When it comes to the evaluation of websites in online marketing, we often talk about the conversion rate (optimisation) or CRO for short. This is a measure of the success of a website and is crucial for the success of a company.

Definition of conversion rateA

large number of visitors to your website does not mean a high turnover. Many click on your site out of interest and immediately move on to another website. Only when the visitor performs an action on the website, makes a purchase, signs up for a (trial) subscription or subscribes to an email list does the business generate revenue or the hope of revenue in the future

Calculating the conversion rate

In online marketing, it is customary to state this value as a percentage. If it is 2 per cent for a web shop, this means that 2 out of 100 visitors perform the desired action. This value is very easy to calculate: you take the number of visitors who have carried out the action and divide this by all visitors. The resulting value is then multiplied by 100.

Different types of conversions

There are several ways to define the conversion rate. Depending on the orientation of the website, the following conversions may be of interest to you:
- Playing a video
- Downloading an e-book
- Signing up for a subscription
- Clicking on a specific advert
- Signing up for a newsletter
- Writing a comment on a blog post
- Participating in a community
- Clicking on the Like button
- Purchasing the product

Your aim will be for the visitor to buy your product, take out a subscription or click on a paid advert. To achieve this, a so-called conversion funnel makes sense. This is a sequence of conversions at the end of which is the action that generates revenue for you.
A conversion funnel could look like this:
1. You measure the number of visitors.
2. Some interested parties stay on the page longer.
3. The next step is to sign up for a newsletter list, which will give you the email address.
4. You now regularly inform the visitor about new products, which ultimately leads to a purchase.

The level of the conversion rate

different opinions on how high the conversions should

Many authors state a value of 1 per cent. However, this is too imprecise, as the value depends on the type of conversion. Downloading a free e-book or subscribing to a newsletter list, for example, has a higher conversion rate than buying an expensive bicycle.

The level of conversions determines the success of your business: whether you are advertising a block about koi carp, an online shop selling second-hand books or software as an affiliate, the level of your conversions is crucial to the success of your business. If you have 10,000 visitors a day and only 2 of them buy your product, this is often only a small additional income. You can only pay the rent with very expensive products or high commissions. The situation is different if you increase this number to 20. Your business will become much more lucrative and may even break even.
If you are planning to use advertising (e.g. Adwords) on your website, this only makes sense if you have a good conversion rate. With many forms of advertising, you pay for every click that leads to your site. With a low rate, this is not worthwhile because you pay a lot of money for advertising without increasing your sales.

Conversion rate optimisation

You can optimise your conversions in various ways. This is a process that you need to work on constantly, as there is always room for improvement.

• Make your website user-friendly: For graphic designers, it is a pleasure to design a website as creatively as possible. Unfortunately, usability often falls by the wayside. Your visitors should be able to find their way around the site immediately, so
pay attention
• to loading times: If a page takes several seconds to load before all the information is finally visible, many customers will often click through to the next homepage.
Make sure that there are
• no large videos, especially on the homepage, as these slow down the loading process
• Optimise the site for mobile devices: More and more people are looking for suitable offers on their mobile phones. Create a website with a responsive design that adapts to the size of the end device. The user then does not have to scroll through the page and finds all products more easily.
• Use A/B tests: Some marketing experts also call this type of test a split test. It is used to continuously improve your site. You create two versions of your landing page that differ in one respect. You direct your visitors to one of the two pages using a random generator. Now you measure the conversion rate and keep the landing page that performs better. Next, you test another page, which again differs in one point, and discard the homepage with the poorer conversion rate. This allows you to constantly improve your site.
• Measure the conversion regularly: To improve the performance of your site, you need to know exactly who your visitors are. With a good tool, you can track the path of your visitors on the website. You know how long they stay, which route they take and on which page they leave your website.