Conversion optimisation: more enquiries from the traffic you already have

How to calculate a conversion rate

Your conversion rate is conversions divided by visitors over the same period, times a hundred. Sixty enquiries from 4,000 visitors is 60 ÷ 4,000 × 100 = 1.5%. Same period, same source, same type of conversion, or you are comparing things that cannot be compared.

The arithmetic is the easy part. What matters is what you put in the numerator and the denominator. Do you count every visitor, or only those on the page where a conversion can happen? Does a newsletter signup count, or only enquiries that could become a quote? Two businesses with the same percentage can be entirely different businesses.

So we always calculate at three levels: across the site, per channel and per landing page. A site average of 1.5% sounds reasonable, but if your paid traffic sits at 0.4% and your brand traffic at 6%, you immediately know where the money is leaking.

Which tests to run, in which order

In order of certainty, not excitement. First make sure your measurement is right, then remove the blockers everyone can see, then the form, then the message, and only last the visual design. Starting with button colours means testing noise for months while the real leaks stay open.

1. 1

   Verify measurement

   No test without a reliable baseline. We validate conversion tracking and exclude internal traffic. This is not a test, it is the precondition for every test after it.

2. 2

   Remove blockers

   A broken form, a slow mobile page, a cookie banner filling the screen. You do not test these, you fix them, then compare the period before with the period after.

3. 3

   Shorten the form

   Usually the single biggest win on a smaller site. Cut fields, make required fields optional, split long forms into steps.

4. 4

   Sharpen the message

   Does the first screen say what you do, for whom, and what the next step is? Here you test headlines and button copy, not the colour of the button.

5. 5

   Add proof

   Reviews, cases and concrete numbers placed where the doubt arises: just above the form, not at the bottom of the page.

6. 6

   Clarify price and offer

   From-prices, what is and is not included, and what happens after an enquiry. This hits conversion hardest, which is why it comes once the rest is in place.

What it costs and what it returns

A conversion audit starts at € 599,-. Ongoing conversion work sits inside the package from € 999,- a month, and loose work is € 90,- an hour. What it returns you calculate with your own figures: every percentage point of improvement is extra enquiries from the same traffic.

That last sentence is the whole business case. Double your traffic and you double your advertising cost. Raise your conversion rate from 1.5% to 2.1% and you get 40% more enquiries without another euro going to Google. At 4,000 visitors a month that is the difference between 60 and 84 enquiries.

Whether that is worth the investment depends on what one enquiry is worth to you. You have that number, we do not. In the first session we work it out together, so you know before starting at what point the work pays for itself.