Conversions metric chart: Metric Conversion charts and calculators

Sometimes you get lucky, but if you want to be among those 10% landing pages in your account, you need to repeat the above steps several times and test the options again and again.

On average, you should test four unique landing pages ー with different offers, redirect people, and messages to find one unrealistically cool landing page. If you want to find a landing page in the top 10% where your conversions are 3-5x above average, you need to test at least ten landing pages.

We analyzed an e-commerce account with 1,000 unique landing pages. About a third of the traffic goes to the most visited landing page in their account. When we dig deeper, we see that around 80% of the traffic goes only to the top 10% of landing pages.

On the picture:

Horizontal: Share of all landing pages

Vertical: Share of all search traffic

You don’t need to create thousands of landing pages. Find the best performing pages you already have and focus your efforts on them.

How can you improve their performance? Cut off the fat, stop wasting time on weak pages ー just get rid of them. If you only have one great landing page, it makes more sense to focus your efforts on it.

Here’s more proof that staying up late creating dozens or hundreds of landing page variations is not the best use of your time:

On the picture:

Horizontal: unique landing pages

Vertical: search engine conversion rate

. We do not see a strong correlation between increasing the number of landing pages and increasing conversions.

If you’re aiming for the best performance, quantity doesn’t necessarily equal quality.

5. To hell with the conversion!

Wait, what??

Picture: Why not just send the conversion to hell

Stay with me. High conversion rates seem unrealistic. However, if you convert less qualified people into customers, you are actually throwing away MORE money because those customers are costing you money.

I want you to focus on landing page optimization as the top 10% that steer you towards higher quality, better quality lead generation, not just more conversions.

Key takeaways

So what did you take away from this article?

I hope you take advantage of the tips that will help you develop a more holistic and effective conversion rate optimization strategy ー one that will increase conversions as well as better lead generation.

1. Most landing page optimization is like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. Small changes ー small benefits.
2. Highly focused and strategically built landing page optimization brings 3-5 times more conversions and improves the quality of the sample of potential customers.
3. In some areas, even a 5% conversion is not that impressive. If you’re stuck in the 2-5% conversion rate range, you have plenty of room to grow.
4. Get creative with your sentences and test a few different sentences to find the one that resonates best with your audience. If you want to really rock out, look for a variety of offers to help you cull the best leads in your search process.
5. Identify what’s blocking leads from converting to customers and remove those blocks by redirecting the flow of people. Test different options to determine exactly which conversion path works best for your audience.
6. Use remarketing to bring back people who wanted to buy but didn’t buy anything.
7. Test smarter, not more often. You need to test 10 unique landing page variations to find the 1 most effective one. The essence of the test should not be limited to changing the color of the font and presenting it as a landing page option.
8. Trim your account fat and discard the lowest performing pages. Focus on 10% of landing pages, that get 80% of traffic.
9. Always be on the lookout for a page that makes more sales or brings in leads that are more likely to turn into customers. Don’t let high conversion rates take precedence over the quality of your future audience or you’ll end up spending more money on dropouts. You need to find an option where everything works like a well-oiled machine.

Now, colleague, go ahead with confidence to eliminate competitors and surprise your future customers with new knowledge to increase conversion!

Original publication:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate

Translated by Pushkina especially for Convert Monster

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from Basics to Advanced Techniques — Marketing on vc.ru

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) guide from Backlinko blog author Brian Dean. Translated and adapted by the Pixel Tools team.

21,279
views

Let’s take a closer look and learn:

• Perform A/B testing.

• Optimize landing pages.

• Turn new visitors into customers.

• Use dozens of different CRO techniques.

More leads, sales and registrations. Tune in — you’ll love it.

Contents

1. Fundamentals and concepts of CRO.
2. How to start CRO?
3. How do I conduct A/B testing?
4. Design and conversion.
5. Effective landing.
6. CRO for an online store.
7. Irresistible CTAs.
8. Advanced tips and practices.

Fundamentals and concepts of CRO

In this chapter, we will literally understand what conversion rate optimization is and why it is so important.

CRO (conversion rate optimization) — conversion rate optimization, that is, work on a site or a separate page in order to attract users to perform the desired actions (a wide variety, from purchase to subscription).

Conversion in this context is targeted user actions.

Online shop? Sale.

Blog? Subscription.

SaaS product? Trial period and others.

What is conversion rate

CR (conversion rate) — the percentage of successfully completed target actions from the total number of visits to the page. Considered as a simple ratio.

For example, your website offers personalized diet programs. Every month, 100 people visit the landing page. Ten of them sign up for a trial period — CR is 10%.

Why CR optimization is so important

You may have heard this opinion from colleagues: «It’s easier to double conversions than traffic.» This is 1000% true. Sometimes even a few simple changes on the landing page can significantly increase CR.

ROI (return on investment) for CR optimization soar above the charts. To reinforce their value, Brian cites a survey of 722 optimization professionals as an example. 68.5% of them achieve CR optimization priority in the task list.

Of the company employees surveyed, only 22% said they were satisfied with the level of CR at the time of the survey. Therefore, investments are needed. According to Venture Beat, the average return on investment (ROI) for conversion rate optimization is 223%.

CRO should not be the number one target

In general, CRO for the sake of CRO does not make sense. The index itself just goes up. For example, your website sells iPhones for $699. The conversion rate is 5%. Reset the price to $1 and the CR will skyrocket to 100%.

It will be great on the chart, but the ultimate goal is profit that the site is able to generate. Why does Brian give such primitive examples? He probably knows how optimizers love beautiful indicators and graphs. It is important to remember that the client (and ourselves) will only be ultimately happy if the bottom line increases.

Getting Started CRO

This chapter is primarily about correct data collection. The problem is that most people skip this step and test random things (like the color of the CTA button). Sometimes it even gives a result, but for multiplying the conversion by 2–10 times, the key is in the preliminary analysis. Let’s take care of them.

Internal goals and criteria

The first step in forming a CRO strategy is to set the right goals and determine our current state.

For example, we have a commercial site. Possible goals are to increase the overall conversion rate by 10% or to develop a separate product page.

In any case, setting high-level goals is essential before diving into the depths of analytics and A/B testing. After we determine the current CR.

Digging into Google Analytics (GA)

GA helps to understand where the strengths and weaknesses of the project are. For example, the abandoned cart is a problem for a huge number of online stores. Analytics is able to show exactly where users tend to stop the process of buying a product.

Another example is a blog. Using GA, you can find which publications perform worse than others. In order to calculate metrics in Google Analytics, goals must be set up (for more information on setting up, see the official Google guide).

It is also possible and necessary to compare indicators for different types of devices. Still a common problem — everything is in order on the desktop, the layout “floated” on the mobile, the CTA is displayed crookedly, it is inconvenient to read and other trifles that knock down the goal.

Useful: Use Google’s PF scoring tool to check behavioral factors for targeted queries. He knows how to count sessions for desktop and mobile, check the snippet and tell you what needs to be improved.

Behavioral Assessment Tool

Quantity data

Scores help you understand how different users interact with a site and suggest an overall problem or benefit. For example, the number of visits per page, the proportion of long user sessions or heat maps.

For example, on one of Brian’s blog pages there are two «useful» banners that users completely ignore (on the right in the screenshot). This is noticeable on the heat map.

To fix this, Brian needs to test other layouts and images, or remove the sidebar links altogether.

It’s also useful to use polls right on the page. In an unobtrusive form, they will help to understand the purpose of users and further optimize the page for specific intentions. Such surveys are successfully used by HubSpot.

Collecting qualitative data

Unlike quantitative indicators, such indicators help answer the questions why the page converts poorly, what prevents users from taking the desired action, and find out a lot of problem areas. Collecting this data is more difficult, but there are several ways:

• Personal surveys, forms, and Skype interviews for SaaS projects.
• Marketing in-depth research (in-depth).
• Evaluation of site usability with the help of assessors.
• Analysis of data from the site’s technical support and online chats on the page.
• User testing.

The main thing here is the right questions. For example, you run an SEO agency and you can ask your clients the following questions:

• Why do you want to hire SEO specialists? Perhaps it would be more efficient to use contextual advertising, SMM, or a full set of services is needed.
• Have you contacted other agencies (which ones?) that made you continue your search?
• In what price range are you willing to work?
• What will be the main criterion for choosing an agency?
• How will you evaluate the work?

Answers to similar, even general questions can inspire options for A/B testing and landing page optimization. Client pain is not always obvious to business owners, and the nuances that may seem obvious to us sometimes require clarification right on the landing page.

How to A/B test

The only problem with split tests is that if a page receives little traffic, then testing is almost pointless due to low statistical significance.

Most optimizers consider 90-95% statistically significant to be sufficient, so the larger the sample, the better. Otherwise, the results may not be statistics, but chance.

You can use the Optimizely calculator to calculate the traffic you need for your desired conversion rate increase.

Specify the current CR, the minimum desired deviation (growth) and the level of statistical significance (95% by default).

The calculator will calculate the required number of users for successful testing.

What to test first

This is not an easy question, there are many significant elements on our sites that affect the completion of targeted actions. However, here are three ways to start the tests.

1. Start with high traffic pages. It’s simple here, if you manage to improve the conversion rate even by a small percentage, then the total number of targeted actions will give a significant increase.

For example, last year Brian ran a split test on the front page of his Backlinko blog. She gets more traffic than any other on his site. Testing details will be below.

2. The worst pages of the site. It makes sense to go the other way and start tests from poorly converting pages — they have nowhere to grow but up 🙂

3. Qualitative and quantitative data. The smartest thing to do would be to rely on metrics collected through Google Analytics, a behavioral scoring tool, and heat maps.

For example, data suggests that people don’t click on a CTA button without noticing it. Try to change the position of the button on the page, color or size, but before that, try to understand the real reason and put forward hypotheses.

Rely on collected data and logic. Without them, we rely on chance. Intuition sometimes helps, but statistics are more reliable.

Run A/B testing

Two pieces of advice at once.

1. Start by testing major changes.

Returning to the main page of the Backlinko blog, Brian had the opportunity to test many small variations: colors, fonts, icons, and more.

Instead, he submitted two radically different pages for A/B testing. So, the old version immediately showed the latest blog posts (as is most often the case).

On the new version of the page, Brian changed the design and the button for subscribing to the newsletter. Addresses of readers in exchange for free access to a seductive case.

Of course, thanks to such large-scale changes, conversion rates have changed significantly.

2. You will need different software for testing.

There are quite a few solutions on the market, Brian recommends the following:

• Unbounce (creation and optimization of landing pages with the ability to conduct split testing).
• VWO (testing for mobile devices and desktop, click map, gallery of ready-made ideas).
• Optimizely (a lot of possibilities, but you need to understand).
• AB Tasty (a lot of visual manipulation on the page, targeting and personalization).

Analyzing data

Most programs that help with A/B testing offer handy pivot tables and visually show the results of the experiment and the statistical significance.

There should be no problems with determining the winner. Use the data obtained for further research and put forward new hypotheses based on them.

Design and conversion

In this section, we will look at how the visual component of the project affects CR and how you can maximize this effect.

Image captions

According to Cashvertising’s guide to copywriting, captions under images attract attention twice as often as images without descriptions. Try captioning images with compelling benefits and details.

Guide users with signals

Hints and navigation cues can direct the user to the cherished CTA buttons. For example, if we see a character in an image looking to the right, it is likely that we ourselves will look in that direction. Elements like arrows, dotted lines, shadows and other design tricks also work.

Turn boring forms into interesting forms

Few people like to fill out forms, but some manage to make them even enjoyable and fun. Huffduffer (a podcasting program) has been able to increase form completion rates by 25-40%. The Mad-Lib (word game) style was used to make the registration form informal.

Also a great option would be to reduce the number of points to fill. More fields, more anxiety. Even reducing by one window can lead to impressive results. Expedia increased annual sales by $12 million by removing the mandatory «company name» field.

CTAs should really resemble

buttons

It’s not just the text or image that matters, but the feel of the click. Users love to click on buttons — it’s nice. But don’t forget the general trends towards flat design and simplification. For inspiration, you can search collections like “best CTA buttons 2019″. The trend is a dark background and contrasting CTAs without shadows.

Increase phone number for mobile users

If calls bring income to your business, try turning a small number into a large and interactive one on the mobile version of the site. In addition, the phone inspires user confidence.

Use minimal information on action pages

For registration, checkout, and other pages that require user interaction, try using super-short landing pages. This helps to focus attention and does not distract customers. For example, Pastel’s trial registration page is extremely minimalistic and converts perfectly.

Progress bar

If your funnel has multiple steps to complete a goal, use a progress bar to motivate users to finish what they started and make the process visual and meaningful. Try to use no more than three or four steps.

Effective Landing Page

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) results directly depend on the quality of the landing page. Consider several original and working methods.

Negative headers

An interesting study by Outbrain discovered showed that negative headlines like «worst» and «never» were 63% more effective than positive words like «best» and «always».

English words were analyzed, so let’s leave the graph unchanged:

For example, the headline «Five Worst Foods for Weight Loss» can get more attention than «Five Best Foods for Weight Loss.» An interesting idea that should be taken into account, the main thing is not to slide into clickbait.

Replacing the text on the CTA button

Try to indicate the value of the user action. Sometimes it is worth replacing the usual “register” or “buy” with the benefits that the client will receive.

In English, marketers tend to use Get (get) rather than Buy (buy). The latter implies certain obligations and is alarming.

Depending on the subject of services or goods, try to emphasize the desired and useful from the completion of the target action.

Instead of «buy» in the screenshot above, the more enticing «start my free 14-day trial period» is used. Cumbersome if in Russian, but easily adapted to «get 14 days free».

Useful: a number of product managers note the magic of the phrase Free trial in the English segment. Test it if possible.

Efficiency

Instead of endless descriptions of features and benefits, try to demonstrate the benefits of the product to your customers. It is more important for people to see what they personally get from using it, and not why we consider ourselves better than the competition.

So, when buying an inflatable pool for a country house, it is important for us to know how many children will fit in it and whether it will break if a dog with sharp claws jumps into it. And only after that we may be interested in what kind of polyvinyl chloride it was made from.

Trust and authority

Testimonials and Satisfied Customers still work, but if you can list big-name customers and important awards, give it a prominent place on your landing page. “Organized a corporate party for Coca-Cola” sounds more convincing than “we have 843 customers.” But both options (number of users and notable brands) will be really useful.

Likes, shares, number of downloads, orders and other trustworthy numbers work in a similar way. If you’re already using some social signals on your landing page but they’re not working, try A/B testing by swapping one type of signal for another. To count the number of mentions of the project in social networks, you can use a special tool.

Specific and detailed headings

Fact: Vague and generic headlines don’t sell well. Try to be as specific as possible about what your product or service does. Some of the potential audience may “fall off” due to such specifics, but target customers, on the contrary, will gain confidence in performing the targeted action.

For example, the site BonFire for creating and selling things with custom prints.

Instead of a general headline like «The next generation of T-shirts», a more specific and useful «easy way to create and sell a T-shirt online» is used — both clearer and more valuable, also use search queries in the headline.

No less effective is an attempt not only to sell, but to emphasize the benefits right in the headline. Highlight the main advantage of your offer and place it in it. For example, «Create your own application for a few minutes «.

As a concern for users, also try to simplify the terminology in your benefit descriptions. Instead of «we are highly qualified software developers that specialize in providing clients with solutions focused on tracking and controlling the entire sales cycle» use a simple «we are a CRM that helps increase sales.»

Form validation

It happens that you fill out the form for ten minutes, click «next» and see a message that some field was filled with an error or did not accept the terms of service (facepalm).

In order not to annoy users, use an inline form validator — it will prompt errors before, not after submitting forms. A little thing that can strengthen CR (research on the impact of a validator on conversion).

If possible, also implement autocomplete wherever you can pull data automatically.

Noticeable price tag

Is your price average on the market or lower than your competitors? Don’t hide it anyway. Otherwise, users may have the feeling: “They didn’t indicate the price, probably wildly expensive.”

Market Dialer doubled conversion by adding a noticeable price tag to the landing page.

CRO for online store

For the e-commerce segment, there is the most direct relationship between conversion and revenue. Let’s take a look at a few universal techniques for increasing CR.

Price anchoring

The essence of the «anchor» effect in prices is that people tend to rely on the price at which they first saw the product or service of interest. This technique was previously often used by marketers in television advertising.

First, the high price of a competitor is shown, the viewer gets used to it, and after several descriptions of the coolness and advantage of the advertised product, its cost is called — much less than the first. Bam, profit. The viewer has almost come to terms with the high price tag and will be happy to buy a product much cheaper than expected.

Do you think this will not work in an online store? Williams-Sonoma, a company that sells kitchen utensils, lists a «recommended» price and its own (much lower) price for some items.

Reviews and comparison tables with competitors can work in a similar way.

Useful: this technique is often used when presenting new models and products at Apple. Steve Jobs was a true master of price anchoring.

Surround your CTA with benefits

As a rule, on commercial pages there can be several different CTA buttons like «buy», «add to favorites», «share» and others. Try to add unobtrusive but obvious benefits next to each and generally scatter them around the page.

This is what Booking.com does. You may not have noticed, but its pages are just littered with benefits markers — everywhere you look, confirmation is everywhere: “I fit, I need to book.”

Multiple high quality images

Any demonstrations are more effective than words. Show your products in action, add some high-quality photos from different angles, 360° or video. Instead of an empty multicooker, let something tasty be cooked in it 🙂

For example, online clothing store Asos showcases most of the items on models in motion through short videos that are much more visual than simple images.

Interactive zoom also works fine. An online shoe store managed to increase sales by 51% with its help.

Label bestsellers

Be sure to label your most popular items. This is another way to build trust and capture the attention of users through social signals and quantitative metrics.

If you want to take it a step further, try personalizing tops based on purchase history and user data. This is how Booking.com highlights rooms suitable for two travelers:

Quality site search

Site search is essential for increasing CR, especially if you have a lot of products or tools. The quality of the search determines the number of tags, autocorrect, word permutation and other bells and whistles.

We at Pixel Tools have also implemented a search by tools, adding a lot of thematic tags to each for ease of navigation and use of the service.

Try to place popular and profitable offers at the top of the page, this is important not only for search results, but also for the main page and categories.

I don’t think it’s worth mentioning filters, but imagine a kilt site that increased conversions by 76% just by adding filtering to their catalogues.

This means that there are 76% more men in kilts. Not bad, right? 🙂

Collect user emails

If you’re having a hard time competing with the giants in the industry, try offering something for free to every user who visits your site. For example, a small Instant Pot company gives away recipes and cooking tips in exchange for mail, and later sends an offer to the interested user to buy the product at a discount.

This is an honest approach if you really offer something useful to future customers immediately and free of charge.

Let me place an order without registration

In some topics, an attempt to force a user to register means to significantly reduce the conversion. Sometimes it makes sense to add the ability to make an order without filling out unnecessary forms, confirming registration and other tedious gestures. Econsultancy reports that 26% of users do not complete a purchase when they need to register on the site.

Logos of payment systems

Industry research (like this one) shows that familiar and trustworthy logos add confidence to users at checkout and increase conversions. Don’t forget to include all possible payment options and don’t be afraid to remind your customers about the security of transactions.

Optimize for mobile devices

Surprisingly, the advice is still relevant. Optimization for mobile devices is not only about performance and normal layout on iPhone or Samsung. First of all, we are talking about the flawless and convenient use of the site on the screen of any smartphone or tablet.

Mobile and desktop versions can be completely different in terms of interface. Of course, this will affect the conversion. ProFlowers increased CR by 20-30% by adapting the site for the touchscreen.

Optimize the loading speed of categories and products

Amazon once reported that one second of website loading delay could cost them $1 billion in annual sales.

Of course, the company won’t let that happen. Don’t let it either. Read 12 technical tips for optimizing website loading speed.

Hide the field to activate promotional codes

If before starting to place an order we see a field for entering a promotional code, then we can probably look at Google with requests “promotional code for the site …”, and if we get carried away with the search, we risk not returning to the site.

Place the field to activate the discount coupon at the end of the checkout form. Pay attention to how this is implemented in the Delivery Club or Yandex. Food applications.

Test prices

You can split-test the color and location of the CTA buttons until you’re blue in the face, or you can test two different prices for one product. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that, as a rule, it is the cost that determines the choice of the user.

Irresistible CTA

A call to action is the last and key step before the user’s final decision. Here are some simple and sensible tips from Brian.

CTA in first person or address to user

A number of case studies show the effectiveness of CTA buttons with first-person text (“I want to try”, “ready to start”, etc.).

But encouraging calls to the customer like “try it” or “get started” also work well. A good reason to do A/B testing is to try both.

Urgency and numbers around CTA

Not always appropriate, but generally working method — add numbers around the target action. It could be the time: «Delivery within 20 minutes».

Or a limited number of sentences: «Only seven left.»

It also works well to indicate the number of users browsing the product or service with you. For example, when booking any type of tickets, this can be a powerful argument for the buyer.

Losses are more effective than gains

Advice from the field of psychology and motivation — a loss is always more convincing than a possible gain. Leaving your comfort zone and depriving yourself of stability is generally unpleasant, so sometimes clients can be pointed out to the possible negative, but honest consequences of their indecision.

Total: «Stop losing customers» is more effective than «gain customers.» At least that’s what the research says.

Timer and timing

Yes, time is still very motivating. This is especially true for goods and products that are sensitive to it, such as seasonal offers, tickets, vouchers and other “perishable” products.

There is even a crazy figure of 332% — that’s how much the conversion rate at Marcus Taylor, a software maker for musicians, has increased thanks to a timer that counts the remaining time until the end of the discount.

Advanced tips and practices

This chapter contains tips and techniques for those who are ready to take their conversion rate optimization further.

Micro-commitments

This is something like a «date» with a client before the official «marriage». Brian suggests two ways:

• At the top of your sales funnel, you can hook a user with a trial subscription, a big discount on the first order, free services, and so on.
• If you need to register a user, try to guide them through forms without being noticed. For example, instead of the “sign up” button, you can immediately suggest a useful action. This is what the CrazyEgg service does, offering users to view the heat map of their site by entering the domain in the appropriate field, and only then will we be redirected to a simple registration form.

Anticipate possible objections

Do not be afraid to ask questions on behalf of users who doubt your services right on the landing page and give concise and reassuring answers.

Questions might be:

• Is it safe at all?
• Why should I trust you?
• What should I do if it doesn’t suit me?
• Is it worth that kind of money?

In general, it is useful to have an FAQ section with answers to all types of possible questions and objections, but the key and most disturbing ones can be placed on landing pages. Here’s a good example on the front page of Qlean (an apartment cleaning service).

Number of information

How much do you need? You can rely on the following rule — the more complex and expensive the product, the more information (not necessarily in the form of text) will be needed.

Surely you have noticed the endless landing pages of online courses and seminars? As a rule, they are expensive, and students will have to spend a lot of personal time on them, and their career may depend on the quality of the course.

Is it possible to describe such a service in a few words and in a couple of pictures? Hardly. Persuade the user by demonstrating the benefit, instilling trust and warning against loss.

Humanize your About Us page

The «About» page is one of the five most visited pages of all sites. But sometimes, apart from “high qualifications” and “experience in the market”, there is nothing useful there.

Seize the opportunity to show users that your company is made up of living, breathing people. Let the photos showcase your personality, and let the page talk about your values, led by the client or common interests.

Specifics and numbers

Use statistics to your advantage. Everything that can be calculated must either be optimized or demonstrated. The numbers are impressive.

For example, in the screenshot below, an excerpt from the Unbounce landing page: “Ready to see how successful advertisers reduce ad spend while increasing conversion rates by 167%?”.

Online chat

Must-have for SaaS products. Zendesk report shows that 92% are satisfied with using chats on websites and 42% use chat to avoid being on the phone.

Tip: If possible, study the history of correspondence with clients. Feel free to post answers to repetitive questions on landing pages.

Create more landing pages

Interestingly, according to Hubspot analysis, companies with ten landing pages generate 55% more leads than companies with five landing pages.

Why? The more landings, the more traffic and possible personalized offers. But be careful not to duplicate content. Pages must be on more than 90% unique (various text, images, CTAs, etc.).

Encourage customers to share their purchases

Don’t forget to place the sharing buttons at the end of the order.

By alexxlab

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