Here is a very simple way to determine if your website is working well (as in, working hard) for your business… or if it’s not:
Step 1:
Login to your Google Analytics account. If Google Analytics is not installed on your website or you are not sure if it is, contact us and we’ll assist you. If you use Oribi, use that instead.
Step 2:
Using your Google Analytics account or your Oribi account, check to see how many unique website visitors your website received from people in your geographic market area last month. Write this number down.
If you don’t know how to find out this information, ask your website provider to provide you with a report by specifically requesting, “Please send me a report from Google Analytics showing the total number of unique website visitors to my website [insert website name] from my geographic market area [tell them what it is – eg. ‘Wide Bay’, ‘Brisbane’, ‘specific suburb names’, ‘Bundaberg’, ‘all of Queensland’, ‘Australia wide’, etc] for last month please.” You can also ask them to start sending you monthly reports with this exact data.
Or if you want to, you can do a short course on using Google Analytics (an entry level HubSpot course is here) to learn how to look-up this data yourself.
Step 3:
If you are a service-based business, we assume you (or your reception team) keep track of how many phone enquiries and online form enquiries your website helps generate each month. Add up the total number of enquiries you received last month, then write it down if you don’t already have a written record of it.
Step 4:
THEN, calculate your enquiry conversion rate for last month. Calculating your conversion rate is fairly easy. All you have to do is divide the number of conversions you get in a given time frame by the total number of people who visited your site during that same timeframe and then multiply it by 100%.
Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100
For example, if your website had 8 website enquiries (conversions) last month and 120 visitors during the same month (from your geographic target area) your conversion rate is 6.6%.
Step 5:
Repeat the above steps for each month during the last 6 months. You’ll then be able to calculate your average ‘website enquiry conversion rate’ score for the last 6 months.
Quick Tips:
You can do the same type of calculation if you wish to work out your sales conversion rate if you operate an online shop, OR if you wish to work out a conversion rate for any landing page including those you may have set up when using Google Ads. OR for any landing page(s) you may have created to promote a special limited time offer or some other marketing campaign promotion. An example is an online Valentine’s Day competition we ran for a client earlier this year, where we used Facebook Ads to promote the competition. You can view the landing page we created for that campaign here.
If your enquiry conversion rate is too low, it can mean one of many things. Four of the most common ones are below:
- Your website is not a good representation of your business and therefore not encouraging people to contact your business. They are contacting your competitors instead.
- Your website looks outdated/ it does not look modern and appealing.
- Your website is a good representation of your business (and looks modern) but is not attracting enough website visitors from your geographic target market area each month. This means your website needs ‘traffic-driving strategies’. Things like Search Engine Optimisation and Google ads.
- It could also mean a variety of issues including a slow ‘webpage load time’, a broken enquiry form, irrelevant or boring text, it is attracting the wrong audience, or the services (and/or promotions & special offers) on your website don’t have enough perceived value. If you’re operating an online shop, it could be related to product prices, difficulty filling out your checkout system, high shipping costs, lack of returns policy or warranty information, broken website code preventing people from being able to purchase or a host of other things. Similar issue too if you are selling an online course.
Here are a few additional quick tips:
- If you want to find out what is causing low website conversion rates, ask a professional website strategist to assist. Once asked we then do a full audit analysis of your website & traffic and then report back to you.
- It is a good idea to calculate and document your website conversion rates every few months so you can identify if your website is working well or needs attention to get it working better.
- If your conversion rates are good, but you don’t feel you’re getting enough enquiries per month, all you need to do is ramp up your traffic driving strategies.
- Most service-based businesses want/ need a monthly enquiry conversion rate higher than 3% each month. Many aim for above 5%.
If your website has a monthly average enquiry conversion rate of less than 2%, your website is not working anywhere near hard enough for your business. - If on the other hand you own (or manage) an online shop and your average monthly sales conversion rate is below 3%, you might want to see if it can be improved. Many people who own online shops aim for a monthly sales conversion rate of 7% or higher.
Jay Daniells has been doing advanced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) work for clients since 2010. He is an SEO specialist. He first started doing SEO work in 2005. He has also been creating websites full-time since 2003. Amongst things Jay is also a graphic designer, digital marketing consultant and creative person. His focus is helping businesses, community groups, clubs, charities, organisations and other entities achieve their goals. He is the owner of Green Valley Digital.