Conversion Rate Basics

Every website has a ‘Conversion Rate’. This is the rate at which it converts visitors to the site into either enquiries, sales or other points of contact.

The first task for any website owner is to be able to measure their conversion rate. There are several ways to achieve this, which combined will give you accurate figures with which you can make decisions.

The first task is to install Google Analytic’s on your site. This will give you details of every visit to every page and allow you to see the ways that your visitors interact with your website.

If your website uses a contact page, you will be able to see how many of your visitors reach the contact page, and you should ideally have a ‘Thank you’ page that can only be reached once a visitor has completed and sent you an enquiry via your contact form. This page will give you an accurate measure of the exact numbers that have actually contacted you via email.

It is a little harder to measure telephone contacts, but there are several low cost ways to achieve this. The first of these is to ask people when they call you. This isn’t fool proof, as most people will just say that they found you on the internet, so the second method is to use a dedicated 0800 number that only appears on your website contact page.

Each month your 0800 provider will give you details of the calls you have received, so you will have accurate data. Additional 0800 numbers should be used on each different advertising medium, as this will allow you to measure your ROI (Return on Investment) for every different area of your business marketing.

If your website is making direct sales, you will be able to see your total sales each month, as well as any potential issues with your website, if for example, 100 people fill a shopping cart, and you only get 5 completed sales. This would be indicative of a sales process that wasn’t working efficiently.

Once you have your data tracking in place, it is time to start analysing that data, and making some improvements.

In part 2 we will discuss some basic essentials that will improve your conversion rate and boost your profits.