What is a webpage’s conversion rate?.. Worried about how it could affect your website?
Simply put, a user converts when they perform the action that the webpage was designed for them to take. For example, if an e-commerce page displays sports equipment, users convert when they decide to purchase a basketball and click “purchase.” Other examples of user conversions include:
- Filling out and submitting contact forms.
- Responding to surveys.
- Clicking to the next page on the site.
A user does not need to buy something to convert, however, as a webpage can have a variety of purposes.
Conversion rates are the percentage of total visitors to the webpage who convert. If 100 users visit the page advertising baby strollers, and two users click the ‘buy’ button, the conversion rate is 2%.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of driving this figure to it’s limits by optimization, it is an ongoing process 99.9% of the time because unless a page’s conversion rate is 100%, which is highly unlikely, it can continually be optimized even further.
Conversion rate vs. page traffic
Conversion rate is a separate measurement from a page’s total traffic or the number of visitors. As a page’s conversion rate declines, the total number of users converting decreases even if page traffic remains precisely the same. Conversely, if a page’s traffic stays the same but the conversion rate increases, the total number of conversions will go up.
How does site speed affect conversion rates?
Website performance has a significant, measurable impact on conversion rates. Study after study have consistently shown that fast webpage speed will result in a lower bounce rate leading to a better conversion rate. To simplify, the quicker a webpage loads, the more likely a user will perform the specific action on the webpage.
How fast should a webpage load? Well, approx.47% of customers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, according to skilled.co. Also per skilled.co, mPulse Mobile found that:
- At a webpage load time of 2.4 secs, had a 1.9% conversion rate
- At 3.3 secs, the conversion rate was 1.5%
- At 4.2 secs, the conversion rate was less than 1%
- At 5.7+ secs, the conversion rate was 0.6%
Other companies have experienced similar results:
- Walmart found that for every 1-second decrease in webpage load time, conversions increased by 2%
- COOK increased conversions by 7% by decreasing page load time by 0.85 secs
- Mobify found that each 100ms decrease on their homepage’s load time resulted in a 1.11% increase in conversion
These seemingly small increases in conversion significantly impact how much revenue a website generates. Suppose an e-commerce site were to produce ten million dollars in sales annually, and the conversion rate would increase by just 2% after the website’s load time is reduced by a single second (as in the Walmart case study). In that case, that’s an additional $200,000 in revenue.
What other factors besides page performance affect conversion rate?
Conversion rate is also affected by the overall design, layout, including the “content,” i.e., text and images on the page, etc. If it’s isn’t clear to a page visitor how to navigate the page, or they are overwhelmed with options, they’re likely to leave the page. Independent of all these issues, website speed optimization, should improve conversion rates even if the page still has other areas to be corrected.
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