Don’t Just Scroll Through, Do Something: Conversion Rate Optimization and How To Increase Client Interaction

So, you’ve optimized your website, and you’re finally showing up in search results. Clients are finding you organically via Google, and your traffic is up almost every month. It’s great, right?

Sure, it’s great. In fact, it’s awesome that your website is more visible and that your target clientele is finding you. But now what? Sure, traffic is great, but if client’s aren’t booking, then what’s the point, right?

I know, I know. There’s a lot of information out there on how to get clients TO your website, which is what search engine optimization (SEO) is all about. However, once potential clients have gotten to your website, how do we get them to interact with it?

That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.  According to Moz, conversion rate optimization “is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise.” In more practical terms, it’s essentially taking a potential client by the hand and guiding them down a path that gets them to do what you want them to do.

And no—I’m not just talking about booking.

You know as well as I do that in order to book, potential clients need to first trust you, your brand, and your staying power. We’ve all read some sort of statistics regarding advertisements, and how it can take a potential client upwards of seven times simply seeing an ad before clicking on it and deciding to book. So really, CRO only works if you have other marketing ideas and strategies outside of simply existing on the internet and being desirable. Having a marketing strategy with multiple points of “sale” makes the “conversion” portion of “CRO” happen.

So, what’s a conversion?

A conversion is simply a general term for a visitor completing a goal that your website has. Websites can have multiple goals:

• Signing up for a mailing list
• Reading a blog post
• Filling out a booking form
• Signing up for other paywalled accounts you may have, like OnlyFans
• Calling you on NiteFlirt/texting you on SextPanther
• Emailing you to ask a question or pre-screen

So, what’s a conversion rate and how do we calculate it?

Your site’s conversion rate is the number of times a user completes a goal divided by the total traffic to your site. Note that depending on the site, a user may or may not be able to convert each time they visit a site. You can only sign up for a mailing list once, and most people don’t fill out your booking form again once they’ve become a client.

To keep it simple, let’s imagine we own a lingerie website called Leggy Ladies. Someone who visits this website could purchase something (a conversion) each time they go to the website. If someone visits the website three times, that’s three opportunities to get them to convert.

A potential buyer visits Leggy Ladies three times:

• First experience was getting a feel for the website and its products, and perhaps finding something they liked.
• Second experience, the potential buyer buys some stockings. That’s a conversion!
• Third experience, the buyer comes back to buy another set of stockings and a bra and panty set. Another conversion! Note that just because someone buys more than one thing, it’s still one conversion because it’s one unique order.

This buyer converted two out of the three times they visited the website. Two divided by three is .66666666666, so our conversion rate would be approximately 67% for this one single user.

If Leggy Ladies wanted to figure out this rate for its whole site, you’d divide the number of unique orders by the total number of sessions. If Leggy Ladies has 500 unique orders and 5000 visitors, their conversion rate would be 10%.

BUT ERIN. This example doesn’t apply to me at all, since essentially I can only make the initial sale (scoring a booking via my website) once.

Oh, don’t you fret! Here’s how we calculate CRO that’s more meaningful for our particular industry.

Let’s take the path of a potential client and see how that works for CRO:

• Potential client comes to your website to check you out, look around, and see what you’re about. He doesn’t fill out your booking form, and leaves. This is obviously not a conversion.
• The same client returns and decides to fill out your booking form. Conversion! Now, it’s THE ACT OF THE CLIENT FILLING OUT THE FORM that makes the conversion—however, we will assume that this is a good form/bookable client.
• The same client returns after filling out your booking form/seeing you to read your blog posts, see your updated photos, and the like.

Since our client here can’t technically convert meaningfully more than once, we measure conversion rate by the number of unique users, not unique sessions. So in the case above, we have one unique user who filled out your booking form, which means we have a 100% conversion rate for your booking form. To expound on that, if you had twenty unique booking forms filled out and two hundred unique visitors, you’d have a 10% conversion rate.

The Benefits of CRO

I know. I know what you’re thinking. This is all a lot, and you’re not really sure why this is important to your website or web presence. You’re wondering why you should care about this and if it’s important or of any kind of benefit.

Let me tell you why this actually is beneficial to you, your website, and your business.

CRO enhances insight into your target market by finding the RIGHT clients for your business and eliminating the wrong ones.

CRO strategies allow you to find the exact language that speaks to your target market. Sure, more traffic to your website is great, but not if the people visiting aren’t converting.

CRO improves your potential clients’ experience with your website.

When your clients feel intelligent and confident using your website, they tend to stay longer and come back more frequently. CRO identifies what actually works for potential clients on your site. When you eliminate what doesn’t work and expand what does, you create a better experience for potential clients starting at your website. If your website experience is great, an experience with you must be too, right?

CRO enhances trust between you and your potential client.

Lots needs to happen in order for a potential client to share the information many of us require on our booking forms; clients need to trust you and your website. Your website is an avatar for you. As such, your website should be able to easily communicate important information to your potential client in the quickest and easiest way possible. CRO identifies these paths of least resistance. Clients who don’t identify with your content and can’t easily find important information will often write off websites (and therefore, you) as being unprofessional.

SO HOW DO I DO THIS?!

CRO is a data-driven process that’s based on concrete evidence; it’s not a guessing game in the least. You have to know who you’re optimizing your site for,  where within your website you need to optimize, and what within your website needs to be optimized.

I’m not going to lie. This is where shit gets intense. Figuring out CRO isn’t something that happens with the snap of a finger, and it’s far more complicated than SEO. The results, however, are worth the time and effort.

Gathering data can happen in two ways—either via gathering numbers in a structured manner, which is called quantitative data analysis, or via asking people questions about their behavior, which is called qualitative data analysis. You can’t just use one or the other. Quantitative data analysis identifies which people you should be asking your questions to. It does you no good to ask people who aren’t your potential clients questions about their user experience, after all.

You’ll need a way in which to gather information for the quantitative portion of your study, and  Google Analytics is the most commonly used tool for this particular job. It’s free, and relatively easy to set up, and if you’re doing SEO at all, you might already have an account set up.

Google Analytics can tell you a whole lot of really important information. It can tell you:

• Where people enter your site (it’s not always the home page)
• What pages and features they interact with the most
• How the got to your site (did they get to you via twitter, organic search, or an ad)
• What devices and browsers people are using
• Where your audience is physically located
• Where users leave your website

This information will help you identify where you need to focus your efforts. You’ll see the fastest and largest improvements by focusing on pages that clients value the most.

The qualitative analysis part is a bit trickier, simply because the data that’s most important comes from your ideal clients, and your ideal clients, ideally, have booked you. Your ideal client might not have booked you yet, though, so there are other ways to capture information there.

The easiest way to do this is via on-site surveys and asking your in-person clients questions on the sly. You can use Hotjar to help out with the survey portion; make a free account and survey away!

The in-person questions are always a little trickier, but I’ll often ask more amorphous questions like:

“What drew you to me?”

“Was there a deciding factor in wanting to meet me?”

Listen to how they respond when they talk about these things. What words to they use to describe you and your website? Sometimes they’ll even drop hints about why your website/writing/etc was compelling and better than other writing they’d read in the past.

Personally, almost all of my clients make comments concerning the usability of my website, my writing style, and my blog posts. When I need more info, I honestly just ask! Most of my clients are also business owners and understand the need for solid data.

Make sure to keep up with the blog for the next segment- tools for CRO!