Learning conversion rate optimization is fundamental if you want to maximize your opportunities to convert people into leads, and then into customers. When you focus on attracting your target audience, demonstrating why they should choose your products, and remaining loyal to your brand, you will close more deals and increase your profits.
What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves implementing specific marketing strategies to increase the number of people who will take a desired action. It can be clicking on a call-to-action button on an email, signing a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or buying a product, for example.
It includes all the processes you take to grow the percentage rate of conversions on your website, app, and other platforms. You can include CRO tactics on your homepage, pricing page, landing page, email marketing campaigns, ads, social media posts, blog posts, and forms.
CRO can help you conquer more qualified leads, elevate the revenue per customer, reduce customer acquisition costs, and gain loyal clients. It depends on what your goals are and the techniques you will apply.
How To Calculate Conversion Rate
Before establishing the conversion rate you want to achieve, it is important to calculate what your current conversion rate is. To do this, you need to divide the number of people who took the desired action by the number of visitors. Then, multiply the result by 100, and you will get the percentage.
Imagine you created a landing page inviting people to download your ebook. You had 2000 visitors and 75 downloads, the calculation is 75÷2000=0,038, 0,038x100=3,8, therefore your conversion rate is 3,8%.
Conversion Rate = (Number of conversions ÷ Number of Visitors) x 100
What is The Average Conversion Rate
Knowing the average conversion rate is important to help you set achievable goals. According to a LittleData's survey of Shopify stores, their average conversion rate is 1.4%. The 20% best Shopify stores have over 3.4% average, while the 10% best ones presented over 4.7%.
According to Speed Commerce, the average global e-commerce conversion rate in 2025 is between 2% to 4%.
- Retail (Fashion, Jewelry, Shoes): 1.9%
- Electronics & Home Appliances: 3.6%
- Home Decor: 1.4%
- Personal Care Products: 6.8%
- Cars & Automobile Parts: 2.1%
- Food & Beverages: 4.9%
- Pet Care: 2.32%
The average conversion rate varies from devices too. The Speed Commerce report also revealed that, despite mobile devices having higher traffic, 79%, its average conversion rate is lower than from desktops, 2.9% against 4.8%.
Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices
1. Know Your Target Audience
It is fundamental to know who your target audience is to define what strategies will be effective to gain leads and turn them into customers. Invest in market research, use analytics tools to segment your website visitors, identify their consumer behavior, and the type of content that attracts them.
Based on that, you will be able to create highly engaging marketing campaigns, write CTAs that work, and achieve your conversion rate goals. You need to know what someone is looking for and what drives them to take action, to give compelling reasons why they should do what you are suggesting.
2. Invest in Personalized Content
Personalized content is a powerful tool to drive someone's attention because you are addressing their interests and needs directly. It doesn't mean only adding the person's name in emails and messages, but giving personalized product and content suggestions based on their browsing history on your website.
3. Write Effective Calls to Action
The call to action is where you tell the person what the next step they should take is. Therefore, it needs to be short and clear with no room for misinterpretations. The CTA must also be strategically placed on the page, where it won't go unnoticed. Highlight it by using a different font and color, for example.
4. Use Trust Signals
Customer ratings and reviews work as social proof and give validation to your brand and products. It enhances your brand credibility and authority, which helps to convince undecided customers. Add them to your product pages and email marketing campaigns.
5. Use Heatmaps for Websites
Heatmaps reveal useful information about how users interact with your pages. You can identify the areas with more and less engagement, where they click, and the most and least popular spots. You can use them to place the CTAs in the places where users pay more attention, and improve the weak spots.
6. Run A/B Tests
A/B tests allow you to experiment and assess two different versions of the same website page, ad, social media post, or email. It enables you to analyze what strategies work best for conversion purposes.
7. Add Pop-Ups
Pop-ups may seem annoying and just a distraction from what the user wants to see, but this conception is proven wrong when they are placed on the right page at the right time. Use the data gathered about your target audience to include pop-ups in pages where users are more likely to become a lead or to make a purchase, for example, and don't forget to personalize them.
8. Integrate a Chat Tool on Your Website
Sometimes, what is lacking for someone to complete a purchase is solving their doubts about a product or service. You can easily solve that by adding an AI agent to your website. You can place a chat window on your pages where everyone who accesses it can just type their demand, and immediately receive an answer.
An AI agent, like the one offered by JivoChat, can analyze the question, search for the best solution in the company database, and provide an effective answer. If necessary, it can redirect the conversation to a live agent. The AI agent diminishes the response time and helps to close deals.
