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Conversion rate
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In internet marketing, conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views
or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers,
advertisers, and content creators. The Conversion rate is defined as follows:

Successful conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and

content creators. To online retailers, for example, a successful conversion may constitute the sale
of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner
advertisement. To content creators, however, a successful conversion may refer to a membership
registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity that occurs due to a
subtle or direct request from the content creator for the visitor to take the action.

Measures
For web sites that seek to generate offline responses, for example telephone calls or foot traffic
to a store, measuring conversions can be difficult because a phone call or visitor is not
automatically traced to its source, such as the Yellow Pages, website, or referral. Possible
solutions include asking each caller or shopper how they heard about the business and using a
toll-free number on the website that forwards to the existing line.

For web sites where the response occurs on the site itself, a Conversion funnel can be setup in a
site's analytics package to track user behavior.

Methods to increase the conversion in e-commerce

Among the many methods to increase the conversion rate, these are the most relevant:

 clear distinction of the website for a certain conversion goal (e.g. "increase sign-ins for
newsletter")
 better content (e.g. text, picture, video) of the website that clearly target versus the
conversion goal
 increase usability to reduce the barriers towards the conversion goal and thus reduce the
abortion rate
 good site navigation structure to help users find and browse without thinking too much
about where to click
  show credibility signs like third-party trust logos and good site design to increase trust
level of visitor
 use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to move the user through the conversion
funnel
 use third party certification sites such as IBCIM.ORG

Role of Headline and Copy

When you receive an email it’s the name of the sender and the subject line of email that
influences your decision to open it right way or to post pone it to future. Similarly, when a visitor
arrives on your website, it’s the design/brand name AND the headline of the page that influences
his decision to engage with your page. Visitors’ attention is the costliest commodity on the
Internet and your page’s headline is where it goes right after arriving on it.

Take a look at the case study below where 37Signals tested different kinds of headlines (and the
winning one boosted conversion rate by 30%).

The winning variation said “30-day Free Trial on All Accounts” and worst performing variation
said “Start a HighRise Account”. Note that clear, no-nonsense headline won. If you think about
it, if a visitor is on Signup page he obviously knows that he is signing up for HighRise account.
The winning headline clearly convinces the already interested visitor that there is nothing to
loose as they offer a 30-day free trial.

Another example of how much headlines matter: CityCliq, a startup in local marketing industry,
split tested the positioning of their product.

Here are different headlines they tested:

 Businesses grow faster online! (too fuzzy and so what if they do)
 Get found faster! (found where?)
 Online advertising that works! (too generic)
 Create a webpage for your business (clear, concise and to-the-point)

The winning headline “create a webpage for your business” tells the visitor what exactly does
CityCliq does and no wonder it increased conversions by 90%. As they say, don’t make your
visitors think.

Right after looking at headline, if his interest is piqued, a visitor looks at the (text/video) copy on
the page. That’s why a combined optimization of headline and copy proves to be effective, as it
did for SEOMoz:
They tested a variety of headlines and copy elements on the landing page for Pro subscription. In
the end, they found out that a headline that piqued interest and a copy that laid out what exactly
constitutes a Pro subscription won (no matter how long it turned out to be).

Other case studies where headline and copy mattered:

Role of Call-to-Action

So, you optimized your design, optimized headlines and page copy. You got visitor interested
and motivated to try whatever you are offering. There is still one last hurdle before you can
throw a success party for your CRO project. Yes, call-to-action is the last hurdle for you to cross.
Even though call-to-action may be considered as minutiae for CRO, the following case studies
demonstrate that even simple A/B testing of call-to-action can result in great improvements.

A highly motivated visitor will sniff out even the poorest of all call-to-action buttons. So, while
optimizing this aspect of your page, make note that you are optimizing for the busy, semi-
interested visitor. If he can’t locate how to try out whatever you are offering, he will hit the back
button. (And in CRO, back button is the greatest enemy of all).

The now-omnipresent “See Plans and Pricing” increased signups for HighRise by 200%. I have included
this case study not to convince you to replace all your buttons with this text (it may not actually work for
you). Rather, the point is to convince you that even small changes in call-to-action can have dramatic
impact on conversion rates. And the best thing about call-to-action is that they are so easy to test. It
literally takes 5 minutes to get such test up and running.

Another oft-repeated test is to see which color works best for a call-to-action (unsurprisingly, a bright
color such as red mostly works better, this may be because they are eye catchy and drives visitors
attention towards them). As an example, along with testing test “Signup for free” v/s “Get Started Now”,
Dmix also tested Green v/s red buttons and found out that red colored works button.

To repeat my earlier point, with call-to-action sometimes surprisingly trivial changes can produce
significant results. Take a look at the following case study:

Notice that all they did was to add “It’s free” alongside Sign up now to boost conversion rate. This is
definitely a trivial change, but why won’t you test such trivial changes if they don’t take much effort and
have potential to fatten your bottomline?

Some other case studies where call-to-action helped increase conversion rate:
What Are the Overlaps Between CRO and SEO?
By Brendan Regan

April 7th, 2010

FutureNow is not a Search Engine Optimization

(SEO) firm.  I am not an SEO practitioner.  So why blog about it?  Because there still seems to
be misunderstanding out there in the online marketing world about how SEO does, or doesn’t,
fit into a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy.

For some background, you can read Melissa Burdon’s post from over 3 years ago about the
“battle” between SEO and conversion.  Still a completely valid and valuable post today!
Another good one is by Bryan Eisenberg, where he coined the phrase “Searcher Experience
Optimization” as a better fit for the SEO acronym.

Let’s start with some basic definitions (Wikipedia’s, with my editing for length) to illustrate the
space each discipline fills…

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): The science and art of creating an experience for a
website visitor with the goal of converting the visitor into a customer.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of improving the volume or quality of traffic
to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (”organic”) search results.

Assuming those definitions are OK, we can now see where the overlaps might be:

 Both deal with website visitors; CRO wants to give them a certain experience, and SEO wants to
find them where they’re searching, and give them reason to visit a site.
 Both should be extremely interested in the quality of traffic, qualified vs. un-qualified.
 Both are ways to make more money online, so both are very interesting to online marketers
who want to improve the results of their business.
 I’d argue that both are “art and science” because both are data-driven, yet require a bit of
talent and experience to do well.

The virtual “places” where SEO And CRO intersect are a) on the Search Engine Results Page
(SERP) b) on the landing page where the prospect enters the site from the SERP and c) in
keywords.  These are crucial places where the two disciplines can work together, share insights,
and “optimize in both directions.”   Alternatively, practitioners can act petty, protect their turf,
and halt optimization progress.

I believe the key to making them work in harmony (with exponential improvement) is to go
back to Bryan’s suggested, new definition of SEO: “Searcher Experience Optimization.”

Instead of focusing only on high rankings and driving more traffic volume to a page, SEO should
also embrace finding and qualifying high-quality traffic, then helping to create content that
resonates with those who visit the site.  SERP listings, especially meta descriptions, need to be
persuasive enough to get a micro-conversion (the clickthrough).  Landing pages certainly need
to contain the right keywords, but not at the expense of good, persuasive copy writing that
converts.  And keywords (which show searchers’ intent) need to be a shared focus; you cannot
optimize for conversion rate if you don’t understand visitor intent, and keywords are perhaps the
quickest/easiest way to get that understanding.

From there, CRO can add its expertise in site behavior, persuasion, testing, and customer
empathy to further optimize the searcher’s experience.  Remember, CRO wants to create an
experience for a visitor with the goal of converting them into a customer.  Search engine traffic
is visitors, so it is the goal of CRO to give organic traffic visitors an experience good enough to
convert them.

We’ve always recommended (always = 10 years) that conversion rate optimization should
come first; plug the holes in your leaky bucket (website) before you pour more water (organic
traffic) in.  A quick caveat is that if your site only gets a handful of conversions a week, you
should focus on increasing traffic to the point where you can at least run valid tests.  Once a
good CRO program is in place, a good SEO program can continuously find and drive high-
quality, qualified traffic into the website as it continues to be optimized to convert
prospects into customers more efficiently.

Despite tongue-in-cheek references across both industries to the “battle” between the two
disciplines, we truly believe the two disciplines can work hand-in-hand to drive significant
results for online marketers at companies of all sizes.

We’ve seen it work, but not enough times, so that’s a challenge to all the various disciplines in
the online marketing world: we need to stop being territorial and work together.  The
challenge to online marketers (who hire and fire us) is: think more holistically, and
structure marketing initiatives, goals, and incentives that discourage the territorial
behavior.