Too many companies settling for these three to 6% conversion rates when with synthetic testing and optimization, the potential for them is way higher, sometimes even up to 25 to 31%. So Amelia, let me ask you, what should businesses actually expect for conversion rates compared to these industry benchmarks?

Today we're gonna be talking about one of the biggest unknown problems that we oftentimes see in our field, and that's businesses leaving massive revenue on the table by accepting pretty bad conversion rates instead of systematically optimizing for dramatic improvements.

Yep. And talks with a lot of our clients and just knowing the industry, we oftentimes see too many companies settling for these three to 6% conversion rates when with synthetic testing and optimization, the potential for them is way higher, sometimes even up to 25 to 31%. So, Amelia, let me ask you, what should businesses actually expect for conversion rates compared to these industry benchmarks?

That's a great question. So benchmarks often hover around that three to 6%, but that shouldn't necessarily be the ceiling. That's not the top that you could get to with smart landing page design and AB testing. We've seen the potential for those conversion rates really in the 25 to 31% range, and I would say that's a massive gap that most businesses don't even realize exists. How much more revenue could companies generate if they achieved this kind of improvement? Well, we have to sit and think

about the numbers. So if you're converting 6% of traffic, bumping that up towards 30% mean you could capture four to five times as many leads without spending a penny more on ads. And for some businesses, that's literally hundreds of new customers every month. Do you find that because of that, poor conversion rates make businesses think paid advertising doesn't work?

We've had clients come to us saying Google Ads just isn't profitable for us. But when we actually dig into it, the problem isn't the traffic or even the ads keywords targeting none of those variables. But it's actually that their website or their landing page just simply isn't converting poor conversion rates make profitable campaigns appear. I'm profitable. You could be bidding on the top keywords and have the best ad copy, but if where the user lands is confusing or low converting, it doesn't match that user journey, then you're naturally going to think that paid media doesn't work. So then how do low conversion rates. Say, affect the cost per acquisition and overall profitability. Then low conversion rates drive cost per acquisition way up. Even if your clicks are affordable, if only a handful of those clicks or visitors actually convert, then your leads end up costing a fortune. You're paying for a click, so you want those clicks to convert and turn into customers.

If we reverse that, what happens to ad costs when Google detects a poor user experience?

People are bouncing right away or they don't engage. Once they click their ad, Google's gonna assume that the landing page is low quality or that you're not. Driving the correct audience to your page or that they shouldn't be landing there and they shouldn't work. That leads to higher cost per clicks and then worse ad positions overall. So basically you pay more for less. Google's penalizing you for having a low quality landing page, bad UX design, and due to the bad user experience, which then in turn creates negative feedback loop with ad prep with the ad platforms, and that's why we end up calling it the death spiral. Right? Yeah, exactly. Low convergence and higher costs equals campaigns that look unprofitable and unsustainable. So you're looking and you're like, okay, I have low conversion rates. That must mean that paid media doesn't work. So then budgets end up getting cut, your growth stalls, and then businesses just end up giving up on ads altogether. And then boom, like you said, death spiral, which as we've been talking about, can definitely be avoided. So Megan, how many potential customers do business actually lose to conversion rate problems? Well,

it's all very subjective, but it can be four out of five customers walking away. Thinking about that. You end up paying for these a hundred clicks and then 80 people disappear because the landing page isn't optimized. It isn't something that someone's gonna be able to click and be a conversion rate optimized page, and so that's a good amount of money that's end up wasted. Do you think that companies sometimes then blame this traffic quality when the real issue is conversion rate optimization?

Absolutely. It's way easier to point the fingers at bad clicks or the wrong audience. But if the site experience is weak, no traffic in the world will convert at a profitable rate. Terrible conversion rates prevent scaling even for the most successful traffic generation.

So then what's the compact impact of core conversion rates on overall ROI? It

is pretty bad. It's higher costs, fewer leads, stalled growth, and then worst of all, the false belief that paid media doesn't work. But if you flip a script, you optimize systematically, you unlock that 25 to 31% of potential conversion rates that we talked about. You can scale your campaigns profitably.

Okay, so here's another big question that'll really help. What's your sympathetic process for testing these conversion rate improvements, and how can we actually optimize them?

Most businesses and more than you think, actually end up making website changes based on assumptions. So they're like, uh, let's move this button. Let's change this headline. But assumptions aren't enough. They're not. You need something that's actually backed by data. The reality is dramatic improvements come from running thousands of rounds of AB testing over time. You love AB testing. Each test is designed to validate one hypothesis, and then the winds compound. So single changes from those AB tests. Honestly, rarely move the needle, but if you're continuously testing those continuous small gains add up to really big results over time. Megan, what tools do you use on the design side to measure and analyze test results?

We use tools, specifically Microsoft Clarity, to see what's actually happening on the page here, we're able to look at statistics like heat maps, and we're able to see. What specific buttons a user is clicking on where on the page they fall out. We're also able to watch specific session recordings from a user, and we're able to see where they drop off, how long they're on the page, how many seconds, and then we're able to run these structured AB tests based off of these statistics and datas that we have and use multiple variations. So we're able to measure significant improvements instead of just guessing what we should change on the page instead of guessing what we think will make this page a better optimized page.

So then once you find a winning test, what's your process for actually implementing it and then measuring the long-term impact? So

we roll out the winner after these 30 days permanently. Sometimes tests go a little longer than 30 days to really make sure we're getting equal amount of traffic to both versions of the page. Um, and then sometimes we keep on testing from there because it's not always a one time project. Sometimes it's ongoing. Sometimes we have to test one specific thing on the page, and then after 30 days we need to test something else on the page to continue to making sure that we are getting to that high 31%. And the long-term impact isn't just more leads that we're getting. It's a sustainable competitive advantage because then the client's campaigns are able to say profitable, why their competitors are stalling out.

Awesome. I think really to wrap up this conversation into a bow bottom line, companies need to stop accepting terrible conversion rates, start optimizing, keep testing, and aim for that 25 to 31% potential conversion rate that's out there, because when those ads stop becoming a cost and start becoming a growth engine, then you'll really see the benefits of paid media.

Your click through rate is lower compared to industry benchmarks. What are your first few things that you look at and some optimizations that you would think about making to increase that click-through rate?

Well, I typically would recommend, um, if you do have a click-through rate below 1.2%, especially in the e e-comm business.