Website ROI Calculator: What, How, and Why?
Did you know that interactive content generates 2 times more conversions than passive content does?
If your website has passive content, then it’s time you reconsider its design. This is especially true if you’re not happy with your conversion rates and want to grow your business more.
A great idea is to have a website ROI calculator. This is a fantastic type of interactive content that provides value for your site visitors.
Are you interested? In this article, we’ll discuss what ROI is, what an ROI calculator is, why you should have one for your site and more.
What Is ROI?
“ROI” is an acronym for “return on investment.” Essentially, this means one thing: was it worth investing your money into the service, purchase, or event?
Of course, this is a very heavy question. Not only do you have to consider the amount of money you’ve put into something (such as the creation of a whitepaper), but you also have to think about things like how many stakeholders were involved and how much time they invested into the project or event.
A very simple way to break ROI down is to look at the formula itself. You take your profit gained from the investment, divide it by the cost of investment, and then multiply it by 100.
To get the profit gained from investment, you don’t look at the revenue earned from it. Instead, you need to take the extra revenue earned and subtract the expenses from it.
What Is an ROI Calculator?
If you’ve ever tried to get a car loan or mortgage, then you’ve probably used an ROI calculator before. You plug in the necessary information, and then you get a projection for whatever it is you’re looking at (for instance, the maximum amount you can get for a mortgage).
In the beginning, ROI calculators were first used heavily only in the real estate and financial industries. But once people discovered how useful they are, ROI calculators started spreading across all sorts of industries.
For your customers, they can get a glimpse of what’s available to them and how attainable it is. For example, if they previously thought a certain amount for a mortgage was unattainable but then the ROI calculator tells them otherwise, this can drive them to take action that they wouldn’t have done previously.
Why Would Consumers Use a Website ROI Calculator?
Doing something without measuring the results is just not a wise choice. At first glance, you may think to attend a trade show was a good idea, especially since you’ve gathered a decent amount of leads.
But you need to dig deeper.
What exactly have you put into this trade show? Did you have to spend a significant amount of money to get banners and other things for your booth? Did you spend lots of marketing in the weeks leading up to the event to attract more people to visit you during the event?
You need to factor in all these costs and time spent, not just what you had to do and spend on the day itself. You need to take a look at everything in the CRM that you’ve gathered from the trade show, and from there, you can determine if the cost per lead was worth it.
If you’re a B2B business, then it’s likely that your prospects and customers go through the above scenario often.
As you can see, it can be time-consuming to tally up everything on their own. If you can offer them a website ROI calculator where all they have to do is enter the necessary information and get numbers instantaneously, then you’ve provided these consumers with an invaluable resource.
How Can Website ROI Calculators Help Marketing?
The job of your marketing team is to get consumers into the funnel so your sales team can push them along into the decision and purchase phases. Because of that, one of the main goals of marketing is to promote your brand. That way, people know who you are and will turn to you when they need your services.
Having a website ROI calculator is a fantastic idea for brand promotion. It’s a helpful tool, so when users find out how handy it is, they’ll be compelled to share it within their own circles. Not only will word get out about your brand, but you’ll also build a reputation as a reliable and trustworthy business.
It’s a Valuable Lead Generation Tool
An ROI calculator placed on a landing page has so much potential. Your marketing team can use it as a lead generation tool in multiple campaigns.
For instance, they can link to it in CTAs, email marketing campaigns, and even paid display ads. As you can see, a website ROI calculator can be promoted across different channels, which makes it extremely handy to have for campaigns.
It’ll work much better for lead generation that static content (such as whitepapers and ebooks). Because users can plug in their own numbers, it creates a highly personalized experience, which is what consumers want. So you’ll get much better engagement and conversions by replacing your static content with dynamic (which is the ROI calculator in this case).
Get Rich Customer Data to Further Optimize Campaigns
We all know campaigns are based on customer data; the more you have, the more relevant you’ll be to your target audience since you can get a clearer picture of what the buyer persona is.
When customers choose to enter their personal information voluntarily on your website ROI calculator, you know this is rich data because they’re not just entering it to, say, access gated content. They’re doing so to assess their own situations, so you can trust they’re being honest when they’re filling out the fields.
From this data, your marketing team can hone their campaigns to resonate with prospects. In turn, they can generate higher quality leads for your sales team.
How Can Website ROI Calculators Help Sales?
Once your marketing team’s gotten prospects get interested in your brand, the usefulness of your website ROI calculator doesn’t just stop there.
Your sales team will be nurturing these prospects. They’ll keep in touch to stay top of mind, and they’ll also send content that’s helpful in driving prospects to the purchase phase.
If a prospect seems to be wavering, a website ROI calculator can be just what it takes to close the deal. Your sales team can show them concrete numbers, which can motivate them to choose you over your competitors. This is especially true if your competitors don’t have personalized content that can show prospects the value of their products or services.
How to Build a Website ROI Calculator
A website ROI calculator will always be based on the equation we provided you with from above: profit gained from the investment divided by the cost of investment, multiplied by 100.
You can always try and have your own team create a website ROI calculator, especially if you already have developers on hand. But this can take them weeks to do, which will take time away from their work at your business.
Instead, you should turn to specialists in interactive content, such as Ion Interactive. They can help you put together a sleek website ROI calculator quickly so you can up your conversion rates in no time.
How Ion Interactive Can Help
Ion Interactive is an experienced company when it comes to website ROI calculators. They’ve been specializing in the creation of interactive content and the rapid deployment of it for years now, which means they’re the experts you need on your side.
They have a prefabricated template for an embedded ROI calculator, which you can quickly put on a landing page. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s generic; in fact, it’s the opposite.
Ion Interactive’s embedded ROI calculator can be branded and customized quickly. It can even be launched without development, which means you can have a live website ROI calculator in under an hour. This will save you lots of hours trying to have your in-house developers come up with an ROI calculator on their own.
How Website ROI Calculators Can Help You Comply With Privacy Laws
Before you can start building an ROI calculator for your website, you need to first figure out which privacy laws you need to conform to and how. When people use your ROI calculator, they’re entering sensitive information, after all, so you need to ensure you’re dealing with that data in a compliant way. If you don’t, not only do you risk hefty penalties, but you might also lose consumer trust.
Below are some of the common privacy laws you’ll find in the world.
GDPR
“GDPR” stands for “General Data Protection Regulation,” which is European regulation. It was first made on April 14, 2016, but wasn’t implemented until May 25, 2018. This was to give businesses ample time to prepare for the implementation of GDPR. Previously, they were subscribing to the laws set forth in the 1995 data protection directive.
GDPR was revolutionary, as it gave consumers more control over their own data. Companies must obtain clear consent from users before collecting their data. Plus, this data should easily be accessible by people.
If your company has over 250 people, then you need to document why data is being collected, as well as how long it’ll be kept for and the security measures you have in place to prevent sensitive data from being compromised.
For consumers, they’re allowed to access their data for free and must be provided with it within one month. They also have the right to request that data be removed from your database.
If you don’t comply with GDPR, you face some hefty fines. They can be up to €10 million or 2% of your global turnover, whichever has the higher amount.
CCPA
“CCPA” is the “California Consumer Privacy Act.” Although it was first adopted in 2018, it didn’t go into effect until recently, on January 1, 2020.
CCPA operates very similarly to GDPR. It empowers consumers by giving them 5 key rights:
Right to notice
Right to access
Right to deletion
Right to opt-out
Right to equal services and prices
As you can see, the first 4 rights are pretty much identical to what GDPR dictates you need to do with customer data. However, right #5 is a bit different.
In the last right for consumers, they cannot be discriminated against when it comes to goods or services if they try to exercise their other rights. This means you can’t charge them a different amount or give them a different quality of goods/services based on if they exercise their CCPA rights.
If you violate CCPA, you have 30 business days to rectify it. If you don’t, you can get a penalty of up to $2,500 per violation. It can be as high as $7,500 per violation if they determine you’ve made these intentionally.
LGPD
This privacy law is one that comes from Brazil. As you may have guessed, this is the Brazilian version of GDPR.
“LGPD” stands for “Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados” and was first passed in 2018. However, it didn’t come into effect until February 2020, which means it’s still very new. Considering the country had over 40 statutes for data governance, LGPD unified them all and made things a lot simpler and clearer.
For the purposes of this article, you can just assume that LGPD is almost identical to GDPR. Of course, there are nuances, but so long as you follow the general rules for GDPR, you should be fine. One of the main differences is the legal basis for processing data; GDPR has 6 bases while LGPD has 10.
If you violate LGPD, you can be fined up to 2% of the previous year’s revenue or 50 million reals, which is about €11 million.
A Prefabricated Website ROI Calculator Will Help You Comply Across the Board
Remember how we mentioned that it’d take weeks (or even months) to develop a website ROI calculator? Part of that is figuring out how to collect customer data without violating any of the privacy laws above.
By working with an expert like Ion Interactive, not only do you quickly get a live website ROI calculator, but you also get peace of mind knowing everything is being ethically and legally collected. They’re experienced in dealing with privacy laws, so rest assured that all data will be collected, stored, and used in the right way.
Add a Website ROI Calculator to Drive More Conversions
If you’re struggling to get the number of conversions you want, then we highly recommend you add a website ROI calculator. When consumers can see actual numbers up on the screen, they’ll feel more comfortable and secure in taking the next step.
An ROI calculator can enable consumers to answer their own questions, as these calculators let them play around with multiple scenarios. When they can experiment, users will feel better about making a purchase, especially if they can already predict how well that’ll go for them.
As you can see, adding an ROI calculator to your website will also create great ROI for your company. It’s definitely a worthwhile investment, so make sure you get to working on one as soon as you can.
If you’re interested in building an ROI calculator to increase your conversion rates, then get in touch with Ion Interactive today. They’ll help you create one that attracts more customers to your business.