Conversion is the marketing process of getting people on your website to do what you want. This could be subscribing to an email list. If you run an ecommerce site it would be getting them to buy. It could just be getting them to fill in a form. Or it could be sharing a page on social media or visiting a specific page on your website. Conversion is a key measure of any internet-based business. You calculate your conversion rates by working out the percentage of people who visit your site who convert. For example, if out of every 1,000 website visitors, 65 people buy something, the conversion rate is 6.5%.
The more sales conversions you are getting the better. Likewise if you a trying to build an email list to market to, the number of subscribers you have will directly impact on your ultimate profitability.
When it comes to lead generation, what matters is how many visitors to your site provide you with their contact details. You need these so that you can market to them.
Website conversion rates
For the vast majority of websites conversion rates are extremely poor. Sites are often designed to look good rather that to act as direct marketing machines.
Conversion levels on sites are effected by many factors. These include the wording, or copy, on the site, the images that are used on the site, whether there are any Testimonials on the site, A critical factor is the source of traffic.
A strongly converting website will make it very easy for the visitor to know what to do next and will limit other options. Good websites that convert well are also usually the result of targeted traffic, effective copy and continuous testing. There is little or no point in driving untargeted traffic to a website and expecting it to convert well which is why the source of web traffic is also key. If you sell epoxy resin it is very unlikely that an internet user taken at random will be interested in buying some.
A number of marketing tools can increase the conversion rates of a site such as autoresponders. These market to sales prospects automatically by sending out sales messages via email. Over time provided the sales messages are well crafted, the overall sales rate of a website will increase if an autoresponder is used – although very few businesses make use of them. The fact is that people who use an autoresponder can drive up their visitor values which makes them a lot more profitable.