Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Success Metrics That Actually Matter.

Make your website work smarter rather than not harder and generate more qualified leads and customers with conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Today, most marketing teams are focused on driving traffic toward websites in hopes that this traffic then converts into qualified leads for sales reps to close. But that's only half the battle.

Getting more out of existing traffic and leads (versus entirely new traffic) can propel 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, and how to get started.

What is a conversion rate?

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, like completing a web form, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product.

A high conversion rate means your website is well-designed, formatted effectively, and appealing to your target audience. A low conversion rate could be the result of a variety of factors related to either website performance or design. Slow load times, a broken form, or copy that doesn’t convey the value of the offer are common reasons for a poor conversion rate.

What is a good conversion rate?

A "good" conversion rate depends on your industry, niche, goals, traffic channel, and audience demographics, among other factors. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites globally was 2.17% in the third quarter of 2020, which was down from 2.37% the previous year. The ecommerce conversion rate in the US was higher, however, at 2.57%.

The average not only differs by year and by country — it also differs by niche. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites in the food and beverage sector is 5.5% whereas the average in the hair care sector is 3.5%.

If your conversion rate is lower than you'd like — maybe it's below average in your industry, or lower than your top competitors, or simply underperforming against your own goals — then it's time to optimize.

Where to Implement a CRO Strategy

Here are four areas of your website that have the potential to largely benefit from conversion rate optimization.

1. Homepage

Homepages are prime candidates for CRO. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, the homepage is also an opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website.

You can do this by emphasizing links to product information, offering a free signup button, or even incorporating a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience.

2. Pricing Page

A website's pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying 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.

Hotjar, for example, added a simple email opt-in popup form on its pricing page and got over 400 new leads in just three weeks.

3. Blog

A blog is a massive conversion opportunity for a website. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content about your industry, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into leads.

This process often includes adding calls-to-action (CTA) throughout an article or inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for an ebook or industry report.

4. Landing Pages

Since landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action, it makes sense that they have the highest average conversion rate of all signup forms at 24%. An event landing page, for example, can be optimized with a video of last year's event to encourage visitors to register this year. A landing page that's offering a free resource can be optimized with preview content from that resource to encourage visitors to download it.

Now that you know where you can optimize for conversions, you may be wondering how you know when your business is ready to start the process.

Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies

Here are some applicable conversion rate optimization marketing strategies to test and implement at your company.

1. Create text-based CTAs within blog posts.

While it's considered a best practice to include CTAs in a blog post, they sometimes fail to entice visitors to take your desired course of action. Why?

Banner blindness is a real phenomenon related to people becoming accustomed to ignoring banner-like information on websites. This lack of attention coupled with the fact site visitors don't always read all the way to the bottom of a blog post (rather, they "snack” on content), means a different approach is required.

2. Add lead flows on your blog.

A lead flow is another conversion rate optimization element you can include on your site. Lead flows are high-converting pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value.

You can select from a slide-in box, drop-down banner, or pop-up box, depending on your offer. We experimented with the slide-in box on the Dreamsdesign Blog back in 2016 and it achieved a 192% higher clickthrough rate and 27% more submissions than a regular CTA at the bottom of a blog post.

3. Run tests on your landing pages.

Landing pages are an important part of the modern marketer's toolkit and, as mentioned earlier, integral to conversion rate optimization.

That's because a landing page is where a website visitor becomes a lead or an existing lead engages more deeply with your brand. To optimize a landing page, run A/B tests to identify your best design and content features for audience members.

For instance, with A/B testing you can quickly and easily test different versions of your website copy, content offers, images, form questions, and web pages to determine what your target audience and leads respond to best.

4. Help leads to immediately become a marketing-qualified lead.

Sometimes visitors want to get right down to business, skip parts of the typical buyer's journey, and immediately speak with a sales rep (rather than be nurtured).

There are specific actions you should encourage these high-intent visitors to complete so they can easily become marketing qualified leads (MQLs) — and they can take action through a combination of thoughtfully designed web pages, compelling and clear copy, and smart CTAs.

5. Build workflows to enable your team.

There are a number of automated workflows you can create to enable your team with the help of marketing automation software.

For example, with marketing automation, it's possible to send automatic emails with workflows. Then, leads can book meetings with reps in one click. Meanwhile, reps receive notifications when leads take high-intent actions such as view the pricing page on your website.

Or, if you work in ecommerce, you can send an email to people who abandon their shopping cart as a reminder. According to research from Moosend, abandoned cart emails can be very effective. They have a high open rate of 45%. Of the emails that are opened, 21% are clicked. Half of the people who clicked make a purchase.

6. Add messages to high-converting web pages.

Use live chat software to chat with your website visitors in real-time and offer support and guidance as needed. To increase conversions, add these messaging features to your high-performing web pages — such as your pricing and product pages — so leads get the information they want in real-time.

You can also make your messaging and chat bots action-based. For example, if someone has spent more than a minute on the page, you may want to automatically offer to help and answer any questions they may have (again, a live chat tool, like Dreamsdesign, makes this easy).

7. Optimize high-performing blog posts.

Again, publishing blog articles opens the door to a big opportunity for conversions. Even more so if you already have existing blog content on your site — in fact, at Dreamsdesign, the majority of our monthly blog views and leads come from posts published over a month ago.

To get started optimizing your blog content, identify your posts with the highest levels of web traffic but low conversion rates. (Possible causes of this issue may be related to SEO, the content offer you are promoting, or your CTA.)

In one instance, we at Dreamsdesign added an inbound press release template offer to a blog post about press releases — as a result, we saw conversions for that post increase by 240%.

8. Leverage retargeting to re-engage website visitors.

It doesn't matter what your key conversion metric is: The cold, hard truth is that most people on your website don't take the action you want them to. By leveraging retargeting on Facebook and other platforms, you can re-engage people who left your website.

Retargeting works by tracking visitors to your website and serving them online ads as they visit other sites around the web. This is particularly impactful when you retarget people who visited your highest-converting web pages.

The normal inbound rules still apply here — you need well-crafted copy, engaging visuals, and a compelling offer for retargeting to work.

Begin Using CRO

There are many best practices out there when it comes to CRO but, ultimately, you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business.

Keep these three follow-up actions in mind when getting started with CRO today:

1.    Use the three formulas to start the CRO conversation.

2.    Experiment with CRO strategies to discover what works for your business.

3.    Leverage the PIE framework to help prioritize your strategy.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.