your Conversion Funnel

To widen your conversion funnel means to increase your conversion rate. As defined, a conversion funnel is a technical term used in e-commerce operations to describe the track a consumer takes through an internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale. The metaphor of a funnel is used to describe the decrease in numbers that occurs at each step of the process.

[Tweet “To understand your customers and inform where you should #optimize, set up a GOAL #funnel .”]

Why is conversion funnel very important? There are several reasons concerning this question and the primary reason is to basically improve visitors and convert them into sales, particularly if you are managing a website. It is the path to your success, and driving people into your funnel could lead to successful business. So it is really crucial to understand and widen your conversion funnel and make sure to consider the following;

  • Spend enough time and effort to understand your funnel.
  • Be clear with your plans and expectations.
  • Set your targets.
  • Take advantage of the tools that could help you track your customer’s engagement.

Measure Your ROI’s Potential

What is ROI? Return on investment (ROI) is simply the investment gains being evaluated to the investment cost. Of course, as an investor or business owner, you want to be successful in your operations and you always want to keep yourself informed whether your company is getting the expected results. Let us take this as an example;

If you have a 2% conversion rate, and you have 5,000 visitors coming to your site, that equates to a hundred conversions. This means that a hundred people are actually buying—2% of that 5,000. So your average revenue per conversion will be $100, and your total sales will be $10,000. If 2% of the people came to your site converted, then what about other 98% people that did not convert?

If you widen the bottom of your funnel, your conversion rate increases. Let’s say that conversion rate was 2.5%, still with the same amount of traffic, 5,000 visitors that equates to 125 conversions, 125 people actually buying. Their average revenue per conversion is 100 dollars, which means that the total sales are $12,500. This would be a 150% ROI. Optimizing with conversions provide with a bigger part of that 98% without adding any more money to driving traffic. This example didn’t change the amount of traffic that came to your site. It just widened the bottom of the funnel and made your site perform better and actually produced more results for you.

Expand The Bottom of Your Funnel

According to an article by Chris Goward,

The bottom of the funnel is ultimately where conversions happen: the shopping cart, lead gen forms, whitepaper download forms, webinar signup forms, payment processors, and the like. Once your prospect has made a decision to proceed with your desired action, the only thing standing between them and the goal is the transactional point. It usually involves the least fun part of a website: a form. Optimizing these parts of the funnel usually involve form interaction usability and reducing anxiety.

Optimizing and increasing your conversion rate by widening the bottom of your funnel will have a huge impact on your traffic, monthly rates, and ROI. Our advice – start out small, collect feedback, and run a scale test to determine the value of your CRO and therefore implement the necessary actions. Visit us at Convert to start A/B testing your website.

Originally published April 17, 2015 - Updated April 15, 2019
Lemuel Galpo
As Customer Content Manager, Lem is responsible for bringing learnings in conversion optimization and testing to the world. He is part of Convert.com's growth team and coordinates all writers, editors and illustrators.
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