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How To Calculate And Improve Your Sales Conversion Rates

Published on
December 23, 2024
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Picture this: You’ve spent hours optimizing your SEO Conversion Funnel, only to find your sales conversion rates still dragging. Frustrating, right? Understanding how to calculate and improve these rates is like finding the missing puzzle. In this article, you'll discover practical insights to boost those crucial numbers, making your hard work pay off.

To make the journey smoother, BlogCTAs offers a programmatic CRO tool to elevate your strategy and help you hit those sales conversion goals faster.

What is the Sales Conversion Rate?

graph - Sales Conversion Rates

The sales conversion rate is a metric that tells you how many website visitors or leads buy something. You calculate it by taking the number of conversions (like sales) and dividing it by the total number of visitors. 

Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage. This number shows how well your marketing and sales efforts are working. If it’s high, you're doing a good job convincing people to buy.

Why Sales Conversion Rate Matters

Knowing your sales conversion rate helps determine if your sales efforts are working. A higher conversion rate means your marketing strategies are on point, and people respond well. It affects how much money you make and can guide you in advertising, website design, and customer engagement decisions.

Factors Impacting Sales Conversion Rate

Many things can affect your sales conversion rate. Here are a few:

  • Website User Experience (UX): A site that's easy to navigate and looks good will keep visitors engaged. If your site loads slowly or is hard to use, people might leave without buying.
  • Quality of Traffic: Are your visitors the right people? If they aren’t interested in what you offer, they won’t convert. Make sure your marketing targets the right audience.
  • Product Pricing and Offers: Competitive prices and attractive deals can make a difference. People love a good bargain.
  • Customer Trust and Confidence: Secure transactions and positive reviews can boost confidence. If visitors trust you, they’re more likely to buy.
  • Marketing Campaigns: Effective advertising brings in qualified leads. If your campaigns aren’t working, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

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How To Calculate And Measure Sales Conversion Rates

man with a laptop - Sales Conversion Rates

Forget the fancy formulas; calculating a sales conversion rate is straightforward. You only need two numbers:

  • Total visitors
  • Total sales

Divide the sales by visitors, and you've got your conversion rate. Multiply by 100 to see it as a percentage. Let’s say 200 people visit a product page, and 10 make a purchase. Divide ten by 200 to get 0.05. Multiply by 100, and you have a 5% conversion rate. Simple, right?

More Visitors, More Sales—It’s Not Always That Simple

A high conversion rate is excellent, but it’s not the whole story. Consider a website with a 5% conversion rate of 200 visitors. Now compare it to another with a 2% conversion rate on 2,000 visitors. The second scenario leads to more sales. Quality traffic matters, but you need quantity, too. A perfect conversion rate on a few visitors won't keep the lights on.

What’s a Good Sales Conversion Rate? You Might Be Surprised

Most visitors don’t convert. A 5% conversion rate sounds low, but it’s impressive. Most businesses hover between 2% and 5%. While that might seem small, it’s a good place to start. A higher conversion rate means a better return on investment. Every uptick in your conversion rate lowers your customer acquisition cost.

Sales Conversion Rates by Industry: It’s All About Context

Conversion rates differ by industry. B2B eCommerce sites generally have lower rates than consumer-focused ones. Check out these averages:

  • Agriculture: 0.62% to 1.41%
  • Arts and Crafts: 3.84% and 4.07% 
  • Fashion: 1.01% and 2.20% 
  • Health and wellbeing: 1.87% to 4.20%

Note: These numbers may vary depending on the source. Always consider what is included in the data and how it’s calculated.

Time to Step Up Your Blog Game

Ready to boost your blog’s conversion rate with ease? Blog CTAs is a programmatic CRO tool that can increase your blog conversion rate by 3-7%+ with sidebar CTAs. 

Start capturing more leads from your blog in just five minutes. Sign up for the waitlist today!

Why Sales Conversion Rates are Important for Businesses

women on a laptop - Sales Conversion Rates

Business owners must know that sales conversion rates are crucial for a successful business. Sales conversion rates show how much effort is needed to make a sale and help determine the return on investment (ROI) for marketing and sales strategies. By monitoring these rates, business owners can optimize their efforts to boost financial performance.

Understanding Your ROI

Calculating ROI is key to growing a business. You can see the ROI for each lead when you track sales conversions. This helps you identify which marketing and sales channels deliver the most return. You can double down on these channels to attract more leads and increase your ROI.

Improving Your Sales Process

A higher conversion rate indicates an efficient sales process. If you know which channels are driving your sales, you can work to improve those areas and convert more leads into customers. Use conversion data to help your sales team close deals faster and boost profits.

Knowing Your Customer Needs

Sales conversion data offers insight into your customers’ needs and behavior. This can help you develop customer-focused strategies, ultimately increasing sales and profits.

Target Specific Customers

Tracking sales conversions lets you target customers more likely to buy from you. By gathering data on who is buying what, you can tailor your marketing messages and offers to align with their interests and needs, increasing the chances of making a sale.

Identifying Potential for Improvement

Tracking sales conversions can highlight areas for improvement. If your conversion rates are low, you can identify the reasons and make necessary changes. This could involve optimizing your sales process or updating your marketing strategy. Knowing your conversion rates helps identify areas that need attention.

Tracking sales conversions is essential for driving business profit and ensuring growth. You can make informed decisions that benefit your business in the long run by monitoring sales conversions.

Related Reading

14 Hacks To Improve Your Sales Conversion Rates

employees on a laptop - Sales Conversion Rates

Regarding increasing the sales conversion rate, it’s essential to remember the B2B sales and marketing funnels. Conversion only occurs at the bottom of the funnel. People at this stage are those who:

  • Are aware of their business problem.
  • They have done their research on the variety of solutions available.
  • Are you ready to make their purchase?

Prospects higher up in the funnel aren’t ready to convert yet. And because of this, your tactics to drive conversions will inevitably change across your funnel stages. Let’s not forget that your marketing and sales strategies can be further divided into inbound and outbound methods.

1. Invest Time and Effort Into a Blog

A blog on your site is one of the most important aspects of a good inbound strategy. To improve sales conversions, your articles should discuss your product or service and industry trends and provide helpful guides for your readers. Having good content on your blog helps you achieve several things. 

Firstly, it helps you establish your brand as a thought leader in your field. This builds the level of trust your readers and potential leads have in you. It also creates the impression that your brand genuinely offers help to your readers and prospects. Content marketing can help make your business one of those “top-of-mind companies” that prospects will think of when looking for a solution to their problems.

2. Create Content for the Right Audience

As we established at the beginning, strategies for increasing customer conversion will vary based on the funnel stage your audience is in.

Those at the top of the funnel (TOFU), or the awareness stage, are looking for more general information and might still need to identify their business problems. For them, blog articles like industry trends, statistics, and general guides are most helpful.

Meanwhile, those at the middle of the funnel (MOFU) - or consideration stage - are already aware of their business problem and are looking for solutions. Articles that compare software (such as this example on B2B lead generation tools) are the most useful for them.

Note that those at the TOFU and MOFU stages aren’t looking to purchase just yet. Your goal when planning content for them isn’t just to improve conversion in sales but to educate.

3. Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

So you’ve got a nicely designed blog page. You’ve got great content that can help answer the questions your intended audience might have. But what good are these when no one can find your blog?  That’s why your content needs to be optimized for search engines. You must also consider your audience’s search intent when developing your content strategy. 

Ask yourself: What kind of content or words is my audience searching for?

You will need to engage in keyword research before even starting to write. 

Top Sales Conversion Tip

You should start optimizing content that targets BOFU prospects. Since these people are most likely to convert, optimizing these articles will help to increase conversion rates.

4. Create Gated Content

We highly recommend that you create gated content. As its name suggests, people who want to read the content must pass through a ‘gate.’ In this case, a lead form.

Here's an example:

An example of a landing page created just for gated content.

You can even create unique landing pages for your gated content and embed a lead form. Top landing page tools can help you to do this.

That way, you incentivize those who want to read your content to provide you with their contact details.

5. Add Pop-up Forms to Your Website

And why stop at just a landing page? Create pop-up forms and have them show up on certain pages. Use pop-ups to inform your site visitors of the exciting new content that you've published.

Top tip: The more conspicuous your pop-up forms, the more likely people are to be aware of your great content, and the more likely they’ll download it. This, in turn, increases sales conversion.

6. Make It Easy for Your Readers to Subscribe

Apart from a pop-up, you should create a subscription box for your site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. This is another excellent way to convert your prospects into leads!

Big, conspicuous subscription boxes can catch the attention of your site visitors! 

Top tip: Make sure your subscription box is big and clear! This makes it easier for site visitors to notice it.

7. Use Convincing Copy on Your Opt-in Forms

And while we’re on the topic of subscription boxes... The copy you use on the boxes also plays a role in convincing site visitors to give you their contact information.

Focus your copy on the value you can deliver to them. For example, if you are a sales automation software company, your copy should focus on how you can help them improve their sales through automation.

You could say: “Receive FREE weekly expert advice on how to improve your sales.”

8. Distribute Your Content

While you should invest heavily in good content and SEO strategy, you shouldn’t rely only on that to get people to read your content. Rely on other channels, such as your social media platforms, to advertise your content to your followers. Also, get your colleagues to leverage their networks and share your content on their profiles!

This makes sense, especially on B2B-centric platforms like LinkedIn, where people often have more connections than companies. The greater your outreach, the greater the likelihood of someone reading your content. And if you distribute more content designed to convert people, you are more likely to drive conversion rates.

9. Run Digital Ads

Enter Google Ads. It’s an advertising system in which advertisers bid on specific keywords to get their clickable ads to appear in Google's search results. While it’s still an ad, it relies on your knowledge of your audience’s search intent to increase conversions.

10. Conduct Pre-call Research

For SDRs, conducting research should be a pre-call ritual. Without sales call prep, you'll come across as a salesperson who’s unprepared and possibly even uninterested in the person on the other end of the phone. Imagine being a marketing professional speaking to someone who tries to sell you a product meant for finance professionals. 

Talk about a need for more effort! Your prospects will likely appreciate the extra effort to personalize the cold call and may open up more. Apart from researching your prospects’ backgrounds, you should also research the types of questions you should ask. And this brings us to our next point...

11. Use a Cold Calling Script

You can increase outbound sales conversion rates if you carefully think about your questions and organize them logically from the most general to the most specific.

Write a quick cold calling script you can reference while on the phone. The idea isn’t to read from this verbatim but to use it to guide you in communicating your message clearly and confidently.

Top tip: The goal of a cold call isn’t to pitch to someone on the spot. You’re just trying to get them to commit to a meeting at a later date.

12. Know When to Call

No SDR wants to waste their time cold-calling the same prospect repeatedly. Yet if you’re cold calling them at the wrong times, that’s just what will happen. Peak Sales Recruiting says one of the worst times to cold call is on a Friday afternoon. This makes sense, as, by this point, most people are tuned out. They’re waiting out the final few hours of work so they can start their weekends.

Another poor time for cold-calling potential customers is on Monday morning. Many people open their laptops first and are focused on going through their inboxes. Companies often hold essential meetings on Monday mornings, as well. Then when should you call? 

Top B2B conversion rate tip: Try Wednesday - cold calls are 70% more successful on Wednesdays!

You have two windows: morning or later in the day.

If you’re an early bird, try cold calling anytime between 11 AM and 12 PM.

Call your prospect from 4 PM to 5 PM if you prefer the afternoon.

13. Don’t Give up Prematurely

Calling strangers and facing high rejection rates can be exhausting for sales reps. It’s no wonder 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call not being successful. That’s a lot of people giving up early! As cold callers, we’re not advising you to harass a prospect but give it more than a single follow-up.

Top tip:

Try four or five times! By being more persistent, you'll significantly increase your sales conversion rate. Persistence helps increase conversion rates by up to 70%.

14. Give the Prospect Time to Talk

A successful cold call lasts an average of 5 minutes 50s, compared to 3 minutes 14s for unsuccessful calls. But just because successful outbound sales calls lasted longer, it doesn’t mean that the amount of time sales reps were speaking for is the key reason for success.

So, how do we increase the sales conversion rate during that short call?

Let the prospect talk. You should offer a listening ear and learn more about their business needs.

Top tip:

The best talk-to-listen ratio for a successful cold call is 55%:45%. That’s almost a 50:50 ratio! Remember that your prospect is an individual, not just another number in a long line of leads.

Related Reading

Capture More Leads from Your Blog for Free Today with Blog CTAs

Setting up blog-wide CTAs shouldn’t be a marathon. Content management systems like WordPress, Webflow, and Ghost demand a significant time investment. This means diverting engineering talent from critical tasks, which isn't ideal. 

With Blog CTAs, you’ll reduce setup time to about five minutes, freeing up resources and letting your team focus on more pressing issues. It's a simple, effective solution to a complex problem.

Boost Conversion Rates with Sidebar CTAs

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