Studies show almost 70% of the qualified leads that hit your website will buy from you or one of your competitors within 12 months. Most companies convert web traffic to leads at a rate of 0.5% to 4%. This inherently creates:
- Lost Leads
- Lost opportunities
- Lost customers
You should always try to increase your conversion rate. It is a never-ending game. Conversion rates vary depending on what business you are in, or to be more precise, what products or services you sell. Let us give you some examples in different industries (global averages, source: Fireclick Index):
- Electronics (0.7%)
- Outdoors and Sports (2.5%)
- Fashion and Apparel (1.4%)
- Software (2.7%)
As you can tell, the numbers are quite different depending on your industry. But the important thing here to remember is how do you compare to your own industry’s average. You want to relate to a benchmark and thereafter see where you stand in comparison to your competitors. If your own conversion rate is lower than the average, you need to find out what to do about it. Inbound Sales Network can help you in your efforts to increase your conversion rate. We focus on 5 factors:
- Product Benefits
Put yourself in the customer’s situation and focus on the benefits of the products. If you sell weight loss products, the customer is interested in losing weight, not necessarily that the product contains an agent that increases metabolism. Clearly display product benefits and back up the facts with fine print if space is available.
- Placement
If you want to increase your conversion rate, you need to consider something called “above the fold”. Statistics says that nearly 80% of internet surfers on average never scroll when they visit a new website. Therefore, it is extremely important that you place your critical information above the fold. Here, you should place your product benefits, trust signs (safe payment posters), guarantees, return policies, product overview, navigation bar etc.
- Testimonials
Testimonials are crucial to your success online. If you want to increase your conversion rate, you have to use testimonials in some way. The most effective testimonials are videos. Videos with satisfied customers are highly effective. Many visitors will watch them (if you place them above the fold) and this will make your potential customers (come to) trust you. Remember, they have no idea who you are, so why should they buy from you? Well, if you can persuade some customers to record video testimonials, they could seriously increase your conversion rate. If you can´t use videos for some reason, use images and text quotations. Use as many as you can - you can never have too many.
- Use Online Surveys
Your customers are your most valuable asset. You must take advantage of this opportunity. So, how do you do this? Well, all you need to do is to ask them questions. This can easily be done using online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey or KISSinsights. You should combine both closed- and open- ended questions; examples include:
- Why did you buy from us?
- What are you most/least satisfied with?
- How do you feel about our customer support and availability?
- How did you hear about our website?
- What could be better with our website, are you missing something?
- Use tools such as Google Website Optimization and Google Analytics
Finally, in order to constantly increase your conversion rate, you need to start testing and analyzing. Google Website Optimization is a free tool, which you can connect to your website. As soon as you have connected to Google Website Optimization, you can start testing different contents on your website. This tool will make it possible to alternate different contents for different visitors. By using this technique, you will be able to conclude which alternative is the most conversion rate friendly. Thereafter, you will benchmark against the alternative with the highest conversion rate and always try to outperform the benchmark and so forth.
Google Analytics is another free tool, which is as effective as Google Website Optimization. Once you are hooked up with Google Analytics, you can start analyzing important factors such as visitor loyalty, traffic sources, paid advertising, organic search engine results and of course, conversion rates for various products or services.
Want some more Conversion Rate Help?
The above factors are major contributors to your future success if you want to increase your conversion rate. Inbound Sales Network has several years of experience of conversion rate strategies and we would love to help you become successful.