What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

by | Published on Mar 28, 2017 | Medical SEO

The world is shifting from analogue to digital and this has led to a drastic increase in digital marketing for businesses. It helps in getting a custom strategy that will work to improve traffic and page ranking. But now it is no longer just about driving more traffic to your website. Online medical marketers now realize that in order to increase sales and revenue, medical businesses have to optimize the visitor’s onsite experience and convert potential customers to actual customers. This process is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). Conversion rate optimization is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that converts into customers or takes any desired action on the webpage.CRO involves components of copywriting, visual design, psychology, user experience and other things that influence people to act.

Human psychology has a significant role to play in the choices customers make, which makes it important to understand the psychology behind the conversion results. Professionals at a website marketing company take psychology and behavioural components of visitors into consideration when designing conversion optimization strategies. This helps them understand why customers make the decisions they make. A business’s conversion rates are very likely to increase if customer behaviour is carefully studied to gain insights for effective optimization.

Now let us look at some conversion rate optimization facts.

  • It is a structured and systematic approach to improve the performance of your website
  • It is based on insights, analytics and user feedback
  • It is defined by your healthcare website’s unique objectives and needs
  • It takes the traffic that a business already owns and makes the maximum use of it.

What Is Not Conversion Rate Optimization

  • It is not based on guesses, hunches or what everyone is doing
  • It is not driven by the highest paid person’s opinion
  • It is not about more and more users, regardless of quality or engagement

Four Essential Components of CRO

  • Call to action: This is the primary button or link or other user interface element that users can use to take action that leads to a conversion. A “buy now” button on a commercial website, or a “sign up” button on an email registration field, a “download now” request etc. are some examples of call to action.
  • Conversion funnel: It is the primary pathway of the user experience where visitors complete a conversion.
  • A/B or Split testing: It is a tool that measures each element by its effectiveness and helps you discover which variation of your website converts more visitors into leads.
  • Multivariate Testing: It helps to determine the best performing elements and combinations.

The conversion rate will vary depending on the type of website, and your specific goals.

  • For an e-commerce website a conversion occurs when a purchase is completed by a visitor.
  • For a services website such as one for healthcare businesses, a conversion occurs when a signup/form has been completed by a visitor.
  • For a blog/media website, a conversion occurs when a newsletter or some other opt-in has been completed by a visitor.

Metrics for Calculating Conversion Rate

  • Bounce rate: It refers to the percentage of people who leave after viewing a single page. A high bounce rate is not favourable for any website.
  • Exit rate: It is the percentage of people who leave after viewing the page. This will let you know the last page that users view before they move on. A high exit rate is also not favourable for any website.
  • Average time onsite: This helps in knowing how long users stick around on your website. A high bounce rate means a low average time on site.
  • Average page views: It tells you how many pages the average visitor browsed before leaving. More page views means engagement but also means a lack of clarity in your conversion funnel.

Factors Influencing Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is dependent on many things such as the type of website you have, your marketing efforts, your unique value propositions, and the main types of visitors you have. On an average, for an ecommerce website 2% is a good conversion rate and anything above 5% is considered very good. In the healthcare industry the conversion rates may vary from 3% to 8%, and a website with an 8% conversion rate is doing well.

You may even have conversion rates above 50% for state-of-the-art, focused paid search lead generation landing pages. Businesses need to focus on increasing their own conversion rate rather than constantly comparing the conversion rate of their competitors. Ultimately the conversion rate depends on how much effort you put into CRO, your budget, and your level of expertise.

Utilize Digital Marketing Services for Healthcare

Today, advanced digital marketing tools are available that can help to identify what vibes with your specific list of current and prospective clients. Every step you take to substantially improve your conversions can also increase your return on your web marketing investment. You need to work regularly to increase conversions and focus on the efforts that prove to be the best.

Healthcare businesses can use expert resources such as digital marketing services for healthcare to learn more about CRO and how to get good results quickly. Strategic CRO efforts will generate more leads or sales on your website with your existing traffic, help maximize the ROI from your marketing spend on paid search, social media search, and so on. It will enhance your website so that it engages more visitors, and increase the chance of returning visitors. CRO will give you a competitive advantage over competitors who may not be using it strategically.

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