You’re good at marketing your event. But it doesn’t matter how many people you drive to your event page if only a small percentage of them buy a ticket.

That’s why optimising your conversion rate — the percentage of page visitors who hit “buy” — is so critical. Improve your conversion rate, and you’ll turn more website visitors into attendees. Ignore it, and your marketing budget could go to waste.

Let’s take a look at how to optimise your conversion rate, so you can make sure your promotional efforts pay off in actual ticket sales — not just page views.

Calculate your current conversion rate

The math is simple: How many visitors come to your site each day? How many tickets do you sell online each day? Your conversion rate is the number of tickets sold or registered attendees divided by the number of unique page visitors.

For example, in April you had 25,000 unique visitors to your event page and sold 400 tickets (or conversions). Your conversion rate would be:

400 / 25,000 = 0.016 OR 1.6%

If your conversion rate is low (the average rate in ecommerce is 1.33%), then you need to consider how you can make it easier for people to buy tickets on your page. You could start with…

Simplify your ticketing flow

There’s a reason Amazon and other sites offer one-click purchasing. If it’s difficult to navigate your event website, you’re putting barriers in the way of people who might want to buy tickets. Many people will give up as soon as buying a ticket becomes difficult.

One in four online buyers won’t complete a purchase that requires them to make an account. And one in ten buyers drops off for every extra step in a purchasing process. Hidden fees that are revealed at the end of the purchase process can also make potential attendees close the window — just seconds from committing to attend.

Optimising your purchasing process by making it easier and faster to buy will boost your conversion rate — and your sales.

Be mobile-friendly

In 2013, consumers started interacting with online retailers more on smartphones and tablets than from traditional computers, and that trend has only continued. So it’s vital that you make their browsing and purchase experience easy on mobile.

Don’t frustrate visitors with a page that doesn’t display well on a phone or with excessive forms that are hard to fill out with fingertips and a tiny keyboard. Studies have shown a 160% lift in purchase completion with mobile-optimised payments.

Go where the people are

Don’t just direct people to your event page on social media — direct them to your checkout page. If you use Eventbrite, you can even connect to Facebook and sell tickets directly from the platform. By putting your event where your audience is already spending time online and reducing the number of steps to checkout, you can dramatically boost your sales.

In fact, we’ve seen over 100% more people getting tickets when they are available directly on Facebook.

In Conclusion

Instead of obsessing over how much traffic you’re driving to your event website, try focusing on optimising your conversion rate instead. You’ll see a big boost in sales with no extra marketing pounds required.