7 Tips For More Website Earnings - 5. Conversion Rate Optimization

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7 Tips For More Website Earnings - 5. Conversion Rate Optimization - The conversion rate has moved more into focus in recent years, but many website and blog operators are still hugely underestimating this key to more income.

This is certainly also because the conversion rate cannot be improved by making a change, but rather a somewhat more complex process that requires a lot of tests.

I have already tried a lot myself and have been able to successfully improve the conversion rate in my own projects, but I also have some catching up to do and will deal with the topic here in the blog more often in the future.

Today I would like to introduce conversion rate optimization as part of the article series “7 tips for more website income” and show how you can use it to improve your own income.

Parts of the article series:

Conversion Rate Optimization

7 Tips For More Website Earnings - 5. Conversion Rate Optimization

The conversion rate is a key figure that describes how well you can get the existing visitors to take a certain action.

In an online shop, this can be, for example, sending an order. However, registering for a newsletter or participating in a competition can also be conversion goals.

On a normal website, a product request could be the goal or other things.

What these goals have in common is that, as the operator of a website, a shop, etc., you define certain actions that are to be carried out by the visitors.

The greater the percentage of visitors who then also carry out this action, the higher the conversion rate.

Of course, there is also a formula for the conversion rate:

Number of “desired actions” / total number of visitors * 100 = conversion rate

If you have 1,000 visitors to a shop in a certain time and then 50 of them order something in the shop, this means a conversion rate of 5%.

However, I keep seeing the question of how high the conversion rate is for shop X or Y and how you can achieve such a conversion rate yourself.

In my opinion, this is the wrong approach. The conversion rate is above all a relative value with which absolute comparisons are hardly possible. This is mainly since many factors influence the conversion rate and one should above all look to increase one's conversion rate and not concentrate so much on the values of others.

Overall, there is a strong trend towards conversion optimization, which is also because the competition in Google is getting stronger and even if there are more and more pages fighting for the top positions, only one can be at the top of Google at a time.

After many years of talking almost exclusively about search engine optimization, the trend in the last few years has moved more towards conversion optimization to make better use of your visitors.

Of course, that doesn't mean that SEO is no longer important, but it's no longer the sole criterion.

Existing Sources Of Income

The conversion optimization is primarily aimed at the existing sources of income. Of course, you should also optimize new sources of income, but you usually start with conversion optimization when you have reached a certain status quo with visitors and income.

The existing sources of income have usually reached a certain level and an attempt is now being made to raise this level.

This also makes sense insofar as it is more difficult to measure the success of conversion optimization when everything is still at the beginning and various factors are constantly changing significantly.

If you have a stable visitor level and relatively stable income, you can see the effects of conversion optimization better and assess more clearly whether the positive effect came about through conversion optimization.

Basically, of course, it makes sense to start conversion optimization as early as possible. Otherwise, you will waste a lot of money for too long.

Conversion Elements

But what exactly is conversion optimization about?

Conversion optimization starts with the individual elements of a website. This can be individual parts of a page (headline, text, etc.), but also the path of visitors through a website. The latter is also known as the “conversion funnel”. The latter is not the subject of this article.

Today I want to focus on optimizing a page.

And that means that you test and optimize individual elements of a page. The following elements can / should be optimized, among others:

Navigation
The navigation of a website plays an important role. Not only with the conversion funnel, but also with the conversion rate of a single page. It is not for nothing that the page navigation is hidden on a page that deals with conversion. The best example is Amazon, which completely hides the navigation on the order page and thus directs the visitor's concentration on the individual desired action.
Headlines
Headlines are also very important. You are usually the first thing visitors read on a page and the headline must meet the visitor's expectations.
Text
The actual text on a page fulfills several functions. He has to explain clearly what it is about. Texts that are too short or too long are usually problematic. Just like unclear content or texts that do not support the conversion goal. The formatting and presentation of the text are also important.
Picture
Images also play an important role. This can be used to draw attention and often images also play a major role in building trust.
Call To Action Button
The famous call to action button is ultimately the “order”, “subscribe” etc. button, which represents the last step towards meeting the conversion goal. There are always interesting studies that show how strong small changes can have an impact. Unfortunately, there is no “one” solution here either, but there is a lot to test in addition to best practices.
Usability
In general, the usability of a page plays an important role. Ease of use is crucial for many visitors.

The entire layout consists of individual elements, but must also work in its entirety. That's what makes it so exciting.

In later articles, I will go into more detail on optimizing individual elements.

Conversion Optimization In Practice

In practice, conversion optimization usually consists of a mixture of 3 things.

Own Experiences
On the one hand, of course, the previous experience. This includes previous statistics and key figures, but also knowledge of your target group.
Best Practices
Second, it makes sense to know and implement best practices. You will never get the most out of it, but of course, you don't always have to start at 0, you can rely on the experience of others and thus shorten the path.
Testing
The third element is then the extensive tests. These are essential to optimally improve the conversion rate for your site. These tests usually take the form of A / B split tests or multivariate tests. More on that later in more detail.

When testing, it is important that you have a certain mass of visitors. There is no point in testing for only 3 days with 50 visitors a day. There are simply too few visitors to get really meaningful statistics. One speaks of statistical significance. What exactly is behind it and how it is calculated, I will deal with it in detail later.

Conversion Rate Isn't Everything

But you should also keep in mind that conversion rate optimization is not everything.

The quality of the traffic is of great importance. It is something completely different whether almost only visitors come to a shop to buy and are interested in the topic or whether you have attracted a very heterogeneous audience.

Likewise, you sometimes only have limited influence, such as in affiliate marketing. Often you can only increase the click rate because the actual conversion takes place on the merchant's pages. And as a rule, you do not influence that.

In a shop, for example, it is also important to keep an eye on the average value of the shopping cart, among other things. There is no point in increasing the conversion rate from 3% to 4% if the shopping cart value drops significantly as a result of the optimizations.

What I want to say with these examples is that when it comes to conversion rate optimization, it is also important that you view it as part of the whole.

Conclusion

For many, conversion rate optimization is still a book with seven seals. And many are also deterred by the supposed effort.

The CRO offers a lot of potentials and, in conjunction with search engine optimization, can generate significantly more income.

In further articles, I will take a closer look at individual aspects of conversion rate optimization and also show which tools can be used to optimize the conversion rate quickly and easily.

Part 6 "new sources of income"

The penultimate part of this series of articles is about how you can generate more income through new sources of income.

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