Every business owner knows the feeling: you’re getting thousands of visitors to your website, they’re poking around and then, they leave without doing anything! You’re seeing impressive traffic numbers, but the bottom line isn’t the same.
Conversion optimization is the secret sauce that will help you turn these idle visitors into purchasing customers! This comprehensive guide will take you through everything you need to know for optimizing conversions, from basics to advanced strategies that work.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion optimization is a system for increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a goal on your site. These actions, referred to as “conversions,” can include anything from purchasing a product to subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or submitting a contact request form.
Conversion optimization is, at its heart, just learning how users behave and figuring out what is stopping visitors from converting. Instead of pushing more traffic to your site, it aims to make the most of what you already have by enhancing the user experience and reducing visitor worries.
The magic of conversion optimization is that it’s data-driven. Instead of trying to guess what should work, you will be able to try different things and see how it influences real user behavior. This progressive methodology guarantees that your optimization grows your business metrics and makes an impact.
Conversion Metrics Explained
Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take your desired action. You can calculate it by dividing total conversions by total visitors, and then multiplying that number by 100. So, for instance, if 50 of 1,000 visitors make a purchase, then you have a 5% conversion rate—learn more about mastering CRO marketing for better results.
Average Order Value (AOV)
AOV is the average spend on each transaction. This KPI will give you an idea about how your customers are spending and where their chances are to enter more revenue from each one through leveraging upsell or cross-sell strategies.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV is the total revenue that you’ll get from a customer throughout your entire business relationship. It is this metric that can help you decide how much you can spend in order to acquire and retain your customers.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who leave your site after only viewing one page. If you have high bounce rates, it can mean your landing pages are not meeting your visitors’ expectations or offering them relevant content.
Exit Rate
Exit rate is the percentage of people who leave your site from a particular page. Exit rate, unlike bounce rate, takes into account readers who saw multiple pages before leaving. It might be an indication for an online business perspective of optimization opportunities if there are high exit rates on important pages.
You Need to Look at Your Existing Conversion Funnel
Your conversion funnel is the path users take from first hearing about you to buying from you. Getting that journey right like this makes it clear where potential customers are falling off and why.
Mapping the Customer Journey
Begin by planning each of your conversion steps. A normal e-commerce funnel might involve:
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Landing page visit
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Product page view
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Add to cart
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Checkout initiation
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Purchase completion
And now, record those conversion rates for each phase to determine which are the most optimal areas for optimization.
Identifying Drop-off Points
Leverage analytics tools to identify where visitors are dropping out of the conversion process. Typical drop-off locations are:
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Vague value propositions on landing pages
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Product pages are missing necessary details.
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Complex and lengthy checkout experiences
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Unexpected costs or fees
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Poor mobile experiences
Heat Map and User Session Recording
The mapping tools’ heat map shows where visitors click, scroll, and hang out on your pages. Session replays show literal video footage of your users’ actions, and frustration points or usability problems that are not revealed in numbers.
This information will allow you to understand the “why” and optimize your campaigns more strategically.
A/B Testing Tips and Tools
A/B experiment is the basis of successful conversion optimization. This is a method of testing two different pages/elements to see which one is better.
Planning Effective Tests
Good A/B tests begin with informed hypotheses grounded in data and user research. Instead of blind testing random changes, here are some elements that can change user behavior:
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Headlines & Unique Value Propositions
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CTA buttons (color, text, location)
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Product description and images
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Fields and the checkout process
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Page layouts and navigation
Statistical Significance
Test for a sufficient duration to establish statistical significance, usually a minimum of a 95% confidence level. Terminating experiments prematurely can cause incorrect inferences and wasted optimization attempts.
Take into account things like traffic levels, conversion rates, and seasonal factors to help you determine how long to run your test. Low-traffic sites might have to run experiments for a few weeks, or even months, in order to collect enough data.
Popular Testing Tools
There are a few accessible A/B testing platforms:
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Google Optimize: Free testing tool that integrates with Google Analytics
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Optimize: Enterprise-grade optimization with robust A/B testing functionality.
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VWO: Testing platform with heatmaps and user recordings built in
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Unbounce: Best for landing page optimization and testing
Personalization and User Experience
Advanced conversion optimization is more than just “progressing the course” – it’s about building more personality into our copy so that it speaks to unique segments of your audience.
Audience Segmentation
Split your list up depending on certain qualities such as:
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Where the traffic is coming from (SEO, social, PPC)
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Geographic location
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Device type
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Previous site behavior
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Whether the customer is new or returning
Different parts of each segment may react to messaging, promotions, and page design in unique ways.
Dynamic Content
Serve user-targeted content according to profile or behavior. Examples include:
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Displaying regionally applicable specials to visitors from multiple regions
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Showing recently viewed products to returning users
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Personalizing headlines based on traffic source
Trust Signs and Proof of Social Life
Develop trust through strategic use of trust signals:
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Customer feedback and comments
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Badges and Certifications for Safety
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Logos of prominent customers you have worked with
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Money-back guarantees
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Industry awards and honors
Social proof helps to kill purchase anxiety and offers the validation that many visitors base their purchasing decisions on.
Techniques for Mobile Optimization
Mobile traffic keeps increasing, so mobile optimization is not only needed, it is vital for any conversions.
Responsive Design Principles
Make sure your site is fully responsive so it can be accessed by any device or size. Key considerations include:
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Large, touch-friendly buttons and gaps between them
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Readable text without zooming
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Images that load quickly and are optimized for the mobile experience
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Simplified navigation menus
Hurdles to Conversion on Mobile
Mobile users have more of these obstacles that can stand in the way of conversions:
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If we load slowly over a mobile connection
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Filling forms is cumbersome, especially on small screens.
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Complex checkout flows
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Pop-ups that deny access to content
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page)
AMP technology provides highly optimized mobile pages that can dramatically increase conversion rates for mobile traffic. Not applicable for all sites but works great on content heavy pages and ecommerce product listings.
Get Inspired: Great Examples of Conversion Optimization
E-commerce Product Page Optimization
One online retailer saw a remarkable 34% boost in conversions simply by making small, strategic improvements to their product page—discover more in e-commerce marketing strategy guide.
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Extra customer reviews and scores
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Supplemental size guides and information on fit
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Displaying better quality images, and from more angles
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Made it easier to add into the cart
SaaS Landing Page Turnaround
A software company doubled signups for their trials after redesigning a landing page:
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Clarified the value proposition in the headline
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Scratch from Form fields 8 to 3
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More customer logos to serve as social proof
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Urgently Overcame Objections With Time Sensitive Offers
B2B Lead Generation Success
A consulting company became an 187% more leads with strategic optimization:
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Industry segmented traffic and personalized messages
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8548Club Replaced default contact forms with service inquiries
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Included additional case studies appropriate for each user segment
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Did a progressive profiling to minimize the form abandonment
Success Measurement and Continuous Improvement
Having Realistic Goals
Big gains are not made overnight. Plan for slow progress not to wish for overnight miracles! Looking in-and-analyst-finding out …said results used to be factored out by industry averages are 10–25% optimization improvement per quarter in successful programs.
Creating a Culture of Optimization
Organizational Commitment To Succeed At Conversion Optimization:
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Regular testing schedules
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Work closely with marketing, design and dev teams across the company
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Data-driven decision making
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Customer feedback integration
The Future of Conversion Optimization
Optimization strategies are being shaped by new technologies:
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Personalization engines based on AI
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Voice search optimization
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Product experiences in augmented reality
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Customer behavior predictive analytics
