One of the most important metrics for performance-oriented campaigns and any eCommerce or website whose purpose is to generate sales, sign-ups, or downloads, is the conversion rate. Conversion rate is the primary indicator of a marketing campaign’s success; it reveals the proportion of visitors who have taken some sort of action after seeing the ad, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, becoming a fan on social media, and so on.
Everything relies on the campaign’s goals and the brand’s strategy, and to boost your marketing efforts’ effectiveness, conversion rate optimization (CRO) should become a routine too. This is why, as a crucial KPI, the conversion rate is commonly addressed, discussed, and negotiated in the typical interactions between agencies and the marketing departments of their respective clients.
The Importance of CRO Marketing
For marketers looking to boost revenue without increasing their marketing budget, conversion rate optimization is the future. This KPI should be monitored and optimized constantly. The higher the conversion rate, the more customers we’ll bring in for our clients and the more money they’ll make, which can lead to more money being spent on ads because they’re a profitable return channel.
However, optimizing the conversion rate is not as easy as it seems, just like with any other KPI in marketing. Be sure that this KPI is in sync with the rest of the client’s metrics so that the organization can reach its long-term goals. The CRO may be superior if the segmentation is appropriate but the acquisition volume is limited. This is because the success of a campaign can be coerced by the sector market if we bid significantly below the market average in our campaigns.
How to Improve CRO
The term conversion rate optimization describes a group of techniques used to increase the proportion of site visitors who complete any desired action, like signing up, downloading something, buying something, etc. CRO is an all-encompassing endeavor that can be approached from various angles.
Analyze Your Website Traffic
Assessing the conversion funnel and pinpointing the points where users are dropping out is the first step in increasing the site’s conversion rate. To do so, you’ll need a web analytics tool to set up conversion tracking and web page events.
At this point, you should examine factors like your site’s conversion funnel, page load times, content performance, traffic sources, and demographic and geographical data. The point is to understand how people find out about your website, whether it’s through social media, ads, or Google search, as well as what is it that attracts them to what you are offering.
Conduct A/B Testing
By comparing the performance of two landing pages with different designs, A/B tests can help you determine which one yields the best results. Colors, calls-to-action, copies, images, and font sizes are just some of the things that can be tested with the help of A/B tests. Simply put, to statistically determine which landing page version performs best, you will randomly show visitors one of two versions of the page on 50% of all visits.
Analysis of Acquisition Campaigns
Evaluation and optimization of acquisition campaigns, intended to increase conversion rate, are also crucial components of a site’s CRO as a whole. It will be necessary to focus on a variety of factors during the acquisition phase to boost performance.
To better allocate resources, you should analyze the segmentation used in each campaign and prioritize according to visibility and performance on different devices, among different audiences, and locations, as well as the times when performance is highest. This will help you focus on the segments that work best, and plan your investment better.
Among the many factors that can increase your conversion rate is a test of your advertisements. It’s simple to put different ads to the test, each with its own set of claims, copy, and calls to action, to determine which ones result in the highest conversion rates.
Conversion rate optimization can also be informed by a test of the landing page across multiple campaigns. The key to increasing sales without increasing campaign investment will be to test different types of landing pages or to check if the conversion rate of a campaign improves by sending the user to a product category page or an individual product page.
In a Nutshell
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) encompasses all efforts to enhance a website’s effectiveness in converting visitors into buyers, including but not limited to marketing optimization, website optimization, landing page optimization, testing, customer experience, usability, and so on. Following these simple guidelines can help you see a significant rise in conversions. Remember to keep track of your actions, as doing so will provide you with important data for future decision-making.
Running a successful business depends predominantly on your conversion rates. And, dominating your conversion rates is how well you know your customers. So, whether you are starting a new online business, or whether you have been struggling with your conversion rates, there are a few techniques that you need to get right first.
With this in mind, we decided to unpack a few ways that you can increase your conversion rates. We took a look at some of the most popular and successful ways that companies around the world are using to get to know their customers and increase traffic and revenue. So, let’s get stuck straight in.
Measure and Track Customer Behavior on Your Site
The first question that we ask most online retailers is if they know what’s happening on their site. Do you know how much traffic is coming into your site on a daily basis? Do you know what is happening with that traffic? How does it behave on your site? Is it bouncing off specific pages or progressing through the sales funnel?
Having this kind of information at hand is key to planning your campaigns and making adjustments to your strategies. If you really don’t have the capacity and the resources to do it yourself, you can look into hiring conversion rate optimization services. They provide you with the relevant information you need to understand what needs to be changed in order to increase the number of visitors who become paying customers.
If your budget doesn’t allow for these kinds of services, you can take matters into your own hands. First, measure your site traffic and conversion rate on Google Analytics. Here, you can track where your traffic is coming from and how it is behaving. You can also monitor conversion and open rates on your social platforms as well as on your email platforms.
Know Your Customer by Bringing Them in With Relevant Content
Thousands of brands go to extreme lengths to draw in customers. But the fact is, with the right quality and frequency of content, you can organically attract your customer directly to your site. One way to achieve this is to create a knowledge base.
A knowledge base on your site is an educational portal for your customers, and employees alike, to access vital information about your company’s products and services. Here, you are able to provide them with useful guides, how-tos and troubleshooting literature. There are a number of great knowledge management systems available for you to provide this kind of content to your potential customers.
You can use this to take advantage of keywords and phrases that your potential customers will be searching for. So, if they are searching for a how-to to use the latest tech gadget, which you just happen to be selling, for example, they will organically come across your site.
In this way, you will be establishing yourself as an authority figure in the field with the customer, and offer them a solution for their issues. So, your qualified target audience will come directly to you.
Map Your Target Audience and Use Social Media to Reach Out
One thing that we do not see a lot of companies doing is mapping their customer. This is a process where you will take a comprehensive look into who your customer is, what their demographics are and what their interests and behaviors are. This kind of information allows you to create an effective marketing strategy that will fully appeal to them.
So, let’s look at an example. Assume you are an organic food retailer. Your customer might be a mid- to upper-income individual that lives in urban areas and is interested in overall health, fitness, and healthy living. As a result, it will be worthwhile creating campaigns that include those kinds of interests.
When creating sponsored social posts, you are able to directly target a customer who is interested in a certain activity. So, you can reach audiences beyond your followers who are into health and fitness. Creating content that combines these interests with your product or services will give you a step ahead and convert those users.
A/B Test Everything
We have already touched on how important data and information are to make decisions, and the next thing we want to go into is A/B Testing. This is the process of providing two different variants of an element of the site to determine which works best.
So, things like your CTAs, your images, your copy and the layout of your landing pages can all be tested. Usually, you can test them simultaneously and monitor what gets clicked on the most. Or, what seems to drive the highest traffic. It is only important not to index one of the pages as Google will pick it up as duplicate content and penalize you.
But using these two different elements, you can see what appeals to people more and what seems to drive more traffic and conversions. Anything from the color of your CTAs to product descriptions can be tested.
Last Thoughts
In conclusion, keep your customer journey in mind at all times. You will want to ensure that from the moment they enter your site, they are surprised and delighted at all times. Keep up with current trends, as well as what your competitors are doing.
Are you aware of the fact that businesses strive hard to obtain a certain sales volume? This is what every business is doing regardless of the type of services or products. Running after customers is not the right approach because this trend is gone. People do not trust a business if it constantly emphasizes that its services are the best out of all.
So, businesses need to behave smartly while approaching customers and for this purpose, knowing their interests and buying power is crucial. Below, some highly useful facts have been unveiled that can help every company to ensure better conversion rate optimization.
Optimized Content Drives Relevant Traffic
CRO is possible only if you make sure to approach the targeted audience that seems willing to buy your products or services. Optimized content is one of the best ways to drive relevant traffic to the site and while writing the content, you must be aware of targeted keywords.
The desired action of any company is that the visitors add items to the cart and click the button to place an order. You can achieve this particular goal by publishing optimized content only.
Outsource CRO to a Renowned Agency
It can be a tough job for many businesses to create high conversion leads because this might not be something they are experienced at. So, outsourcing can be a valid solution to it. Once you choose a renowned CRO agency based in London, lead generation won’t be a headache to you.
This will prove a great decision because businesses can focus on key tasks while the leading agency works on the conversion rate optimization.
Better Lead Nurturing
The reason why most businesses struggle hard to approach customers is that they rely on lead generation only. This is not an accurate strategy because leads are of no use if you do not nurture them further.
There are certain ways that can nurture lead generations for high conversions. So, make sure that you do proper research on CRO before you start investing your time, efforts, and money in it.
Social Media Hype Always Works
This might be an indirect way of approaching customers however the results are amazing. In this era when social media proves a great influencing platform, you cannot skip it from CRO strategies. So, it is mandatory to create social media hype regarding your services, company, and products.
This is something that will never leave you empty-handed. A strong social media base proves beneficial to every business, especially to startups.
Search Engine Optimization
For CRO, you must be aware of the pros of SEO. Conversion rate optimization is easier if you do SEO of the website because it ultimately lets you appear on the top. Once your website pages get ranked on search engines, CRO won’t be a big deal. However, still, you should ponder other aspects to make sure that people visiting your site are actually taking interest in buying your products and services.
There are many brilliant benefits that come with tracking your brand, be it big or small. From helping brands figure out their ideal target audience to appraising the success of advertising campaigns, you’ll find that brand tracking slips easily into all aspects of your overall marketing strategy.
Sadly, these benefits are not enough for everyone.
That’s understandable. Marketers work with the main aim of generating conversion and that’s not something you can really do with a brand tracker – or is it?
This article will zone in on one fantastic advantage of brand tracking: improving conversion rate optimization (CRO). Discover some of the ways—including offering eBooks and other startup resources—you can track your brand to keep pushing your CRO numbers even higher and attract large numbers of visitors to your website.
How to Improve CRO with Brand Tracking
Figure Out the Best Startup Resources to Offer
If there are startup resources of value on your website, then there’s a strong chance that web users will click through to check them out.
Take digital eBooks for example. You obviously don’t want to give away all of your secrets in one, but if you write skillfully and knowledgeably about your niche and specialist subject, then you’ve just created a startup resource that other brands can learn from. Such content can position you as a thought leader in your niche. And what are people willing to provide in return for valuable information? Their email address.
Providing an email address via gated content is an important conversion because it provides you with a way to build a relationship with a consumer and guide them toward purchasing your product.
But how do you know which resources will drive conversion? It’s easy: use brand tracking. When tracking your brand, you’ll have your finger on the pulse when it comes to who are the consumers with the best perception of your brand and better adapt your mind map ideas. You can segment the data to discover the defining characteristics (e.g. age, location, frequent traveler, etc.) of the consumers interested in your brand and generate content that will appeal to them.
Keep Working on Brand Awareness
Every customer journey begins with brand awareness. So, to really facilitate growth and conversions from the beginning, you must begin here. Only when consumers have achieved a good level of brand awareness can you push them further down the sales funnel.
Brand tracking comes into play here. You can use brand tracking software to track brand awareness for your target audience over time. The software can also be used to track brand campaigns so you can see exactly which campaigns are having a positive impact on brand awareness.
With these insights, you can determine the best campaigns for driving brand awareness and keep running them, or something similar, to achieve your goals. Similarly, you can see which campaigns aren’t working and discontinue them before you burn your budget. To get a better idea of what might work best for you, check out these tips from branding experts.
Making your target audience aware of your brand is a great achievement in terms of conversion. Once you’ve planted this seed in their minds, you should find that people will proactively seek more information about your brand and start their journey toward the ultimate conversion: sales.
Look to Turn Customers into Brand Advocates
Customers who love your brand’s products or services could potentially become your brand advocates. From teaming up with social media influencers to simply offering a referral program for current customers, there are many ways you can create customers who continually vouch for your brand.
Brand tracking data will accurately show you the demographics most in tune with your brand. Using this insight, you can decide which form of advocate would be more appealing to your target audience.
Once these advocates get to work, they’ll be very persuasive in showing customers the benefit of your brand—and getting customers to purchase from you should be effortless. And you can measure the impact they are having using a brand tracker!
Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and all those big marketing tools are great in helping improve your CRO. However, none of these tools can give you insight into the mind of your target audience like a brand tracker can. Need proof? Work your way through the steps ahead to see the difference it makes to your CRO.
No matter what type of business you run, converting site visitors into customers is the root of success. Figuring out ways to optimize your conversion rates isn’t easy. The number of leads collected translates to the percentage of new customers gained from those leads, so the more leads you collect, the better.
When visitors land on your page, you want them engaged, or they’ll bounce away to another site. Around 80 percent of those abandoning a website won’t return a second time. Higher engagement leads to higher conversion rate optimization (CRO) and lower bounce rates.
How do you increase conversions on your website and reduce bounce rates? Here are six web features that lead to higher CRO and follow-through:
1. Offer Incentive to Buy Now
One method to upping your conversions is creating a sense of urgency in the site visitor. Offer a discount if they order within so much time, and it may just put them from the maybe column to the yes column and convert them into customers.
Even in traditional retail, there is a rule of thumb that if a customer walks away, they’re less likely to return and make a purchase. Online, you have the advantage of abandoned shopping carts and collecting an email. Follow up on any abandoned shopping carts with an email offer that provides an incentive for the consumer if they complete the order within 24 hours.
Schwan’s creates immediate sales that are only good until midnight that night, encouraging visitors to order within a few hours and save on sale items. In addition to daily deals, the site also offers various coupons, such as saving $20 on the entire order.
2. Speed up Your Pages
Studies show that slow-loading websites drive visitors away. A mere one-second pause in load time translates into 7 percent fewer conversions. Speeding up your site requires a multifaceted approach that includes optimized images, a fast web host and limited scripts.
3. Provide Printable Coupons
Local businesses should provide printable coupons customers use when ordering services or visiting a brick-and-mortar store. Conversion rates aren’t just about who buys the second they land on your page. There are times when the customer thinks over the purchase and then comes back to your business as their solution.
Add printable coupons to your page and remind customers of your business days or even weeks later. This method works well for service businesses in particular.
Haynes Plumbing uses printable coupons to great advantage. First, it places a coupon in the footer of its page, serving as a sort of call to action for the site visitor. It also has a page devoted to available coupons. The coupons cover different services Haynes Plumbing offers, such as new sump pumps, water heaters and toilets. Print the coupons or simply mention when you call.
4. Test Call to Action Buttons
Your calls to action (CTA) directly impact your conversion rates. About 53 percent of websites don’t have a clear CTA that’s easy to find. In a perfect world, your CTA stands out and grabs the attention of site visitors almost immediately.
One study showed that out of 330,000 CTAs, those with personalized wording converted 202 percent better than generic CTAs.
However, minor tweaks make a big difference in how effective your CTAs are. A change in the wording on the button, its color or placement all works toward better or worse CRO stats. Test your CTAs and do so often. Anytime you make a change on your landing page, test against the previous version and see which CTA performs best with your target audience.
5. Buttons Should Look and Be Clickable
User experience (UX) determines how long users stay on your page and whether they’ll return, which directly impacts your CRO. Make sure any CTA buttons not only look clickable but are clickable.
The button should contrast sharply with the background of the page, so it stands out and the user feels it is something clickable. When the user does click on the button, it should immediately shift to the action you’ve asked the user to take. If the button says, “Get a Free Quote,” clicking on it should pull up a form that gathers information for the quote.
Think through the steps a site visitor goes through to turn into a lead and make each step of the process as simple as possible.
Hulu does an excellent job with its CTA button by creating a burst of green that stands out against the muted blue background. The button is rectangular and easily clickable and states “Start Your Free Trial.” Once the user clicks on the button, they immediately go to a page with several options, including no commercials or adding Live TV to the package.
6. Drive User Trust
Step into the mindset of your site’s visitors. Imagine you’ve never heard of the brand before and you’re not sure you can trust the company. What would sway you toward making a purchase? One way to overcome the doubt of new leads is providing reviews and testimonials showing other people’s glowing praises.
Consumers read about 10 reviews online before feeling a local business is trustworthy. On top of that, 84 percent of people believe online reviews are just as reliable as a personal recommendation. Gain the trust of consumers with authentic reviews from current customers.
Improving CRO
Improve your website CRO takes time and testing. Try different methods and add various features, studying the results of each change and seeing what works best with your specific audience. Even a small increase in conversions improves your revenue and makes your marketing efforts more successful.
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.