More enquiries from your website: how to investigate and improve conversion

If you want to improve your website's conversion rate, start by deciding which action matters. For a service business, it ultimately comes down to enquiries you can work with: a relevant question, a good conversation and perhaps a new client.

First, define what a good conversion is

A click on the contact button, a download and a request for an introductory call tell you different things. They're all signs of interest, but you don't want to lump them together.

Talk to sales about what makes a good enquiry. Does the request fit the work you do? Is the timeline realistic? Is it a project you can and want to take on? If marketing counts forms and sales counts projects, you're looking at the same website differently.

Keep those definitions simple and use them consistently. Then you can see whether a change actually brings in more suitable enquiries.

Check that your tracking works

Fill in your own form from start to finish. Is the submission tracked, does it arrive, and does the same person appear three times in your CRM? Leave your own test enquiries out of the results afterwards.

Always calculate your conversion rate on the same basis. For example, the number of enquiries divided by sessions on relevant pages. Comparing a rate per user with a rate per session gives you an unclear picture.

A hypothetical example: you have 4,000 relevant sessions, 40 enquiries and 20 of those fit your offering. That's a 1% enquiry rate and a 0.5% rate for suitable enquiries. After a change, you get 60 form submissions, but still only 20 good enquiries. The first number looks better. Your sales team mostly has more work to do.

Find out where people start to hesitate

Walk through the journey to getting in touch. Does someone understand who you work for? What you actually do? How a project works? And why they should trust you with it? There's often more to improve there than in the button itself.

Use conversations alongside the numbers. Ask new clients what they wanted to know before they contacted you. Or have someone from your target audience complete a task on the website and watch where they get stuck.

A heatmap can show you where people click, for example. It doesn't tell you why they hesitate. You'll need to follow up on that.

Make your offering easy to understand

“We help brands grow” sounds fine, but what do you actually do? Make it clear who you work for, what you make and what kind of question someone can come to you with.

If someone is looking for a new website, the types of projects you work on, your approach and a realistic budget are relevant. You don't have to squeeze all of that into your first sentence. But it should be easy to find.

Use your customer's words. An internal name for a service is only helpful if the visitor understands what it means.

Put evidence where it helps people decide

Client logos can provide recognition. A relevant case study can show much more: what was the brief, which decisions were made and what did they achieve?

Put that case study where it helps, too. Explaining a complex migration alongside your migration approach gives someone an immediate sense of how you work. In a general project overview, they have to make that connection themselves.

Use real quotes and results you can substantiate and share. If you don't have hard numbers, explain the approach properly. That can be valuable too.

Make getting in touch easier

Ask for what you need for the next step in your form. A budget field can help you assess whether a project is a good fit. A required field you never use afterwards mainly makes it harder to get in touch.

Explain what happens after someone submits the form. Will they receive a reply or a suggested time for a meeting? If you mention a response time, make sure your team can meet it.

Test the form on mobile, check its error messages and try using it with a keyboard. If the form doesn't work, better copy around it won't fix much.

Work on one clear improvement

Make your expectation specific. For example: visitors don't know whether their project is big enough for our service. A clear example of project scope can help them judge that.

Decide what you want to measure and what else might change. With enough traffic, you can run a carefully designed experiment. With little traffic, you sometimes learn more from usability tests and targeted feedback than from an A/B test that barely gathers any data for months.

Look at what happened outside your change, too. A new campaign or a different season can affect enquiry numbers. Don't immediately attribute every gain to your new copy.

Keep reviewing enquiries together

Make time regularly for marketing and sales to sit down together. What enquiries came in, which were a good fit, and what does that tell you about the information on the website? That keeps the feedback grounded in day-to-day work.

Optimisation then becomes a series of concrete improvements. Want to find out where your visitors get stuck? Discuss your website with BORING. We'll look at what people do on the site and the enquiries you want to receive.