If you’ve ever been in a business early, you’ve probably heard the term Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) mentioned amidst conversation about how to improve marketing performance. But what exactly is CRO and why should you care about it for your marketing strategy?
Conversion Rate Optimization simply means enhancing your website, software product, or digital assets so that visitors are more confident and likely to take a desired action there. The term “conversions” can take many forms—from subscribing for a newsletter, to participating in a webinar, to making purchases on the spot. CRO is all about optimizing every contact a company makes with its customers online in order to increase both sales and return on investment (ROI) without spending more on advertising.
By the end of this post, you will learn:
- What is conversion rate optimization about
- Why CRO is indispensable for every digital marketing strategy
- Specific steps you can take today towards getting started with CRO on your site
Knowing how CRO works will unlock new potential in your marketing efforts.
Why Is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
Many Web businesses make Internet traffic their pet peeve. But the fact is, after my homepage has 1,000 visitors in one day; what next? Conversion Rate Optimization bridges that gap by perfecting the experience and guiding users through your funnel to take important action.
Maximize ROI
CRO allows you to effectively make the most of the traffic you already have. Rather than pouring money into bringing more visitors, it ensures your current ones are converting at higher rates and giving better overall return on investment (ROI).
For example, if 10,000 people visit your site each month and 2% of them convert to customers, that works out to 200 customers. But even a modest increase in conversion rate to 3% means an extra 100 customers every month without spending an additional dime in advertising.
Better Experience = Better Engagement
Happy users are more inclined to stay and engage than not, while also more likely to come back for your next offering. A site optimized for sales and leads isn’t just good business; it’s great copywriting too.
When copywriters involve themselves in CRO (conversion rate optimization) as an experiment, they strip out any friction from the user’s path and make his or her experience seamless, intuitive, pleasant–and successful.
An obsessed focus on CRO means you do that — remove friction. That could be 1 click instead of 10, or 10 seconds to completion instead of 30. But the result is pleasant.
Now we know that CRO makes good sites great websites. But is it enough? What about SEO, UX design, and so on down the line? Data holds the answer for your business: and Customer Research Optimization (CRO) empowers you with new insights for marketing sales success.
Overlap and Leak: Competing Forces within CRO
On the Internet, there are no safe harbors. The more knowledgeable your market becomes and the faster transactions must be processed, lower our chances are for success. But CRO can help to turn things around; it doesn’t matter if we are reporting on athletes or accounting software—by improving user ease of use all across our site, this optimization work boosts income prospects while reducing effort expended.
- The bounce rate
- Exit rate
- Traffic sources
- Lost points in the channel
You can track where users are getting lost and how you can better guide them from analyzing this data.
User Behavior Tools
Use tools to dig inside the numbers:
- Heatmaps which show which blocks users concentrate in most.
- Session recordings of a user journey as affected.
- Surveys for direct access to audience feedback.
These tools help give you the view of user issues and opportunities. They afford you a whole new perspective. Learn more about Tools
A/B Testing
A/B testing (or split testing), a key practice of CRO, means doing just that: Putting two variations of a page or function next to each other and seeing which performs better. For example, you can A/B test headlines, CTAs, or even the color of a button to find out which one gets more clicks.
Optimized Landing Pages
Landing Pages are often the place where conversion matters, so you’re going to have to do some testing. Take note of the following categories:
- Double headlines
- Call-to-action on both sides of the page, and how obvious is it?
- Page structure to help draw user eyes—use the main elements
- Mobile accessibility
Everything about your Landing Page is designed to operate with maximum effectiveness.
The CRO Step-by-Step Guide
It’s your turn to dig in and start your CRO practices.
Step 1. Set Clear KPIs
Start With Skills! Choose your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Depending on your business goals, your KPI could be sales, leads, or another critical measure.
Step 2. Analyze The Data
Sink into website statistics and look for high-traffic underperformers, pages that are ripe for optimization.
Step 3. Understand Your Audience
Make detailed customer personas to understand who you’re dealing with, what they’re looking for, and how you can help them. This guides your CRO strategy.
Step 4. Make UX Better
Now have a look at your site to try and find any blocks or obstacles that frustrate the user. Slow loading times, poor navigation, or hard-to-read fonts can strike conversions.
Step 5. Make A/B Testing
Begin experiments! Whether it’s different headlines, CTAs, or page layouts, be sure to change only one variable at a time so as to keep testing pure.
Step 6. Iterate and Refine
CRO is not a single event. Regularly scan your campaigns to refine strategy based on performance.
CRO Tools to Stack Things In Your Favor
Use the right tools to rethink how your brand approaches CRO, and we promise that it will speed up progress:
- Hotjar – Get exclusive heatmaps and user opinion
- Optimizely – Full power A/B testing experiments
- Unbounce – Hassle-free production of high-converting landing pages
Tactical Fundamentals of Optimizing
Put simply, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) allows you to get far more from your website traffic. Whether you are hoping to pick up customers for less or make a great brand experience out of people who already love you, CRO is something any marketer or business professional who wants to win must do.
Are You Getting Any Results from Your Optimization Yet?
If you’ve not started focusing on CRO, now is the time! By using data, improving your user experience, and testing all the time, you can see all those results for your marketing campaigns.
Need help planning your website’s conversion strategy? Today, send us a message! We’ll show you how to add Sparking Success to your site or app with our CRO knowledge.
