Did you know that 53% of mobile website visitors abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load? Half of the total web traffic comes from mobile, but the conversion rates on these devices are lower than the conversions that occur on computers (Google).
If we sell very little, we may think that what we need is to get more users to visit our website. However, many times the number of visits may be very high, while the conversion rate is very low. These cases are a clear example of what needs to be improved is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
What is conversion rate?
Before delving into what CRO is, we must understand what conversion rate is.
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who have completed a specific action, such as filling out a contact form, subscribing to the newsletter or buying a product. It is calculated according to the following formula:
For example: If your website receives a total of 500 visitors per month and you have sold 30 products, the conversion rate is as follows:
(30 : 500) x 100 = 6 %:
Depending on the size of our business, we may think that selling 30 products in a month (one a day) is a lot. However, when we calculate the conversion rate and get only 6%, we observe that, taking into account the number of visitors, we should convert much more. Therefore, we need to analyze our website to detect what is happening and why users are not buying our products. This is where CRO comes into play.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion Rate Optimization consists of carrying out a series of techniques so that the website is optimized to make it easier for users to perform specific actions, such as buying a product, calling the number on the website, filling out a contact form, etc.
As we have seen, we must analyze why we are not contacted or why we are not purchased. Maybe the loading time is too long (you can calculate it here), the website is not intuitive and it is difficult to navigate, the payment gateway does not work well, the product sheets do not have enough information, or maybe they have contacted us by web form and we have taken too long to answer (or we have not even done it).
How to improve our CRO?
Once we are clear about the problem, we must solve it: improve the design and usability of the website, fix the payment gateway, modify and increase the product data, add Call To Action (CTA) buttons in key places, expand the customer service team… These are some of the actions we can take to improve our website, but everything depends on the type of business we have or the target audience we want to approach, since the messages on our website must be personalized to attract the attention of a specific profile.
In addition, whatever the target audience, we must optimize the performance of the website so that it loads faster. As we have seen, loading time significantly affects sales: A single second of delay in loading a mobile website can mean a decrease in conversions of up to 20% (Google).
It is possible that, by performing these actions, the number of visits to our website will decrease. This is because, having adjusted our website to focus on a specific audience, users who were not really interested in purchasing one of our products will stop visiting it. On the other hand, more users of great value for the company, qualified users, will access it, since they will be more similar to our buyer persona (ideal customer profile). In this way, visits decrease, but conversions increase, which translates into an increase in the conversion rate.
There are many ways to improve the CRO of your website, calculate your conversion rate and get started!
