What is the conversion rate on the site, and how can I increase it?

"What is more important, a website or an online advertisement leading to it?" This question is asked by almost every business owner who sells goods or services through a website. 
Based on many years of practice, there are two extremes. Some marketers bring the design of a website or an online store up to an ideal and believe that this is a sufficient condition for the site to sell. 

Others, on the contrary, believe that good "catchy" advertising will lead to a huge number of buyers, and on the site, it is only important not to forget to specify the phone number that you need to call to place an order. 

Often, these extremes lead to deplorable or insufficient results for business. What should I do to get buyers from visitors who came through contextual advertising or other ways of promoting on the Internet?

Let's take a closer look at each stage — what the user is doing and what ways we have to improve the conversion rate on each section of his path. 

Query in a Google search, and how does it affect the increase in the conversion rate

We start working on advertising by analyzing users' search queries. We prepare and run ads only for target queries. To achieve the best result with a sufficient amount of semantics, we divide the target search queries into groups that can be typed in Google search by "hot," "warm," and "cold" potential customers. Each group uses its own advertising strategy. In the process of advertising, the list of requests is constantly being adjusted: an advertising specialist monitors statistics, replenishes the list of negative keywords, and disables phrases that do not give the advertiser the desired result. 

Viewing search results

The user enters a query on our topic in the search and sees the search engine output page, where there are many different sites. At this stage, we need to stand out so that our advertising is noticed. There are different ways: a high display position, an intriguing title, an unusual description, figures, facts — choose what suits you. You can make several variants of ads for each search phrase and, by launching several pieces at the same time, see in rotation what will work better. The optimal number of ads for each phrase is 3–4. 

Selecting an ad and clicking on it

If a user notices our advertisement, that's very good, but we also need a person to want to click on the link. Attract a potential customer by any available means: the advantages of your product, prices, discounts, gifts, warranty service, and other calls to go and get something interesting and profitable. 

Viewing the landing page of the site 

And finally, by typing a query in the search, noticing your advertisement, and clicking on the link, the visitor finds himself on your site. It is very important that on the page where he was, the user immediately saw what he was looking for. Always direct visitors to the pages that match their queries and the text of the ad. Advertising should be configured in such a way that the user who comes to the site does not have to search for the right product or service. It should immediately get to the product page. The visitor will definitely feel your concern for his time and convenience and will appreciate it. 

Performing a target action to increase the conversion rate

This is the crown of our entire chain of user engagement. The visitor placed an order, sent a request, downloaded a catalog, made a call, or wrote to the support chat. There can be a lot of targeted actions; mark any important active user actions on the site with goals. If you have an online store and a visitor needs to perform a sequence of actions to place an order, mark each action with goals. This will help you understand where your visitors get lost and why they don't reach the final goal.