What Is Conversion Rate? 10 Ways to Increase Website Conversions

In online business, Conversion Rate is an important metric in your paid search strategy, showing how effectively your ad campaign turns traffic into leads. In today's article, MONA Media will explain what conversion rate is, why it matters and how to increase your website's conversion rate you project.

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the number of conversions as a percentage of the total number of users reached by a given campaign. Conversion rate shows how effective your website is, expressed as a percentage: the share of visitors who take interactive actions such as signing up as members, filling in a survey form, placing an order, paying…out of the total number of people who “visit” your website.

Conversion rate formula:

CR (conversion rate) = (Total goals achieved / Total website visits) x 100%

Example: A household goods website ran a sales push during last October's promotion and recorded 550 visits, 260 of which were purchase sign-ups. From this you can calculate conversion rate website:

CR =260/550*100% = 47%

For e-commerce websites, conversion rate is extremely important. Conversion rate The higher it is, the better your website is performing and the more clearly your company's marketing is on the right track. So what do visits usually convert into? For example:

• Call conversion rate: how many calls come in to the company's hotline per 1,000 website visits.
• Purchase conversion rate (completed orders): how many orders are sold per 1,000 website visits.
• Member sign-up conversion: how many new members sign up per 1,000 visits…

Why does conversion rate matter?

From our experience in technology, MONA has found that regularly tracking conversion rate shows you how your website or sales app is performing and what share of users take action. It also gives you an objective measure of your website's success, and helps you spot customer trends, tastes and needs, as well as areas to improve.

In short, improving conversion rate means your company earns more revenue and wins more contracts from the same traffic.

One example of website conversion rate optimization is Booking.com, an online hotel booking platform. The site uses many conversion rate optimization techniques to get customers to book, such as:

• Scarcity and competition: showing the number of rooms left, how many people are viewing the same room, and how many people booked in the last 24 hours, to create a sense of urgency and fear of missing out.
• Social proof and credibility: Showing the number of reviews and scores from previous guests, highlights, and security and safe-payment icons, to increase customer trust and satisfaction.
• Persuasion and value: Showing special offers, free cancellation and no booking fees, to encourage customers to book right away and save money.
• Convenience and ease of use: A simple, clear interface, filters and sorting by many criteria, and features to save choices and compare rooms, to help customers search and decide quickly.

Together, these turn customers' interest into action and lift the business's revenue and sales.

One key to increasing conversion rate is understanding how customers make decisions. They may not always admit it, but a polished, professional design strongly affects emotions and buying behavior. A good-looking, clear, professional website helps customers trust you and decide faster. So how do you use psychology in design to improve conversion rate? Watch the video below:

Ways to increase your website's conversion rate

To help businesses improve their customer conversion rate and grow revenue, MONA has put together the following effective ways to increase conversion rate:

Set clear conversion rate goals

Conversion Rate is a metric that measures how effectively a website persuades visitors to take the desired actions. No website has a 100% conversion rate, where every visitor converts.

So you need to check whether your website's conversion rate is high or low compared with your goal. If it is low, review whether your goal is realistic.

Example: If you want to sell cars on your website, you cannot expect a high conversion rate, because cars are expensive and hard to sell online. On the other hand, if you only want to collect customer details to contact them later, your conversion rate will be much higher.

Create engaging content that attracts customers

This section goes deeper, because it is the “key” to an appealing website. In business, you have to put yourself in the customer's shoes to understand what they want before you can meet their needs.

Your job is to present information to customers in a short, concise way that still covers everything. You also need to make it clear to users what they are reading, why they should care about that information, why they should trust you,…

-> See also: How to write good contentthat lifts conversion rate: a complete guide

Set up A/B testing

A/B Testing is a comparison and measurement method that helps businesses collect customer feedback and choose the best options and strategies for their website. It is considered one of the most practical ways to support business growth.

For example, if you have 2 headlines for the same content but don't know which one attracts users more, you can try A/B testing. The results of this test make it easy to choose the best option. In the same way, you can apply A/B testing to every part of a campaign to optimize it and get the highest conversion rate.

Create urgency

Creating urgency to increase conversion rate on a sales landing page is one of the most powerful methods. It makes customers ask themselves whether to buy, for fear of missing out. There are two kinds of urgency you can create:

• Limited quantity (For example: Only 2 spots left at this price).
• Limited time (For example: Only 1 day left to buy).

However, don't deceive customers with fake urgency. If they find out, they will ignore the store's future promotions and your brand's credibility will drop sharply.

Integrate live chat

Live Chat works like a shortcut: a handy contact button that makes your website look more professional and helps customers trust you. It is a simple bridge between customers and your website.

Customers can reach the business directly and quickly when they need advice or answers, or want to partner with you or buy. Their feedback also makes it easy to fix shortcomings and improve your website and conversion rate better.

Simplify the checkout process

Many sites have excellent articles that convince visitors to buy, but the order form is so cumbersome that conversion rate drops.

In this case, MONA advises against forcing customers to create an account to buy. The order form should only ask for their name, phone number and delivery address . Email confirmation isn't really necessary either; you can confirm the order by calling the customer. Remember to keep things as simple as possible for customers.

Build more customer trust

One effective way to build customer trust in your business is to add links to reputable websites. This lets your customers verify information about your business quickly and easily. Professional website design is also an important factor in making customers trust your business.

Or you can use plugins such as Testimonial, Review to show reviews from earlier buyers, so visitors trust you more as they learn about your products and services.

Show customers your value proposition 

Value proposition is an important concept in business: it is the difference in value you offer customers compared with your competitors. Customers choose your product based on that value. It can come from service, customer care, product quality or price. So finding and sharpening what makes you different is key to increasing conversion rate.

Add effective calls to action (CTAs)

Call to action has always been one of the most effective ways to improve conversion rate. Almost every website uses it today to attract customers and increase revenue.

You are probably familiar with flash sale sections with countdown timers that appear during promotions, customer appreciation events,… on e-commerce marketplaces. That is a form of Call to Action, an effective way of prompting purchases for e-commerce websites, playing on customer psychology.

Other ways to prompt conversion include adding buttons such as Buy now, Order now, text lines, attached images,… to grab attention and push customers' purchase intent.

Page load speed

Improve your website's speed: This is an important factor in building a user-friendly website. If you visit a website and it takes a long time to load, would you have the patience to wait when you have countless other choices? Would you want to come back next time?

This is one of the obstacles that can cost you a large share of potential customers. Once traffic drops significantly, how can engagement stay high? So for a website interface that gives users a great experience , page load speed has to come first.

If you need to improve and optimize your website's load speed and interface to enhance user experience and drive high conversions, please CONTACT US with MONA via Hotline 1900 636 648 to get your business a website design service tailored to your requirements, that helps you completing your website exactly the way you want.

The professional team at MONA Media is always ready to advise you and find the right solution for your website, to raise conversion rate and grow revenue.

You may also want to read:

• A guide to checking website speed simply and accurately.
• 10 methods to speed up a WordPress website effectively.
• Google PageSpeed Insight : what it is and how to improve your score.

Frequently asked questions about conversion rate

1- What is a good conversion rate in marketing?

What counts as a good conversion rate depends on many factors such as the business's industry, goals, strategy and competition. There is no single figure for all websites. However, according to a WordStream study, the average website conversion rate is 2.35%, while the top 10% of websites have conversion rates above 10%. This means that if your conversion rate is above 10%, you are doing better than most other websites.

2- Is a high conversion rate really good?

A high conversion rate is not always good. You need to look at conversion rate in relation to ROI (return on investment). If you push your conversion rate up through discounts, gifts or heavy ad spending, you may lower your ROI.

You also need to make sure the customers who convert are quality customers, meaning they stay loyal and buy repeatedly rather than buying once and leaving. You should also compare your conversion rate with competitors in your industry to know where you stand and what else you can improve.

3- Why does a website have a low conversion rate?

The main causes of a falling conversion rate are:

• Slow page loads, and technical factors that haven't been optimized.
• The website interface is not user-friendly.
• The website's brand lacks credibility.
• The website content rambles and isn't honest enough.

Above is a detailed answer to the question of what Conversion Rate is and effective ways to increase conversion rate for your website. As you can see, conversion rate plays an important role and is the metric that measures the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in particular and your website in general. We hope the information MONA shared above helps you improve this metric and grow your revenue.