I’m going to show you how easy it is to calculate your conversion rate, how to keep monitoring it and how to improve it.
Why do you need to do this? So you can find out where the bottleneck is on your website that’s stopping those sales from coming in so you can do something about it.
It isn’t as technical as you think either (you can breathe a sigh of relief!). So let’s dive into the steps you need to take to calculate and optimise your conversion rate.
How to calculate your conversion rate
Your first step is to work out where you are right now with your conversions. A conversion can be an action that you want someone to take on your website.
For e-commerce businesses, a conversion is when someone completes an order.
For businesses that don’t sell online, your conversion could be:
- Sign up to a mailing list
- Signing up to a webinar
- Contacting you
You can track conversions across any time period you choose, from your whole website, from individual products or from individual marketing campaigns.
Once you’ve got an idea of the conversions you want to track you’ll need to look at your website analytics and work out:
The calculation
- Find out the number of visitors to your website
Go to your website analytics and work out the number of visitors to your website for a set time period (I recommend starting with a month) - Find out how many orders were made on your website
For the same time period as above, go to your website analytics and count the number of individual orders made on your website - Divide the total number of orders by the total number of visitors, and times that number by 100
This will give you your conversion rate as a percentage
For example…
- Number of orders in a month = 100
- Number of visitors to the website = 800
- 100/800= 0.125
- 0.125 x 100 = 12.5%
What is an average conversion rate?
The average conversion rate for websites in general is 2-5% and for e-commerce websites it’s 1-4%
Source: Wordstream
Knowing this percentage is a great start, but what’s next? Let’s talk about how you can actually improve that number.
Three approaches to improve your conversion rate
Attracting the right audience
If you have a lot of website visitors, but your current conversion rate is low, it might be that you aren’t attracting the right audience.
Quality traffic is more likely to convert, so understanding where your most engaged visitors are coming from is essential.
This is a whole topic in itself, and is about refining your visual identity, tone of voice, brand values and marketing tactics.
But here’s a few quick tips to help you:
Refine your marketing messages
Ensure that your marketing speaks directly to the needs and desires of your ideal customer. Are your ads, social posts, and blog content addressing their pain points? By refining your messaging to appeal specifically to your target audience, you’ll naturally draw in visitors who are more likely to convert.
Use keyword research to reveal customer intetions
Keyword research isn’t just about finding popular search terms—it’s a powerful way to understand what your potential customers are thinking, what problems they’re trying to solve, and the questions they’re asking.
By analysing the keywords and phrases people are searching on google, you can tailor your content to answer their specific queries and align with their intentions.
Find out where your customers hang out online
Is your website listed in online directories such as Yell and Google Business?
Could you collaborate with other businesses and swap blogs to reach each other’s audiences, or guest on podcasts?
There are lots of things you can do to increase your visibility overall by keeping in mind your goal of improving the number of visitors to your website.
Purchase our brand audit checklist
Improving your customer journey
If when checking your analytics it appears that customers are adding to basket but not quite making it through to the checkout, do some digging to find out why.
What page are they moving to next?
Why are they clicking away?
Is it easy for people to find your products?
When you first start your product business you might only have a handful of products that very neatly fit on one page. But over time as you build up your product catalogue you end up with pages of products.
Are your products in categories on their own category pages?
Make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Ensure you have filters so they can look for the colours or types within those categories. The easier you make the customer journey the more likely your visitors is going to find what they’re looking for and make the purchase.
Are there any nasty surprises at checkout?
We don’t want the first time someone finds out about delivery fees and shipping times to be at checkout.
Hiding important information like delivery times and fees on product pages means that people can often become annoyed if suddenly confronted with extra fees at checkout.
Think about any potential hesitations your customers might have before buying. Display information about your return policy, shipping times, or customer reviews BEFORE checkout to reassure them. This helps reduce any anxiety they might have before clicking “purchase.”
Abandoned cart emails
Do you have an email automation set up for customers who have forgotten about their purchase? Often called ‘abandoned checkout automation’.
When done right, this automation alone may very well increase your sales.
Download our customer experience audit checklist
Increase your average order value
If your customers are coming through the doors but you’d like to make more sales then the easiest way to do this is to increase the average order value. Some very simple things you could do are:
Create product bundles
One way to improve sales is to bundle products together so you can increase your average order value. Create bundles in your online shop or offer related products at the checkout with a small discount. Think about how your products might naturally fit together so that it makes sense.
Add upsells at checkout
Set up some ‘add to basket’ items at the checkout that are related to the products already in your customer’s basket. The more relatable it is, the more likely they are to buy.
Add incentives for a minimum spend
Why not encourage people to spend a minimum amount in your store in return for a discount or free shipping?
Conversion rate data is your friend
So, in summary, analytics and conversion rates are your best friend here. Monitor and measure them. Tweak one thing at a time so you can attribute the results to the actions you’re taking. And treat it like a science experiment – there is great satisfaction of knowing that a few tweaks you’ve made have led to more sales! Give it a go and let me know how you get on.
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