From 3% to 30% Conversions: The Strategies You’re Not Using

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Too many companies settling for these three to 6% conversion rates when

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with synthetic testing and optimization,

the potential for them is way higher,

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sometimes even up to 25 to 31%.

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So Amelia, let me ask you, what

should businesses actually expect

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for conversion rates compared

to these industry benchmarks?

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Speaker 2: Today we're gonna be talking

about one of the biggest unknown problems

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that we oftentimes see in our field, and

that's businesses leaving massive revenue

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on the table by accepting pretty bad

conversion rates instead of systematically

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optimizing for dramatic improvements.

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Speaker: Yep.

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And talks with a lot of our clients and

just knowing the industry, we oftentimes

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see too many companies settling for

these three to 6% conversion rates when

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with synthetic testing and optimization,

the potential for them is way higher,

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sometimes even up to 25 to 31%.

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So, Amelia, let me ask you, what

should businesses actually expect

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for conversion rates compared

to these industry benchmarks?

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Speaker 2: That's a great question.

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So benchmarks often hover around

that three to 6%, but that shouldn't

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necessarily be the ceiling.

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That's not the top that you

could get to with smart landing

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page design and AB testing.

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We've seen the potential for those

conversion rates really in the

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25 to 31% range, and I would say

that's a massive gap that most

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businesses don't even realize exists.

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How much more revenue could

companies generate if they

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achieved this kind of improvement?

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Well, we have to sit and think

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Speaker: about the numbers.

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So if you're converting 6% of traffic,

bumping that up towards 30% mean you could

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capture four to five times as many leads

without spending a penny more on ads.

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And for some businesses, that's literally

hundreds of new customers every month.

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Do you find that because of that,

poor conversion rates make businesses

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think paid advertising doesn't work?

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Speaker 2: We've had clients

come to us saying Google Ads

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just isn't profitable for us.

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But when we actually dig into

it, the problem isn't the

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traffic or even the ads keywords

targeting none of those variables.

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But it's actually that their website

or their landing page just simply

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isn't converting poor conversion rates

make profitable campaigns appear.

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I'm profitable.

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You could be bidding on the top keywords

and have the best ad copy, but if where

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the user lands is confusing or low

converting, it doesn't match that user

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journey, then you're naturally going

to think that paid media doesn't work.

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So then how do low conversion rates.

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Say, affect the cost per acquisition

and overall profitability.

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Then low conversion rates drive

cost per acquisition way up.

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Even if your clicks are affordable,

if only a handful of those clicks

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or visitors actually convert, then

your leads end up costing a fortune.

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You're paying for a click,

so you want those clicks to

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convert and turn into customers.

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Speaker: If we reverse that, what

happens to ad costs when Google

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detects a poor user experience?

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Speaker 2: People are bouncing

right away or they don't engage.

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Once they click their ad, Google's

gonna assume that the landing page

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is low quality or that you're not.

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Driving the correct audience to

your page or that they shouldn't be

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landing there and they shouldn't work.

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That leads to higher cost per clicks

and then worse ad positions overall.

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So basically you pay more for less.

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Google's penalizing you for having

a low quality landing page, bad

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UX design, and due to the bad user

experience, which then in turn creates

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negative feedback loop with ad prep

with the ad platforms, and that's why

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we end up calling it the death spiral.

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Right?

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Yeah, exactly.

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Low convergence and higher

costs equals campaigns that look

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unprofitable and unsustainable.

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So you're looking and you're like,

okay, I have low conversion rates.

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That must mean that

paid media doesn't work.

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So then budgets end up getting cut,

your growth stalls, and then businesses

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just end up giving up on ads altogether.

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And then boom, like you said, death

spiral, which as we've been talking

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about, can definitely be avoided.

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So Megan, how many potential

customers do business actually

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lose to conversion rate problems?

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Well,

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Speaker: it's all very subjective,

but it can be four out of

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five customers walking away.

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Thinking about that.

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You end up paying for these a hundred

clicks and then 80 people disappear

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because the landing page isn't optimized.

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It isn't something that someone's gonna

be able to click and be a conversion

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rate optimized page, and so that's a good

amount of money that's end up wasted.

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Do you think that companies sometimes then

blame this traffic quality when the real

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issue is conversion rate optimization?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely.

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It's way easier to point the fingers

at bad clicks or the wrong audience.

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But if the site experience is

weak, no traffic in the world

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will convert at a profitable rate.

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Terrible conversion rates

prevent scaling even for the most

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successful traffic generation.

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Speaker: So then what's the compact impact

of core conversion rates on overall ROI?

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It

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Speaker 2: is pretty bad.

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It's higher costs, fewer leads, stalled

growth, and then worst of all, the false

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belief that paid media doesn't work.

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But if you flip a script, you optimize

systematically, you unlock that

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25 to 31% of potential conversion

rates that we talked about.

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You can scale your campaigns profitably.

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Speaker: Okay, so here's another

big question that'll really help.

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What's your sympathetic process

for testing these conversion

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rate improvements, and how

can we actually optimize them?

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Speaker 2: Most businesses and more

than you think, actually end up making

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website changes based on assumptions.

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So they're like, uh,

let's move this button.

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Let's change this headline.

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But assumptions aren't enough.

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They're not.

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You need something that's

actually backed by data.

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The reality is dramatic improvements

come from running thousands of

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rounds of AB testing over time.

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You love AB testing.

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Each test is designed to validate one

hypothesis, and then the winds compound.

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So single changes from those AB tests.

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Honestly, rarely move the needle,

but if you're continuously testing

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those continuous small gains add

up to really big results over time.

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Megan, what tools do you use on the design

side to measure and analyze test results?

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Speaker: We use tools, specifically

Microsoft Clarity, to see what's

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actually happening on the page here,

we're able to look at statistics like

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heat maps, and we're able to see.

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What specific buttons a user is clicking

on where on the page they fall out.

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We're also able to watch specific

session recordings from a user, and

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we're able to see where they drop off,

how long they're on the page, how many

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seconds, and then we're able to run

these structured AB tests based off

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of these statistics and datas that

we have and use multiple variations.

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So we're able to measure significant

improvements instead of just guessing

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what we should change on the page

instead of guessing what we think will

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make this page a better optimized page.

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Speaker 2: So then once you find a

winning test, what's your process

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for actually implementing it and

then measuring the long-term impact?

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So

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Speaker: we roll out the winner

after these 30 days permanently.

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Sometimes tests go a little longer

than 30 days to really make sure

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we're getting equal amount of

traffic to both versions of the page.

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Um, and then sometimes we keep on

testing from there because it's

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not always a one time project.

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Sometimes it's ongoing.

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Sometimes we have to test one specific

thing on the page, and then after 30

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days we need to test something else

on the page to continue to making sure

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that we are getting to that high 31%.

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And the long-term impact isn't

just more leads that we're getting.

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It's a sustainable competitive advantage

because then the client's campaigns

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are able to say profitable, why

their competitors are stalling out.

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Speaker 2: Awesome.

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I think really to wrap up this

conversation into a bow bottom line,

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companies need to stop accepting

terrible conversion rates, start

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optimizing, keep testing, and aim for

that 25 to 31% potential conversion

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rate that's out there, because when

those ads stop becoming a cost and start

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becoming a growth engine, then you'll

really see the benefits of paid media.

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Speaker 3: Your click through rate is

lower compared to industry benchmarks.

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What are your first few things that

you look at and some optimizations

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that you would think about making

to increase that click-through rate?

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Speaker: Well, I typically would

recommend, um, if you do have a

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click-through rate below 1.2%,

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especially in the e e-comm business.