As a small business owner, you understand the importance of increasing sales and revenue. As a small business owner, you understand the importance of increasing sales and revenue. One of the most effective eCommerce strategies for achieving this is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Before I go into the 9 great reasons you should love Conversion Rate Optimization as a small business owner, I am going to explain what CRO is, what it is not and what the optimization process looks like.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

CRO is the process of improving a website or marketing campaign to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. The goal of CRO is to improve the user experience and persuade visitors to take action, which can lead to increased sales, improved ROI, and a better understanding of your customers. CRO involves a process of testing different hypotheses and analyzing the results, which can help businesses make data-driven decisions and continually improve their website and marketing campaigns over time. By optimizing for conversions, businesses can generate more revenue and achieve their goals more effectively.

What Conversion Rate Optimization is NOT?

It is not a magic bullet for sales.
It is not quick to execute.
It is not a one-size-fits-all solution for all websites and industries.

In saying this, our aim is to provide small business owners ‘with’ a simplified approach to CRO to lay solid foundations for improving your conversion rate and your revenue, both in the short term and for longer term growth.

What is your website conversion rate?

A website conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. This is typically measured by dividing the number of conversions (desired actions taken) by the total number of website visitors, and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if a website receives 1,000 visitors and 50 of them make a purchase, the conversion rate would be 5%. A higher conversion rate means that a larger percentage of visitors are taking the desired action, which can indicate that the website is effective at persuading and engaging its audience. Improving the conversion rate is a key goal of conversion rate optimization (CRO), which involves testing and optimizing various elements of the website to increase the likelihood of visitors taking the desired action.

So, in summary, optimizing your conversion rate or, in other words, increasing your conversion rate in reality becomes a MULTIPLIER of all your marketing efforts.

The average global conversion rate is currently 1.82%, this varies depending on your industry.

Here is a breakdown of the average conversion rates by industry in 2023. This has dropped 1% in the past 18 months – which is significant.

Tables showing average conversion rate for websites by industry
Average conversion rate by industry

So a note on these industry conversion rates, remember they are the average – If your website is converting at around the average mark, then the good news is that there is room to improve your conversion rate and increase your revenue. 

What is the process to optimize your conversion rate?

The process of optimizing your website’s conversion rate looks something like this:

  1. Identify goals: Determine what actions you want visitors to take on your website, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up for a newsletter.
  2. Analyze data: Use web analytics tools to track your website’s performance and identify areas for improvement, such as high bounce rates or low conversion rates on specific pages.
  3. Conduct research: Gather feedback from customers and conduct user testing to better understand their needs and preferences.
  4. Develop hypotheses: Based on your research and analysis, develop hypotheses about what changes to your website could improve conversion rates.
  5. Test changes: Use A/B testing or other methods to test your hypotheses by making changes to your website and comparing their performance against a control group.
  6. Analyze results: Use data analysis to determine which changes had a positive impact on conversion rates and which did not.
  7. Implement changes: Implement the changes that had a positive impact on conversion rates across your website.
  8. Monitor and iterate: Continuously monitor your website’s performance and iterate on your optimization efforts to achieve ongoing improvements in conversion rates.

By following this process, businesses can identify and address barriers to conversion on their website, test solutions to improve conversion rates, and ultimately increase revenue and achieve their goals more effectively.

However, as a small business, I appreciate how this can seem extremely overwhelming and I mentioned a little earlier in this article our aim is to provide small business owners ‘with’ a simplified approach to lay solid foundations for improving your conversion rate and your revenue, both in the short term and for longer term growth.

Best practice website conversion rate tactics for small businesses

Here are 10 questions you can use to audit the homepage of your website to improve your customer journey and conversion rate:

  1. Are your products/services and prices shown on your homepage?
  2. Are your product / services deep linked from your home page?
  3. Is your call to action above the fold?
  4. Is your ‘buy now’ or ‘shop’ button above the fold?
  5. Is your brand message above the fold, clear and does it resonate to your audience?
  6. Do you have a pop-up or on-page email sign up form? Does it outline something they can get in return?
  7. Do you have trust factors and social proof (reviews, testimonials, industry seals, ‘as seen’ logos) on your homepage?
  8. Is your value proposition outlined on your homepage? What makes your company different?
  9. Is your shopping cart icon visible?
  10. Do you have clear customer service links such as a call number and/or live chat?

If you would like to read more about these and other best practices you can purchase my book on Amazon called “The eCommerce Growth Framework™”.

9 reasons why small businesses should love conversion rate optimization

  1. Increase sales: By optimizing your website for conversions, you can increase the number of sales you generate from your website. This can have a significant impact on your bottom line, especially for small businesses that operate on tight profit margins.
  2. Improve ROI: By increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website, you can improve your return on investment (ROI) for your marketing campaigns. This means that you’ll be getting more value for your advertising spend, which is crucial for small businesses that need to make every marketing dollar count.
  3. Understand your customers: CRO involves a process of testing and analyzing user behavior on your website. This can help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers, their needs, and their preferences. Armed with this knowledge, you can tailor your website and marketing campaigns to better serve your target audience.
  4. Reduce bounce rates: Bounce rates refer to the percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking any action. By optimizing your website for conversions, you can reduce your bounce rates and keep visitors engaged for longer periods of time.
  5. Improve user experience: CRO involves improving the user experience on your website, which can lead to increased engagement, loyalty, and word-of-mouth referrals. By making your website more user-friendly and intuitive, you can drive a higher conversion rate and increase revenue without increasing your marketing spend in advertising.
  6. Test and iterate: CRO is an iterative process that involves testing different hypotheses and analyzing the results. This means that you can continually improve your website and marketing campaigns over time, based on real data and user feedback.
  7. Save time and money: By optimizing your website for conversions, you can save time and money on future marketing campaigns. Instead of constantly trying new tactics and strategies, you can focus on what works and refine your approach based on data.
  8. Foster growth and scalability: CRO is an effective way to foster growth and scalability for your small business. By increasing your conversion rate, you can generate more revenue without having to rely solely on increasing your website traffic or marketing spend.

In conclusion, small businesses should love, know and understand conversion rate optimization because it can help them increase sales, improve ROI, gain a competitive edge, understand their customers better, reduce bounce rates, improve user experience, test and iterate, save time and money, and foster growth and scalability. We particularly love Conversion Rate Optimization at ‘with Small Business’ because small business owners can make some of the best practice changes to their homepage, product pages, checkout pages and cart pages and increase revenue without investing more money into advertising.