So, you have a website, but how do you know if it's successful? Whether you are selling services or products, one of the main metrics of success is conversion rate. Most website owners will obsess about traffic, the more visitors, the more sales you get. Which is correct, but what if you could make more of the website visitors, buy a product, a service - convert, then you will have more sales and your website will be more successful and the business will grow. This is why Conversion Rate Matters!
How to work out your conversion rate?
Check your conversion rate now. On Shopify, you can find it on your Analytics page, other platforms may also show it in your data. But you can also work this out yourself easily.
Conversion Rate = Conversions / Sessions
Shopify defines this as sessions that completed a checkout / sessions, which is the same
If your conversion rate, is below 0.5% you should be urgently reviewing your website and path to checkout, its letting you down. This is really why conversion rate matters, especially if you are missing out on conversions you could be getting. The industry average for conversion rate is between 1-2%, but this can change depending on the industry. Here is the average over the last 12 months by industry:
Beauty & Personal Care - 4.3%
Pet Care & Veterinary Services - 4.12%
Fashion, Accessories, and Apparel - 2.88%
Home & Furniture - 1.27%
Consumer Goods - 2.88%
Multi-Brand Retail - 3.57%
Luxury & Jewellery - 0.87%
Food & Beverage - 5.83%
source: dynamic yield by mastercard
How to improve conversion rate
There is a bit of a list of what on your website can kill your conversion rate. This is where Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) comes in. Large brands have teams, that help test tiny changes to a website through A/B Testing (by setting up an alternative variation, and measuring the success of it). You do not need to go that deep though, there are some easy tweaks you can make:
- Update your weak product pages
- Don't force customers to make accounts
- Be transparent about costs, avoid high delivery prices
- Ensure you add in no trust signal, like reviews, user generated content, social media
- clunky checkout - reduce the number of steps to completion
Make any changes over time, while tracking the changes on conversion rates, page views etc.
If you need help understanding your data, or your website, get in touch to see how I can help you.