In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is marketing with the intention of increasing conversions—that is, site visitors who are paying customers.
Conversion marketing addresses low online conversion rates by improving customer service and overall customer experience. This typically involves a combination of personalized experience management, web analytics, and user feedback to enhance process flows and site design.
By focusing on elements such as site usability, support channels, and overall digital experience, conversion marketing is generally considered a long-term strategic investment rather than a short-term fix. Despite significant growth in website traffic over the past decade, average conversion rates have remained relatively stable. As a result, conversion marketing strategies prioritize optimizing existing traffic rather than simply generating more visitors.
This approach involves the proactive use of real-time analytics to identify signs of visitor hesitation or intent to abandon a site. In response, targeted messaging, interface enhancements, and personalized content are deployed to guide users, highlight value propositions, and increase the likelihood of conversion. Post-sale, marketers may continue engagement through support services or re-engagement campaigns to strengthen customer retention.
Conversion marketing spans the full customer lifecycle, using integrated tools to support transitions between each phase—from initial interest to repeat purchase.
Conversion marketing efforts are often measured by the conversion rate, which represents the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as a purchase or form submission.
Common conversion marketing services
Recommendations Behavioral analysis that identifies products and content relevant to the customer's perceived intent. Targeted offers Targeting attempts to fit the right promotion with the right customer based upon behavioral and demographic information. Ratings and reviews Using user-generated ratings and reviews to increase conversion rates, capture feedback, and engender visitor's trust. Email personalization E-mail with embedded recommendations and chat that are tailored personally to the recipient. Chat As consumers tend to abandon sites after only three clicks, attempts to use proactive chat, reactive chat, exit chat, and click-to-call to convert consumers quickly. Click-to-call Supports cross-channel conversion without losing the context of the conversation when visitors move from the website to the phone. Call to action (marketing) Statement designed to get an immediate response from the person reading or hearing it. Broadly used in business as part of a digital strategy to get your users to respond through one single action. Cobrowsing Tool for support agent infrastructure (chat or call) to assist customers in transacting online. Voice of the customer Feedback about products, services, and online experiences that is captured through carefully analyzed structured and unstructured data. Automated guides predetermined steps that allow a customer to better understand product features, and options to assist with the selection process. Retargeting Identification of visitors interested in particular products or services based on previous site browsing or search to offer relevant content through targeted ad placement.Methods of increasing conversion rate
Main article: Conversion rate optimization
The process of improving the conversion rate is called conversion rate optimization. However, different sites may consider a "conversion" to be a result other than a sale.3 Say a customer were to abandon an online shopping cart. The company could market a special offer, like free shipping, to convert the visitor into a paying customer. A company may also try to recover the customer through an online engagement method, such as proactive chat, to attempt to assist the customer through the purchase process.4
Among many possible actions to increase the conversion rate, the most relevant may be:
- Employ Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) principles to design the user experience through the conversion funnel
- Enhance the user's credibility and trust in the site, the product, and the business by displaying third-party trust logos and by quality site design
- Improve site navigation structure so that users can browse and shop with minimal effort
- Improve and focus the website content, including text, photographs, illustrations, and video, towards target conversion
- Review, and edit or remove obsolete or distracting data
- Increase usability to reduce barriers to conversion
- Create a self-serving customer service format by letting the user reach informative answers quickly with a learning database.
- Offer active help (e.g. live chat, co-browsing)
- Generate user reviews of the product or service
- Gather a baseline user experience by recording user actions and compiling key objections
- Enable clear tracking of standardized metrics using website analytics software for a predetermined conversion goal (e.g. "increase volume of newsletter subscriptions" or "decrease shopping cart abandonment percentage rate")
- Take repeated action to monitor and improve the site, based on quantitative and qualitative metrics
- Add a clear offer to the web page such as a price discount or special add-on offer like an eBook
See also
- Berkeley-Study on Conversion rate in Spam [1]
References
De Clerck, JP. "Customer intelligence: why and how a data-driven business is a customer-centric business". Archived from the original on 27 March 2012. Retrieved 3 April 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120327173033/http://www.conversionmarketingforum.com/en/blog/customer-intelligence-why-and-how-data-driven-business-customer-centric-business ↩
"Conversion Marketing: Definition & Guide". MarketingSherpa. Retrieved 2025-06-04. https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/how-to/conversion-marketing-definition-guide ↩
"Conversion Rate". http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/conversion_rate/ ↩
"Conversion Marketing". 15 December 2009. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/conversion_marketing.html ↩