Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the performance of a website or landing page by increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. This is typically done through a combination of A/B testing, user research, and data analysis. The goal of CRO is to optimize the user experience and make it as easy as possible for visitors to complete the desired action.
Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies
There are many different strategies and tactics that can be used to improve conversion rates, but some of the top recommendations include:
- Make sure your website is fast and responsive: A slow-loading website can be a major turn-off for visitors, and can lead to a high bounce rate.
- Have a clear and compelling value proposition: Visitors should be able to understand what you offer and how it will benefit them quickly.
- Use persuasive language and design: Use persuasive language to encourage visitors to take action and make sure your website design is visually appealing and easy to navigate.
- Test different elements: Conduct A/B testing to see which elements of your website or landing page perform best, and optimize accordingly.
- Make it easy for visitors to take action: Make sure your calls to action are prominent and easy to find, and that the process for completing a purchase or filling out a form is simple and streamlined.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly: With the majority of internet users accessing the web on mobile devices, it is important to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for smaller screens.
- Collect data and use it to optimize: Use tools to collect data on how visitors interact with your website, and use that data to optimize your website and improve conversion rates.
- Use social proof: Use customer testimonials, reviews and social media to build trust and credibility with potential customers.
- Use retargeting and remarketing: Use retargeting and remarketing techniques to reach visitors who have left your website without converting.
- Continuously monitor and optimize: Continuously monitor your website's performance and make changes as needed to improve conversion rates.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization crucial?
There are several reasons why you should consider performing conversion rate optimization (CRO) on your website or landing page:
- Increased revenue: By increasing your conversion rate, you can increase the number of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. This can result in increased revenue for your business.
- Better #roi : CRO can help you to get more value out of your existing traffic by converting more visitors into customers. This can improve your return on investment (ROI) and make your marketing efforts more cost-effective.
- Better user experience: CRO is focused on improving the user experience on your website. By making it easier for visitors to complete the desired action, you can create a more positive experience for them and increase the likelihood that they will return to your website in the future.
- Improved competitiveness: By improving your conversion rate, you can increase your competitiveness in your industry or niche. A higher conversion rate can give you an edge over your competitors and make it easier for you to stand out in a crowded market.
- Better decision making: By collecting data from your website, you can make more informed decisions about how to improve it. This can help you to understand what is working and what is not, and make changes that will have a positive impact on your conversion rate.
- Cost effective: #cro is a cost-effective way of increasing revenue as it focuses on improving the existing traffic and assets, rather than on acquiring new customers.
- Long term growth: CRO is not a one-time project, it's a continuous process. By continuously monitoring and optimizing your website, you can ensure that your conversion rate is always improving, and that your business is growing over time.
Overall, CRO can help you to increase revenue, improve the user experience, and make your website more competitive. It can also provide you with valuable data and insights that can help you to make more informed decisions about how to improve your website and drive growth for your business.
What Does a "Good" Conversion Rate Look Like?
A "good" conversion rate can vary depending on the industry, the product or service being offered, and the type of website or landing page. However, in general, a good conversion rate is one that is higher than the average conversion rate for your industry or niche.
According to the industry benchmarks, the average conversion rate for e-commerce sites is around 2-3%, while the average conversion rate for lead generation sites is around 5-15%. However, some industries have much higher conversion rates. For example, the average conversion rate for a software as a service (SaaS) company is around 15-20%.
It's also important to note that conversion rates can change over time, depending on the market conditions, the competition, and other factors. A good conversion rate for your website is one that continually improves over time.
It's also worth noting that a higher conversion rate is not always the best indicator of success. It may be the case that you are focusing on the wrong metric and losing revenue. Some businesses may prioritize an increase in average order value over a higher conversion rate, and others may prioritize lead quality over quantity. So, it's important to define your business goals, and track the metrics that align with them.
What Tools Should You Use for Conversion Rate Optimization?
There are many different tools that can be used for conversion rate optimization, but some of the most popular and effective include:
- A/B testing tools: Tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, and VWO allow you to test different versions of your website or landing page to see which one performs best.
- Heatmap tools: Tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, and my favorite Clarity allow you to see how visitors interact with your website and identify areas for improvement.
- User feedback tools: Tools like UserTesting, Feedbackify, and UserFeel allow you to gather feedback from real users and identify pain points in the user experience.
- Analytics tools: Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics allow you to track visitor behavior and measure the performance of your website.
- Surveys and polls: Tools like SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and Typeform allow you to gather feedback and insights from visitors.
- Retargeting and remarketing tools: Tools like AdRoll, Perfect Audience (now SharpSpring), and Retargeter allow you to reach visitors who have left your website without converting.
- Lead generation tools: Tools like Leadformly, Leadpages, and Unbounce allow you to create effective landing pages and forms to collect leads and convert visitors into customers.
- Personalization tools: Tools like Optimizely X, Monetate, and Qubit allow you to personalize the user experience for different segments of visitors.
- Multivariate testing tools: Tools like Convert, Adobe Target, and Oracle Maxymiser allow you to test multiple variables at once to improve your website's performance.
- CRO Platforms: There are some platforms that offer a suite of CRO tools, like Optimizely X, Adobe Target, and AB Tasty.
It's worth noting that not all the tools are necessary for every case, and it's important to choose the right tools for your specific needs and goals.
How to perform a Standard CRO Audit
A conversion rate optimization (CRO) audit is a process of analyzing your website or landing page in order to identify areas for improvement and increase conversion rates. Here is a general outline of the steps involved in performing a CRO audit:
- Define your goals and metrics: Before starting the audit, it's important to define your goals and the metrics that you will use to measure success. This could include things like increasing the number of form submissions, reducing the bounce rate, or increasing the average order value.
- Analyze your website's data: Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to analyze the behavior of your website's visitors. Look at things like bounce rate, time on site, and the number of pages viewed per visit. This will give you an idea of how well your website is performing and where visitors are dropping off.
- Conduct user research: Use tools like surveys, polls, and user testing to gather feedback from real users. This will give you insights into the pain points and issues that visitors are experiencing on your website.
- Analyze your competitors: Take a look at your competitors' websites and see what they are doing well and what you can learn from them.
- Use heatmap and scrollmap tools: Use heatmap and scrollmap tools to see how visitors interact with your website. This will help you identify areas of your website that are getting a lot of attention and areas that are being ignored.
- Check your website's technical SEO: Check your website's technical SEO to ensure that it is properly optimized for search engines. This includes things like meta tags, title tags, and alt tags.
- Analyze your calls to action: Look at your calls to action and see if they are prominent and easy to find. Make sure they stand out and are easy to understand.
- Check your website's mobile-friendliness: Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for smaller screens.
- Identify areas for improvement: Once you have completed the audit, identify the areas that need improvement and prioritize them based on their impact on conversion rates.
- Implement changes: Make the changes that you have identified and keep track of the results. Continuously monitor and optimize your website to ensure that conversion rates are improving over time.
It's worth noting that this is a general outline of the process, and different businesses may require different steps, tools, or methods depending on their specific needs and goals.
How to perform a A/B test
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a web page or element to see which one performs better in terms of a specific goal or metric, such as conversion rate. Here is a simple method for conducting an A/B test:
- Define your goal and metric: Clearly define the goal of your test and the metric you will use to measure success, such as click-through rate or conversion rate.
- Choose an element to test: Decide which element of your website or landing page you want to test. This could be the headline, the call to action, the color scheme, or any other element that you think may have an impact on your goal.
- Create a control and a variation: Create a control version of the element you are testing and a variation. Make sure that only the element you are testing is different between the two versions.
- Split your traffic: Use a tool like Google Optimize or Optimizely to randomly split your website's traffic between the control and variation versions.
- Collect data: Use analytics tools like Google Analytics to collect data on how visitors interact with your website. Track the performance of the control and variation versions in terms of your goal and metric.
- Analyze the results: Compare the performance of the control and variation versions. Look at the data and identify which version performed better in terms of your goal and metric.
- Make a decision: Based on the results of your test, decide whether to implement the changes from the variation version or stick with the control version.
- Repeat: Conduct additional tests to further optimize your website and improve conversion rates.
This is a general overview of the process and different businesses may require different steps, tools, or methods depending on their specific needs and goals. Additionally, A/B testing should be done in a controlled environment, and not all the elements should be tested at once, to avoid any interference on the results.
Understanding Heatmaps
Heatmaps are a visualization tool that can be used to show how visitors interact with a website. They use color-coding to indicate which areas of a website or landing page are getting the most attention, and which areas are being ignored. Here is an overview of how to understand a heatmap:
- Heatmaps typically use color-coding to indicate the level of engagement with different areas of a website. The warmer the color, the more engagement, typically red being the highest level of engagement.
- Look for patterns: Heatmaps can reveal patterns in how visitors interact with a website. For example, if a particular button or link is getting a lot of clicks, it will be displayed in a warmer color.
- Identify problem areas: By looking at a heatmap, you can identify areas of your website that are causing visitors to leave or drop off. For example, if you see a lot of clicks in the navigation menu but very little engagement on the rest of the page, it could be an indication that visitors are having trouble finding what they are looking for.
- Compare heatmaps: Compare heatmaps from different pages of your website or different versions of a landing page to see which areas are getting the most engagement. This can help you to identify which elements of your website are working well and which are not.
- Look for changes: Over time, heatmaps can be used to track changes in user behavior and see how visitors are interacting with your website. By comparing heatmaps from different times, you can identify areas that have improved or worsened.
- Understand the limitations: Heatmaps are a useful tool, but they have some limitations. They don't show the intent of the user, only the clicks, scrolls, and hovers. They also don't take into account the time spent on the page, or the user's demographics or personas.
By understanding heatmaps, you can identify areas of your website that are performing well, and areas that need improvement. This can help you to make informed decisions about how to optimize your website and improve conversion rates.
Understanding Scroll maps
A scroll map is a type of visualization tool that shows where users are scrolling on a web page and how far they are scrolling down. Scroll maps can be used to understand how visitors interact with a website and identify areas of the page that are getting the most attention and areas that are being ignored. Here is an overview of how to understand a scroll map:
- Look for patterns: Scroll maps can reveal patterns in how visitors interact with a website. For example, if a particular section of a page is getting a lot of attention, it will be displayed in a warmer color.
- Identify problem areas: By looking at a scroll map, you can identify areas of your website that are causing visitors to leave or drop off. For example, if you see a lot of scrolling on the top half of a page but very little scrolling on the bottom half, it could be an indication that visitors are not finding what they are looking for on the bottom of the page.
- Compare scroll maps: Compare scroll maps from different pages of your website or different versions of a landing page to see which areas are getting the most engagement. This can help you to identify which elements of your website are working well and which are not.
- Look for changes: Over time, scroll maps can be used to track changes in user behavior and see how visitors are interacting with your website. By comparing scroll maps from different times, you can identify areas that have improved or worsened.
How to Gather Feedback From Visitors and Customers
There are several ways to gather feedback from your website visitors and customers, here are a few popular methods:
- Surveys: Use tools like SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and Typeform to create surveys that you can send to your website visitors and customers. Surveys allow you to gather feedback on a wide range of topics, such as the user experience, customer satisfaction, and product or service feedback.
- Feedback forms: Add feedback forms to your website that allow visitors to provide feedback or report issues. You can use tools like Feedbackify, Formspree, and Formstack to create forms that can be embedded on your website.
- Live chat: Use live chat software like LiveChat, Tawk.to or Chatbot to allow visitors to communicate with you in real-time. Live chat can be a great way to gather feedback and address any issues that visitors may be experiencing on your website.
- Email campaigns: Use email campaigns to gather feedback from customers. You can send out customer satisfaction surveys or ask for feedback on specific products or services.
- Social media: Use social media to gather feedback from customers and visitors. Monitor social media platforms for mentions of your brand and respond to any feedback or complaints that are posted.
- User testing: Use user testing tools like UserTesting, UserFeel, and WhatUsersDo to gather feedback from real users. This can give you insights into how visitors interact with your website and identify pain points in the user experience.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS is a metric that measures customer satisfaction and loyalty by asking customers to rate the likelihood of referring your product or service to a friend. It's a simple but effective way to understand customer satisfaction.
- Customer Service or Support tickets: Keep track of customer service or support tickets, and look for patterns or common issues. This can provide valuable feedback about the customer experience and help you to identify areas for improvement.
Not all the methods are necessary for every case, and it's important to choose the right method or methods for your specific needs and goals. Additionally, it's important to use the feedback to make informed decisions and take action to improve your website and customer experience.
