Today, many marketing teams focus on driving traffic to websites in hopes that this traffic then converts into qualified leads for sales reps to close. That’s only half of the equation –getting more out of existing traffic and leads (rather than entirely new traffic) can drive companies toward long-term, sustainable growth.
That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. In this guide, you’ll learn about the power of CRO, why your business should focus on improving your conversion rate, what to avoid and how to get started.
There are factors that affect your business’ success beyond web traffic — things like quality, customer service, etc. In order to improve conversion rates, you need a CRO tool.
What is Conversion Optimization?
Conversion optimization (CRO) is a marketing technique that improves conversion rates of websites and online stores. It involves improving the design and layout of the website, as well as selecting effective marketing channels.
CRO is the process of enhancing your website to increase the number of leads you generate, and it is achieved through content enhancements, split testing, and workflow improvements. Conversion rate optimization results in highly-qualified leads, increased revenue, and lower acquisition costs.
CRO mistakes to avoid
There are a number of common mistakes that marketers make when trying to achieve high conversion rates. Here are three of the most common:
1. Design improvements without prior testing
A poorly designed website may not be user-friendly or attractive. It will also be difficult for people to find what they are looking for. Building a new website design using web optimization services prior to implementation will help to avoid problems like this.
2. Trying to achieve too much with one campaign
A single marketing campaign cannot achieve everything that is needed to improve conversion rates. It is important to test different campaigns and find ones that work best for your website or store.
3. Focusing on short-term results
Marketing efforts should be aimed at improving conversion rates over the long term. It is important to look for ways to improve your website or store’s performance without changing the way it looks and operates
4. Forgetting about human nature
Customers may shop multiple times from a single merchant before making a purchasing decision, but they will not do so if they perceive that their efforts are being ignored or that the process is slow. The best approach is to test out different tactics and marketing strategies in order to get better results.
Why you need CRO
Achieving a high conversion rate is one of the most important goals of any marketing campaign. Conversion optimization (CRO) is the process of making sure that your website and marketing efforts are leading to conversions or sales from visitors.
There are a number of ways to optimize your website for conversions, but there are also a number of common mistakes that marketers make. In this guide, we’re going to share some of the most common conversion optimization mistakes and how to avoid them.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your website and marketing campaigns are maximizing conversions. Having a single conversion-optimized landing page is the most effective way to increase your conversions.
Calculate, then implement
1. Conversion optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the rate of conversion of your website visitors into leads and customers.
2. The most common mistakes that marketers make when implementing CRO are failing to measure and optimize their efforts, over-optimizing for short-term gains, and neglecting customer feedback.
Before we take a look at implementing CRO, let’s walk through how to calculate your site’s conversion rate to have a better understanding of how much time and resources to invest in a CRO strategy.
Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors and multiplying that number by 100 to get a percentage.
As long as you know how you’re defining a conversion, then calculating your conversion rate is easy. You just plug in two values and multiply by 100.
For example, you’re outlining a conversion as a newsletter opt-in, and there is an opt-in form on every page of your website. In that case, divide the total number of newsletter form submissions by the total number of website visitors and multiply it by 100.
So if you had 500 submissions and 20,000 visitors last quarter, then your conversion rate would be 2.5%.
You can repeat this process for every conversion opportunity on your site. Just make sure to only count the number of visitors on the webpages where the offer is listed. For example, if you want to calculate the conversion rate of an ebook offer, then divide the total number of downloads by the number of people who visited web pages where the ebook is offered.
Otherwise, you can calculate your website’s overall conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions for every conversion opportunity on your site by the total number of visitors on your site.
Where to implement a CRO strategy
There are four website areas that have the biggest potential to benefit from conversion rate optimization:
1. The homepage
The homepage is an optimal candidate for CRO because it’s your visitors’ first impression – so it is an opportunity to retain visitors and guide them into your website. Visitor retention can be enabled by emphasizing product links, free signup buttons and calls-to-action (CTAs), or a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors.
In order to increase business through website traffic and leads, you have to have a solid conversion rate for each visitor and lead that comes into your site. This means that you need to measure and optimize how many people convert to your offers, how many of them are converting, and how long it takes them to do so.
2. Pricing page
A website’s pricing page can be the final decision point for most website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page transform visitors into customers by adjusting the pricing intervals (e.g. price-per-year vs. price-per-month), describing the product features associated with each price, including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote, or adding a simple pop-up form.
3. blogs
Blogs offer huge conversion opportunities. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content, blogs can use CRO to convert readers into leads. The CRO process includes adding CTAs throughout the blog article or inviting readers to take a deeper dive into tops by submitting email addresses in exchange for ebooks or industry reports.
By using tracking software such as Google Analytics, you can better analyze conversions from all visitors in order to determine who is most likely to convert on your offers and what might be keeping them from converting.
4. Landing pages
Landing pages are designed to entice people into taking action. For example, an even landing page can be optimized with a video of previous events. Also, a landing page that offers a free resource, like an ebook or whitepaper, can be optimized with preview content that encourages visitors to complete a download
Forms should also be designed with a clear and concise form process. You don’t want visitors to spend too much time on your form, or they might lose interest in signing up for your email list or becoming a lead.
Make sure that all of the content on your website is optimized for SEO. This means that you should use keywords throughout your content, and you should make sure that your title tags and meta descriptions are optimized for search engines.
Finally, make sure that you’re tracking your conversion rates on a daily basis. This will help you to track which pages are converting well, and which pages need more attention.
By using tracking software such as Google Analytics, SEMRush, etc., you can better analyze conversions from all visitors in order to determine who is most likely to convert on your offers and what might be keeping them from converting.
Read about the most effective post-pandemic B2B lead generation strategies here
Conclusion
There are many CRO best practices available. Ultimately you need to find what your customers respond to and what drives results.
When marketing and technology collide, cutting-edge ideas emerge. Connect with your audience at the right time by leveraging nerd-tested, creative-approved solutions backed by data science, technology, and strategy.
Author BIO – Larry Nicholls is the Marketing Manager at Incrementors. Incrementors is an award-winning digital marketing company that is expanding their businesses online by bringing in more customers, leads, and sales. Incrementors focuses on offering clients highly specialised, individualised web marketing solutions.
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