
Glossary Terms:
- Lead: Someone who might be interested in what you offer
- User Flow: The path a visitor takes once arriving on your website; the order of pages they visit
- Conversion: When a lead takes your desired action (like signing up or filling out a contact form), that equates to one conversion
- Exit Rate: The percentage of visitors that leave your website after viewing a page
Introduction to Website Marketing Series
Welcome to the final post of our website marketing series where we'll focus on making small changes to your website to help reach your goals.
So far, you have established your website's purpose and crafted an intended flow for visitors to follow through your website. You've also developed a plan to drive traffic to your website. With the data gathered from your effort to better understand your visitors’ path through your website, you identified the potential friction areas on your website where people get stuck or leave before taking your desired action. These friction points give you a place to start optimizing.
What are conversions, and why should you care?
A conversion occurs when a website visitor says "YES!" and takes your desired action. Common website conversions include:
- Filling out a contact form
- Signing up for email updates
- Requesting more information
- Applying to a major or program
- RSVPing for an event or visit
- Making a purchase
- Joining a subscription program
Your conversion rate shows how many visitors say "yes" compared to your total visitors:
Conversions ÷ Total Pageviews × 100 = Conversion Rate
For example, if 50 students click "Apply" after 1,000 of them visit your program page, your conversion rate is 5%.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) means making your website better at getting visitors to say "Yes!". It starts with identifying areas for improvement on your website that will increase the conversions you receive.
A simple process for a high-converting website
Beginning with conversions in mind is a great idea for any new webpage or campaign. The process might look something like this:
- Set a specific goal
- Example: "Get 25 new high school juniors to sign up for our campus tour this month"
- Implement tactics to achieve the goal
- Add a prominent "Schedule a Visit" button on every program page
- Share weekly student testimonials on Instagram to attract new visitors
- Review your results (as we covered in our previous post)
- Make improvements based on what you learn
- Maybe your form is too long for busy teenagers
- Perhaps your "Schedule a Visit" button needs to be more visible
- You might need to add more photos so students can visualize themselves on campus
Clues from your website analytics
Beyond user flows, you may have also noticed other unexpected metrics while reviewing your results:
- Pages with higher traffic than you anticipated
- Pages with a high exit rate
Pages with surprisingly high traffic
The content on these pages is perceived as valuable and clearly resonates with your audience. Optimize these pages with care. The messaging is important, but it may be an opportunity to lead them toward your desired conversions.
Pages with high exit rates
The exit rate for a page is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing the page. When lots of visitors leave from a specific page, it usually means one of two things:
- They found exactly what they needed (great!)
- They got confused or disappointed (not great)
If you see many returning visitors, they're probably finding value. If not, that page needs help!
How to optimize under-performing pages
Content strategy improvements:
- Review content clarity – Would a 17-year-old understand what this page offers and be interested? Is the next step they should take obvious? Put your most important information at the top where visitors will see it before scrolling.
- Reduce friction – Remove anything that makes it harder for visitors to take action. Keep forms short and simple. Remember that many browse on phones and have limited attention spans on websites.
- Eliminate distractions – Does every block on the page serve a purpose? Cut anything that doesn't help visitors move toward converting.
- Create urgency – Your button text should motivate action.
- "Limited spots available for fall workshop" vs. "Sign up now"
- "Schedule your campus visit before classes end" vs. "Schedule a Visit"
- Match expectations – Make sure your content delivers what visitors expect to find. Research what search terms bring them to your page and address those specific interests and questions.
Pro tip: Compare your page to competing programs. If they use videos and testimonials while you have heavy text, consider updating your content to match your audience's preferred method of consuming information. The CALS/LAS web team can help you do a program comparison. Reach out to us at websupport@iastate.edu.
Next steps
Test one change at a time
Don't change too much too quickly! Make a change and give it time to reflect in your results. One change at a time will help you better understand your audience's needs and preferences.
Lastly, don't forget that you can take advantage of heatmap testing with the analytics dashboard. Reach out to our team to set up a specific test page and start recording visits with the heatmap.