How to increase sales and leads with Conversion Rate Optimisation

What is a conversion rate?

A conversion rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who complete a specific action, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase, after clicking on your site.

They're calculated by taking the total number of users who 'convert' (for example, by signing up to a newsletter), dividing it by the total audience size, and converting that figure into a percentage.

For example:

Conversion rate = (150 conversions ÷ 260 customers) x 100 = 57.69%

It's this number that helps you shine a light on the areas of your marketing that are bringing in the most business, and those that aren't. With this knowledge, you can understand how and where you could invest more resources.

Conversion rate is most relevant to your paid advertising, because you are investing money into the ads, and you want them to bring back value.

If an ad has a low conversion rate, it's likely that you are losing money, and need to improve the conversion rate quickly. This guide on average conversion rates by industry and network should help.

What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the process a business, or digital consultancy, goes through to improve factors that influence your conversion rate. In most cases, it's optimising your website, your landing pages, and your social media content.

Why is CRO essential for businesses?

• Missed opportunities: CRO is a key part of marketing that is often overlooked. It plays a crucial role in boosting your conversion rate, which directly contributes to your business' success. Without CRO, you risk losing potential customers, making each website visit a missed opportunity. Just as you would invest time and money into making a physical shop welcoming to attract customers, your website deserves the same attention to encourage visitors to take action.
• It gives you a competitive advantage: Customers will often look around for what they are searching for, and will have a few different competitors in mind before they convert. You want your website to be the most inviting, look the most reliable and give the best impression of what you are advertising. The quality of your website can sometimes be the deciding factor in securing a sale, even when your product or service is priced higher than a competitor's.
• Increased cost efficiency: CRO helps you get the most out of your marketing budget. For example, if you spend £1,000 on a poorly targeted Meta Ads campaign with unengaging creatives and a basic website, you might not make any sales. This means that you've effectively wasted that £1,000. Optimising your website and ad strategy ensures you see better returns on your investment.

Key factors that drive your conversion rate

It's important to note that your conversion rate will depend mostly on a combination of two factors, namely the quality and relevance of your ad clicks, and your website.

The quality and relevance of your ad clicks

The first step to boosting your conversion rate is making sure your ads reach the right audience. If your ads are shown to people who aren't interested in your offering, the chances of them converting are very low.

To check if you're targeting the right audience, you can:

• Review the search terms in your Google or Microsoft Ads search term report, as well as organic search results in Google Search Console.
• Analyse targeting settings in Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Display Ads on Microsoft or Google.
• Assess data insights from advertising platforms to refine your audience.

For example, if you run a commercial asbestos removal business but notice your ads are attracting searches for 'home asbestos removal,' your conversion rate will likely be 0% for those visitors. Since your website only promotes commercial services, those clicks are wasted.

The quality and relevance of your website

Below are some of our top tips on how to improve the conversion rate of your website:

Make your website descriptive:

• Bullet points are a great way to give quick information that a user may be looking for.
• Videos and product imagery are important to help the user visualise what they would be getting.
• Remember your audience, too, and what they will be looking for. Are you advertising a product that your audience is likely to need urgently? Make it clear on the page that you offer 30-minute click & collect or first class delivery.
• Keep descriptions useful and detailed so users have all the information they need to convert immediately.

Make your website function well:

No one likes a website that is clunky and hard to navigate, so it's important to have a website that users can use with ease. All websites should have:

• Fast-loading pages
• A secure and simple check out system (if eCommerce)
• An easy-to-find contact page
• A simple navigation menu
• A search bar
• A mobile-friendly design

Simply, your website should make it as easy as possible for someone to convert. The more barriers there are (such as a slow website or bad checkout system), the lower the conversion rate.

For example, if your desired conversion is for users to fill out a form to get a quote, you should keep the form as short as possible. Long forms put users off - keep it short and sweet. Any additional information you can get later. It's more valuable to get a name and an email address to follow up later for more information rather than no leads!

Consider this landing page from TJ waste as a good example of a trustworthy, descriptive and well functioning website!

What mistakes should you avoid when optimising your conversion rate?

• Not optimising for mobile first: Mobile traffic represents up to 64% of global website traffic. This is why it's important to optimise for mobile users first. Make sure that your website is responsive for mobile, otherwise your users will almost immediately bounce and leave you with a 0% conversion rate. Try checking your Google Analytics 4 data for what devices your users are using, and you can optimise based on your priority device.
• Sending traffic to a page before it's finished: One common mistake is sending traffic to a website that isn’t ready for customers yet. Don't send traffic (especially paid traffic) to a page that is not ready to receive customers yet. Make sure that your pages are well optimised before you turn on the tap of paid marketing. Make sure there's images, a description, a review and an easy conversion point.
• Not having a clear conversion point: Call-to-action buttons are great and, when used correctly, can improve conversion rates. However, it can be easy to add too many call-to-action buttons on a page, which can confuse the user. Try to stick to just one conversion action. Don't have a page that displays an 'Add to cart' button, a 'Call us now' button, an 'Email our team' button and a contact us form! Make it clear what you want your user to do, and limit the amount of conversion points you have.
• Not tailoring the page for your specific audience: Not all CRO best practices suit every audience, so make sure you think about what your audience wants. A common CRO tactic is to add a sense of urgency to a product or service with a countdown timer. These can work great in some industries, but in others it's just not appropriate (e.g. adding a countdown timer on a law firm website). This could come across as overly aggressive and undermine trust. Always keep in mind your customer, and put yourselves in their shoes.

To summarise:

Conversion rate optimisation is an ongoing process of refining your user journey, aligning ad messaging with landing page content, and eliminating barriers to action. By focusing on mobile usability, clear messaging, and targeted traffic, you ensure every marketing pound spent delivers maximum business value.