What is a conversion rate?

In online marketing, we use the term “conversion” to describe a measurable conversion, i.e. the conversion of a visitor into a potential customer. The visitor has therefore taken the action that the website operator intended. This can be many different things, such as filling out a form, signing up for the newsletter, or making a purchase in the online store. The conversion rate describes the relationship between visitors to a website and the number of interactions that have been set as a conversion. If about 10 out of a total of 1,000 visitors to the website sign up for the newsletter, the conversion rate is 1 percent.

Is a high conversion rate good?

The short answer: yes, it is. A high conversion rate is a very good starting point for achieving the set corporate goals by means of online marketing measures. But: A high conversion rate is not everything. It is the beginning of a comprehensive customer journey that needs to be designed in the best possible way.

However, what is a good conversion rate is not so easy to define. This depends on many, sometimes very individual factors. The central lever for high conversion rates is the right target group. People who are not interested in the offer will not convert. The quality of the offer also plays a central role on the way to a qualified lead. In addition, the usability of your website also plays a crucial factor, as well as the industry, your brand awareness, competition, and search engine ranking.

You want concrete figures? We understand that. There are countless statistics on conversion rates on Google, here is a first impression: The conversion rate of banners is among the lowest with less than one percent, Google Ads are on average about 3.5 percent and in partner search you can be happy about a conversion rate of just under ten percent. In your first attempts at optimization, try to set an initial approximate value as a guide. You will quickly notice if this is a good fit for you and your business.

Why is conversion rate optimization so important?

Getting the best out of painstakingly generated traffic is the goal of conversion rate optimization (CRO). In this way, we achieve more orders, prospects and sales. However, conversion rate optimization is not always easy. Increasing online competition and sensory overload on traffic channels makes it increasingly difficult to increase conversion of visitors to prospects and buyers. That’s why online marketing must no longer be just about increasing traffic, but improving conversion. But how can you set up a successful strategy for CRO? What levers can we operate?

What influences the conversion rate?

There are many factors that influence the conversion rate. Due to this large number, it is not possible to list and describe all of them, but two basic types can be distinguished:

• short-term, controllable
• long-term, uncontrollable

While the short-term influencing factors can be controlled through repeated testing and adjustment, the long-term factors are difficult or impossible to control.

These short-term factors include, among many others:

• Traffic channels
• Products & Offers
• Content (variety and adaptation to the customer journey)
• Website security
• Usability process

The list of potential influencing factors is long. Therefore, it should not be tried, exchanged and tested haphazardly. It is important to take a close look at a few points at the beginning, formulate concrete theses and then verify or falsify them. Meaningful and clearly defined hypotheses are the basis for a successful CRO. What about the long-term factors? Most of these are socio-political developments over which we as a company have virtually no influence: Changes in the legal situation, armed conflicts or even social trends can influence the performance of our conversion rate – positively or negatively. Seasonal fluctuations, such as bookings for skiing vacations or sunscreen products, play a special role. This is nothing unusual, but should be considered in a CRO strategy.

Conversion rate optimization methods

Many factors condition many methods and approaches to CRO. Before we get to those in the user experience space, here’s a quick reminder of what methods always work to optimize CR:

• Generate more and better traffic
• Combine call-to-actions with matching lead magnets
• Optimize mobile view and loading speed
• Publish better, i.e. target group optimized content
• Refinement of the Customer Journey
• Keywords customization
• Simplification and “decluttering” of the website
• Text as a UX factor in conversion optimization

When it comes to user experience, text plays an important role. Unlike usability (user-friendliness), which is primarily about a clear structure and smooth flow on the website, UX design aims to evoke the best possible feeling in the visitor. The appropriate words, paraphrases and terms put the visitor in the right mood, create mental cinema and emotions. So it’s very important to know your target audience and which keywords are actually being used and whether you’re hitting the tone of the buyer persona.

It can be as banal things as the difference between potatoes and potatoes, which encourages visitors to click. Do you know where your visitors are coming from? Then they adapt to their language.

Colors at the CRO

Colors are among the most important tools when it comes to putting people in the right mood. Different colors evoke different emotions and can attract users’ attention. The color palettes we choose are more than just visual decoration, they can have game-changing effects on conversion rates. A CTA button, for example, is made up of four important factors: Placement, shape, text and color. When these four aspects are aligned, you have a great effect. The color of the button is one of the longest-running debates at CRO. There are numerous A/B test results that show that changing the color of a CTA button has a massive impact on the number of conversions.

You want to try something color-wise? Then take a look at Adobe Color Reel or coolors.typography, image and video for better conversions. As I said, it’s all about creating a suitable mood image that picks up the user where they are. This applies not only to language, but also to visual impressions on the website. The choice of typography (font, font size), the imagery used and the presentation of the videos can contribute a lot to the acceptance of the offer. The aim is to put our target group in a “buying mood”, i.e. to create a feel-good atmosphere.

What exactly our target group wants to see, we can only find out step by step. The better we know our buyer persona, their preferences and habits – e.g. whether this person prefers reading or watching videos – the easier it will be for us to do CRO.

Customize CTA buttons for conversion rate

If we have accompanied our website visitors to the call-to-action with the right texts and images, this very button should also catch the eye. The size, placement and color of the CTA button should stand out strongly at all times. To increase the conversion rate, you can also place the button sticky, i.e. it scrolls along at all times and remains in the field of view. If Google is to be believed, the ideal place for CTAs is just above the “above the fold” boundary and the ideal shape is a vertical one.

The position of the CTA button is also important. There are places where our call to click simply performs better than others. Here Grow & Convert have put together an exciting table – with reference to personal experiences with newsletter signups.

• CR in the sidebar: 0.5 – 1.5%
• CR at the end of the contribution: 0.5 – 1.5%.
• CR with pop-ups: 1 – 8%
• CR with sliders and bars: 1 – 5%
• CR with a full-screen welcome opt-in: 10 – 25%.
• CR of highlight boxes: 3 – 9%
• Navigation bar: variable

Trying out CTA buttons is one of the first and easiest steps to change your conversion rate. It is important that you do not change too much at once, as this will make it unclear what actually caused the CR to change.

Forms in the CRO process

Forms are an important part of the customer journey, a point where it becomes very clear whether we have done our job well up to there. If the user has followed us to the form and is willing to fill it out, then we have been able to build enough trust. If users bounce off the form, we know that this is where we need to start optimizing. Basically, the fewer input fields, the higher the conversion rate. It is therefore worthwhile in the first step to query only the fields that are really necessary – everything else can wait.

Conversion Rate: Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization is an iterative process, there is always something to try and improve. In addition, the preferences of our target group also change with the trends of the time – a real “end” of optimization is therefore rather unlikely. Even though the topic is huge and the optimization possibilities almost infinite, it is worthwhile to approach the process strategically and thoughtfully. Supported by tangible user data (see also our article on the Golden Record ), the appropriate levers for the CRO can be found quickly.

The post Increase conversion rate with UX first appeared on Zensations.

Firstly, Nashville has been a great place, not only because of being the capital of country music. The venue of the Drupalcon, the Music City Center, turned out to be a surprise. Because this impressive building is located in Downtown Nashville directly in front of the Bridgestone Arena of the native NHL hockey team, the Predators. For me as a former hockey player it couldn’t have been a better place. During the DrupalCon week there have been the first play-off game of the Predators against the Colorado Avalanches. Sadly, they have been eliminated in the second round after winning the first series. But not so DrupalCon! It has won the face off! After vacation and some time returning to my work I finally found the time for a recap.

Drupal is still relevant and bright

The first memorably highlight was the Driesnote by Dries Buytaert. He pointed out what is crucial for Drupal to sustain as a relevant open source software for digital experiences. I was excited because I got the feeling that Drupal is entering a new stage: It needs to improve its technical evaluation process (fostering better documentation and a shorter and easier try-out-adoption), its content creator experience (more drag and drop interactions ), its site building experience (configuration management for more use cases, improved relationship between composer and drupal core and longer grace periods between required updates) and a better promotion to non-technical decision makers. That means there are a lot of enhancements coming or have already started its adoption which we will see and face soon (for example a new admin theme).

As Drupal 8 has been a major overhaul compared to the previous major releases breaking some habits of Drupal developers. There have been a lot of rumours that Drupal has lost its momentum. But Dries showed stats that this isn’t true. In the last year Drupal 8 sites have grown by impressive 51% (from 159.000 in April 2017 to 241.000 sites in April 2018). And 81% more Drupal 8 Module become stable now (1.860 stable modules and 5.076 under development).

I am really impressed how Drupal is trying to keep the pace even for the community. Dries has illustrated how Drupal is a role model as an open source community and how it can be fostered forward. Its values have been evolved in the last 17 years and been passed by word of mouth. He recognized that there is a need to capture these values as a guide for Drupal culture and behaviors. This has been been condensed into the new about section page for values & principles on www.drupal.org as a first starting point.

Insights from my session experience

The sessions I was attending have been a topic mix of accessibility, testing, performance, hosting, site building, frontend engineering, image processing, content auditing, special views and digital experiences outside from classic websites. Sadly, there have been so many good sessions at the same time and it has been a greater challenge to decide which you will read further below.

The keynotes were very interesting and outstanding. Steve Francia told about how Drupal has helped him achieve an incredible open source career. His name is strongly bound to Open Source Software like MongoDB, Docker, Go, Hugo, spf13-vim and Cobra. It was great to see which challenges in all fields of life even in illness he did face in the past and that he never forgot his roots in Drupal.

Emily Rose, a developer advocate at Twitch, gave a strong future oriented keynote how people could potentially become cyborgs with unprecedented access to information and communication and which possibilities and challenges we might face morally and ethically. For me it was very interesting because I have already been dealing with this topic for years. Because some people with disabilities are the first real cyborgs and therefore I know the difference if you are forced to get a implant or not. Nonetheless, this view gave me another insight on how people like Emily Rose are seeing this.

In the field of Accessibility I could see that there is a cultural difference between Europe and North America. The term of inclusion is more used in the US than in Europe and is also used rather different in its meaning. The reason could be grounded by the effects of ADA (Anti-Discrimination-Agenda of the United States) with its strong sense for diversity. On the other hand the used narrative of accessibility could be more inclusive for the audience and brought in a broader sense in general. It sounds too much like a special service for disabled people although there are incredible great efforts made or still in the making by great people. Hey, I think they have deserved a bigger stage! Nonetheless, I can highlight the session about accessibility testing by Everett Zufelt which has been very informative about how he sees machine learning as possibility to solve accessibility issues in the future. There is also to mention the session “Inclusive Mindsets” by Mike Miles which had some similarities to my talk in Vienna.

Performance is the key challenge today for the digital experience brought by Drupal. Estee Lauder showed how they are de-jquerying their global platforms which turns out that they are in a conversion process to a react frontend and Typescript. React has gained a lot of momentum in the community, therefore I have been curious to see a building example: Brian Perry show how to build a react music discovery app with Drupal.

Performance engineering has got a broad spectrum in general now. It begins with hosting where Pantheon gave insights how the use of CDN (Content Delivery Networks) is best for HTTP/2 to reduce the amount of Round Trips and TTFB-latency (Time to first byte) which is used by pageranks. Mike Carper showed how we can improve our Drupal sites to get the best for Google Pagespeed and what we can do additionally to the Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation Module, especially how to create a critical path CSS for every page or enhancing the image optimization in Drupal. There have been given some great tips how to get good results. In order to improve image performance, Abby Milberg presented possibilities how to use images in a more advanced manner. Sometimes you have special use cases in presenting images where you need to write some code to get the desired results. Even for gaining good results in frontend performance, you also need to reduce the frontend codebase. Kendall Totten and Cassondra Roberts from Redhat have been sharing their approach developed in 3 years to turn design system mockups into a performing frontend by identifying the patterns.

Beyond the frontend I have been attending more backend related sessions. Mike Madison gave some insights on how to use Drupal as a data pipeline for digital signage. It turned out to be signage output for public traffic information. And even there is a matter of performance to update the information. The last session before the closing session has been about views and how to enhance it for special use cases.

To summarize my session insights, Drupal is moving forward to become a data model system with a wide range of API for tailoring different digital experiences where performance is most critical.

Drupalcon Challenge

Even if Drupal as a community is trying really hard to become as inclusive as possible, for me as a deaf developer it was a bit of a challenge. DrupalCon is a very large event! In Nashville I had the feeling that it has been twice the size compared to Vienna. With 14 sessions at the same time I had to decide and plan which sessions I wanted to see before flying to the other side of the earth. Not only because of the size but also to give the sign language interpreters (special service) some preparation and guide.

To my surprise, it turned out that I was not the only deaf attendee there as I have been in Vienna. I had to share the interpreter with my new friend from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. and together we had to make a new session plan every day as far as possible. That meant that we had to compromise but we found a good way.

Despite of this it has enriched my Drupalcon experience. He told me that he has already been attending DrupalCons for ten years and has never met another deaf developer until we met in Nashville. We had a great time together talking in sign language and sharing our experiences even if the organisation of the interpreting service was not what we expected. The responsible event management of DrupalCon was not fully aware of the difference between the sign language interpreting business and the spoken language one. Ok, this was not perfect but I am sure it will be a matter to learn from. Maybe there has been a lack of experience in general. I’m trying to share this story for all future events. This could be also relevant for the new Drupal Europe as replacement for the DrupalCons in Europe which will take place in Darmstadt, Germany, for the first time this fall. Facing challenges and finding solutions this is and has always been the Drupal way from where its values do evolve. Nonetheless, we never got the feeling of being ignored. They tried best of the situation. Therefore we took part in the Trivia Night without any communication barriers after we had to get through half a day with communication barriers on the last session day. Inclusion does always start minor and could have an major impact, which in future could turn into a recognised part of the Drupal Culture. That’s real inclusion, there are always possibilities to find a way. I have to thank Amanda Gonser who asked me to come to Nashville.

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