What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

If you’re a pay-per-click specialist, then your main objective is to ensure you drive as much traffic to a website as possible. And if a percentage of the traffic converts, and if the campaign seems profitable, your job would be to optimise the campaign for bigger budgets. This will allow you to drive more traffic hoping it translates into more sales.

And this makes sense, right?

Let’s think about it for a second. If you are spending R20 000 a month on Google or Facebook Ads, and you are driving 10 000 people a month to your website, then you are essentially paying R2 a landing page view. Now, if you made R30 000 back in sales, then your campaign made 1.5x the return. This means that for every R2 spent you made R2.50c back.

This is a very profitable campaign. It would only make sense to put more money into the strategy so you could make more money back. Right?  Well, what if we told you that there is a way that you could spend the same amount of money but make more money back than before?

You’re probably thinking that this doesn’t make sense. If the budget doesn’t change, what needs to change for us to make more money back? And the answer to this burning question is, we need to improve the ratio between people who land on the website and the amount of people who buy a product. This ratio is called your conversion rate and optimising this ratio is called conversion rate optimisation.

So, how does it work?

How Does Conversion Rate Optimisation Work?

It’s simple, really. If 10 000 people land on your website and only  1 000 of them made a purchase, your conversion rate is 1%.

Now, keep in mind the average conversion rate for e-commerce stores is around 2 – 3%. So, if your store has a 1% conversion rate then you could most definitely improve. Now it all comes down to finding out why 9 000 people are not buying. Is it because of price? Maybe it’s because they couldn’t find what they were looking for? Or, maybe the checkout process was way too complicated.

Regardless of the reason, it’s the conversion rate optimisation specialist’s job to try and fix it.

Some of The Best Conversion Rate Optimisation Tactics

1. CONTACT DETAILS

One of the main reasons people don’t always trust a website is because the website’s contact details are either difficult to find or not available at all.  This leaves an uneasy feeling in the customer’s gut and will most definitely have an impact on your sales.

Ensure you display your company’s or support line’s e-mail address and contact number somewhere on the website where it’s easy to find.

2. SHIPPING COSTS

It’s essential that you clearly articulate what your shipping costs entail.

Most website owners are scared to show their shipping costs thinking that it might scare the visitor away. However, little do they know that people hate hidden costs and – by not displaying it somewhere within view – the visitor ends up leaving anyway.

3. EASY CHECKOUT PROCESS

Did you know that, in 2017, US$6 trillion worth of products and services got left behind in online shopping carts?

This just goes to show that people are quick to leave their items behind and this is why it’s of the utmost importance to ensure that your checkout process is seamless and free of any distractions and complicated steps.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

By cleaning up your check out process, you will most definitely see an upswing in conversions. Want to learn more about digital marketing? The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course comprehensively covers all core and fundamental elements of digital marketing and strategy.