Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of improving your marketing and website results through data analysis and testing. Also known as CRO for short.
It’s essentially a process geared towards increasing the percentage of required actions taken on your website by visitors.
CRO may seem complex, but it doesn’t have to be. However, if you don’t know much about data analysis and using it to your advantage, it may be more complicated than you thought.
Let’s break it down a little and set you on the right path.
Your website’s conversion rate is an established estimation of how well each page of your website converts. This is based on encouraging users to take the desired action. These actions could range from something as simple as signing up for newsletters. Or to bigger actions like requesting a quote for your services.
What is the difference between CRO and SEO
SEO is aimed at increasing your website’s visibility to bring visitors and promote clicks on your pages.
With CRO, the visitors are already on your website.
CRO is focused on getting these visitors to take an action, usually, the action that is behind the content of the page.
How to calculate your website’s conversion rate
There are two important factors when calculating conversion rate; site traffic and the number of times your visitors took a required action.
Conversion rate for a user = number of times a required action was completed divided by site traffic number X 100
For example, if a user visits your website three times and makes purchases two times, the conversion rate of that user is 66%.
Conversion rate using sessions = number of orders divided by number of sessions X 100
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
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It reduces the cost of customer acquisition and increases ROI
Getting visitors to your website requires both financial and creative resources. You want to be sure that whatever you invest produces enough returns to cover your investments (ROI). A better result would be to exceed those estimated returns.
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It can be applied in all areas of your digital marketing strategies
If every aspect of your digital marketing strategy is going great, but visitors are not taking any action, the aim of your strategy is lost. CRO is important to the end goal of everything that is included in your marketing strategy.
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Engage the attention of users
Visitors need to stay interested in what they are seeing for as long as you can hold them. CRO is important in helping to hold on to their attention while directing them to the areas you need them focused on and eventually, to take an action on.
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Provides customer insight
Tracking user’s activities is very important in understanding how they think, what they expect from you, and the best ways to engage them. Data gathered through CRO initiatives will give you direction on how you can align both content and services to get users interested and make them want to engage with you.
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Helps to develop a strategy as opposed to using guesswork
Results from your CRO strategies show you precisely what your visitors are interested in, and what made little to no impact on them. Convincing someone to take an action, regardless of how large or small it is, requires that you know them well enough to influence their decision-making process. This can only be achieved if you have enough user behavior data.
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Promotes better user experience
Your users will stick around if they believe that you know what you are doing. When you understand the wants of your users and create strategies to satisfy them, they will feel comfortable enough to trust you, because they believe that you understand them. When people enjoy your services, they also begin to promote you to the people around them.
How to Optimize Conversion Rates Successfully
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A/B testing
One of the best ways to find out what people prefer is by giving them options. And A/B Testing provides options.
A/B tests are designed for website pages to determine which design/layout/content produces more conversion.
For example, you could design two or three landing pages, all focused on promoting the same result, but with different elements e.g. call-to-action button, background color, images, e.t.c. You can put these landing pages in an A/B test to run over time and using the results, determine which one brings in better results.
To use A/B testing, you should have a significant number of website visitors and run the test for a period of time. This is so you can gather enough data to make good predictions and estimates.
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Surveys and customer feedback
Getting the direct opinion of your customers gives you a clear view of how they see the content on your website. It also provides the type of effect it has on them. Feedback can be collected in several ways including online surveys, product rating, comments, satisfaction surveys, etc.
Feedback can be collected in several ways including online surveys, product rating, comments, satisfaction surveys, etc.
This information can be applied in marketing strategies to promote a better connection and to improve customer experience.
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Customer behavior analysis
Customer behavior continues to increase in complexity because of the amount of information they are now open to. A potential customer can easily research your brand, products, history and past experiences with other buyers. You need to make sure that all that information is readily available on your website.
Being open and transparent will promote trust in you. And inadvertently, prevent customers from deviating and being presented with other options from your competitors.
If you keep your consumers interested by providing all the information they are looking for, it will be easier for them to take the required action waiting at the end.
Things you shouldn’t do with CRO
Do you guess, assume, and/or go with your “gut” feeling? It’s important to realize that decisions made with the aforementioned, are not based on real data, customer feedback or even past successes.
As much as you think you know your customers, you can never be too confident that the content you are putting out will resonate with them. It’s important that you only work with data-based strategies to avoid running tests that will become inevitable failures.
How well versed are you and your organization when it comes to CRO? Do you need an experienced marketing team to grow the conversion rate of your business website? We offer conversion rate optimization services for both new and existing businesses. If interested, contact us today and we can start working on the best CRO strategies to boost your business.
