Conversion Rate Optimization: Best Practices To Improve Your Conversion Rate

Website owners and SEO experts put strenuous efforts to drive more organic traffic to their websites, hoping that a good website design and attractive landing pages will help them make it through. In reality, it’s only half the battle. Multiple other factors influence the overall conversion rate of the website.

On average a website has a 2.35% conversion rate, however, it varies based on the industry. If you are worried that your website’s performance is not up to par, it’s time to take some actionable steps to boost the conversation rate.

Ready? Let’s proceed to discuss some basic concepts and then some of the most viable strategies for conversion rate optimization. 

What Is the Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of total visitors coming to your website and performing the desired action before leaving the site. This specific action could be:

• Signing up for a newsletter
• Creating an account
• Purchasing a product
• Completing a survey
• Booking a consultation
• Buying a course

A website’s high conversion rate indicates user-friendly design, appealing formatting, and resonance with the target audience. On the other hand, a low conversion rate may arise from issues related to website performance or bad UI/UX experience. 

Factors such as slow loading speeds, broken forms, or ineffective copy that fails to communicate the offer’s value are some of the common culprits for poor conversion rates.  

What Is the Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO is a process of implementing such strategies that can potentially increase the website’s conversion rate. Simply put, CRO involves increasing the percentage of visitors performing a specific action referred to as leads or conversions. 

Conversion rate is an integral part of a business’s success and its optimization is paramount. It includes optimizing landing pages, service pages, product pages, and more. 

A good conversion rate can be achieved by implementing certain optimization strategies such as split testing, content optimization, workflow improvements, and more. By effective conversion rate optimization, businesses can attract highly qualified leads, boost revenue, and reduce acquisition costs.

What Conversion Rate Should Be Considered Ideal?

In the first quarter of 2023, B2C e-commerce businesses across various sectors achieved an average conversion rate of 2%. Meanwhile, B2B companies’ conversion rates vary, with SaaS companies slightly higher than 1% and legal services reaching over 7%.

Typically, the e-commerce conversion rates range from 2.5-3%. Even with all the right strategies in place, you can anticipate securing a sale only about 2-3% of the time.

A conversion rate of 3% or higher should be the fundamental target for your website or online store. Once you attain this, you can progress to more sophisticated conversion rate strategies.

Best Strategies for Conversion Rate Optimization

Here are some of the proven ways to boost conversions on your website. 

Improve Page Load Speed

Page load speed is one of the significant factors in retaining visitors to the website. Your website’s load speed impacts the user experience and it further influences the conversion rate. To provide a good user experience to the visitors, an ideal load time should be around 2.5 seconds or less. If it is higher, you need to improve it for a better user experience.

Some of the commonly used methods for improving page load speed include:

• Condensing image files to decrease their sizes.
• Activating caching to enable browsers to store static resources locally.
• Minimizing the quantity of elements on the page, including images.
• Introducing lazy loading — loads images only as they appear in the user’s viewport 

Use Diversified CTAs

CTAs are vital, pushing your visitors to take action and generate leads. By using calls-to-action (CTAs) in various formats and positions throughout your web pages you can elevate the likelihood of visitors converting. 

For instance, it’s common to include a CTA at the end of blog posts. However, this approach might overlook potential conversions from users who only skim the page.

Likewise, CTA banners may not always be effective as users might scroll past them, mistaking them for ads. Yet, by incorporating a mix of CTA buttons, in-text CTAs, and banners, you provide multiple opportunities for users to convert.

Use Interactive Headings and Sub-headings

Adding interactive content to your web pages is another effective conversion rate optimization strategy. Crafting compelling headlines involves emphasizing crucial details and calls to action while structuring content for easy scanning. 

Use these tactics to strengthen your headings and sub-headings:

• Incorporate action-oriented verbs like “drive,” “improve,” or “increase,” along with pertinent keywords that highlight the benefits of your offering.
• Consider posing questions to spark curiosity among your potential customers.
• Additionally, different headlines and subheadings provide excellent opportunities for A/B testing

Align Your Content Tailored To Target Audience

To boost conversions, ensure your web pages cater to your audience’s expectations. Suppose they happen to click your ad where you offered your audience a free course. Once they click on it, they anticipate a landing page with the content promised to them in the advertisement. Any deviation from this may confuse visitors and they may leave.

For webpages targeting organic traffic through keyword optimization, prioritize understanding search intent. Search intent indicates the underlying purpose of a user’s search query, representing their desired outcome.

Why is search intent important?

Because search engines like Google prioritize delivering relevant results to users. Therefore, crafting content with search intent in mind can lead to improved ranking, increased traffic, and ultimately, more conversions.

Also read: 8 Successful Steps To Rank a Site on Google

Reduce Unnecessary Distractions

Do you know that other links and elements except CTA can prove to be a distraction for your users? To maximize the purpose of your CTA and increase the conversion rate, it is important to reduce unnecessary distractions. 

Consider a landing page aimed at encouraging newsletter sign-ups. Your objective is to prompt users to subscribe. However, if there are additional links such as sidebar navigation, it can divert users’ attention away from this primary action.

By eliminating unnecessary navigation elements, you reduce distractions and maintain focus on the desired user action of subscribing to the newsletter.

Conduct Split or A/B Testing

Conducting split or A/B testing is another very suitable approach to evaluate the potential of your web pages. You can test which element encourages or discourages the conversion.

A/B testing allows you to compare two distinct versions of a web page, evaluating which performs better. Maybe you want to see which copy is more interactive, the placement of the form, or any other elements on the page. There are multiple tools to conduct split testing for web pages such as AB Tasty, Visual Website Optimizer, and Kameleoon. 

Initiate Your Website’s Conversion Rate Optimization Journey

Each website visit has the potential to generate a lead for your business. All you need is an effective conversion rate optimization strategy implemented in the right place. While numerous best practices exist for CRO, the key is to identify what resonates with your customers and what effectively drives results for your business.

If you are looking for proven strategies to increase conversions on your website, we suggest you go for VirrgoTech’s professional digital marketing services. Our professional team of designers, developers, and strategists is here to help you stand out in your niche. 

[Also Read: Best Product Page Optimization Tips for Enhanced Conversions]