DigitalMakers Blog - Digital Transformation, Digital Marketing and Web Development

What is and why is the conversion rate important?

Written by Oriol Escofet | Feb 28, 2020 10:58:14 AM

In a previous article we talked about the importance of digital analytics when defining aspects of your online strategy. We have also talked about what are the basic KPIs that you should take into account. This time following this series of articles you will talk about one of the most important KPIs there is, the Conversion Rate (CR) or conversion rate.


What is the conversion rate?

Basically it is a metric in the form of a percentage that measures the number of users who have completed an action, that is, it indicates the success of a process.

This action or process can be a purchase, a registration, a subscription, it all depends on the objective you want to measure in each case.

In order to obtain the CR you only need two data, the number of users who have started the process and the number of users who have finished it.

 

Why is this data important?

As we have explained with the Growth Driven Design, the traditional website is obsolete. Currently, the web is the main marketing asset of a company, not a business card. The website must be designed according to business objectives and the way to measure them is the conversion rate.

Knowing this data will let you know if the strategy you are following is correct or if it is improvable.

 

Conversion Funnel

The conversion rate generates a funnel (or funnel) by itself, which may be higher or lower depending on the steps of the process.

It is important to say that the beginning of the process can be marked by us, for example we can determine that the beginning is the home of the web or that it is when they access a specific section, as it will always depend on what we want to measure.

We show you an example of funnel, in this case of a purchase process:

 


This funnel tells us that of 2000 people who accessed the web, 500 reached the section of the online store of the web, 150 came to add some product in the shopping cart, 100 came to start the payment process, and finally Of these, 20 completed it successfully. In this case the conversion rate would be 1% (20 purchases divided by 2,000 visitors and multiplied by 100, to obtain the percentage).

Your goal should be that this funnel is as straight as possible, means that a large number of leads that start the process, end it successfully.

 

How to read the conversion funnel?

There is no unique way to read it, it is necessary to know the process that is being analyzed step by step, and apply the logic, for example following the example of the previous funnel, if 100 people start the payment process, the logic tells us that They have decided to buy, but if only 20 finish it, it is clear that there is some obstacle that does not make them develop. If in the example we add that on the web you can only buy via PayPal and the user is not informed of this situation until the end of the process, we can deduce that this is causing the loss of many conversions.

 

 

Take another example, you have prepared a form on the web for users to register for an event organized by the company, it turns out that 300 people have pressed the call to action button to register, but only 50 have completed the registration. Logic tells us that 300 users had already decided to register, but 250 have not completed it. In this case, a first step you must follow is to verify the correct functioning of the form at a technical level. If it does not have any errors, you have to go on to analyze the form, it may happen that you are asking for too much data and this point is making users back, or that the landing page of the button is not consistent with what you said before pressing it the landing page does not meet expectations and people leave without completing.

Obviously not all readings are so easy, but we encourage you to look at the conversion rate of your goals, get the conversion funnel and start applying small changes, surely the rate begins to improve and that will help you achieve your marketing goals.