CRO or Conversion Rate Optimisation is the practice of increasing conversion rate (conversion rate means the number of conversions achieved from a website's visitors over a specified period), by optimising web pages to more efficiently convert the visitors who land there. Essentially, pushing more of the people who land on your website towards becoming a customer. It is a broad based skill that requires excellence in a range of disciplines including copywriting, design, UX (User Experience), as well as testing and data analysis.
Conversions range from online purchases to form fills, sign ups, gated content downloads or any number of other targeted actions. So, effective Conversion Rate Optimisation optimises web pages to monitor these conversion tracking events, increase how frequently they occur, drive more conversions, encourage visitors to become customers and ultimately deliver revenue for your business.
The reason that Conversion Rate Optimisation is so important is simple. Delivering visitors to a website can be a time and cost intensive process. Failing to adequately optimise the conversion process on that website is effectively throwing that hard won traffic, and investment, away. Great Conversion Rate Optimisation does not just boost conversions, it can also work to filter your traffic, leading poor fit traffic to leave the site, freeing your sales resource to focus on the traffic that will deliver the greatest revenue and benefit to the business. Good Conversion Rate Optimisation is essential in delivering maximised returns from investment across your website and in paid and organic search.
In broad terms, a website’s success boils down to how easily it is found by the relevant audiences, (visibility) and how well it converts them into customers once they land there, (conversion).
Visibility is determined by how well the website attracts and serves its target audience, while conversions are reliant upon both a good level of the right traffic and delivering what that traffic is looking for, in a user friendly, accessible, and compelling way. Attracting the right traffic to the site is a vital first step, but the value of that traffic is lost if the site cannot convert it effectively.
That is why conversion rate is such a critical metric for marketers. It tells them how well their website is performing against its primary purpose.
Conversion rate is typically calculated with this conversion rate formula:
number of conversions over time / number of sessions (or users if preferred) over time
Progress is measured by comparing year-on-year, month on month or on specific periods following tranches of Conversion Rate Optimisation work, typically, this data will be tracked and measured in Google Analytics. You can calculate conversion rate across your website by section, using this conversion rate formula, by vertical or by whatever grouping suits your business model best.
Conversion Rate Optimisation can enhance revenue results without the need to drive greater quantities of traffic to your website, which can be costly or difficult to achieve in a competitive marketplace. Improving conversion rate also improves the value of every channel that delivers traffic to your website, increasing conversions that not only build revenue but drive brand awareness, and potentially referrals, within your target market too.
If you double conversion rate when your traffic stays the same, you’ve doubled your conversions without having to invest in traffic acquisition!
However, despite the need for clear data and analysis in Conversion Rate Optimisation, it is essential to approach it holistically, with a more human point of view too. Consider the performance of your website in terms of the people you want to attract, retain, and convert. What drives them, what turns them off, what interests them and what hooks them into converting. Understanding your audience behaviours, their needs and wants, are all key in shaping a truly effective Conversion Rate Optimisation strategy.
Conversion Rate Optimisation is not a one time thing, nor is it something you can do sporadically and still achieve optimum results. Great Conversion Rate Optimisation is ongoing, consistent, and iterative. Measuring conversion rate, benchmarking it and monitoring it are crucial ongoing activities. After all, markets change, competitors improve their own sites, consumer habits change, and every change or fluctuation in the competitive market will impact and change the relevant best practice for delivering the right User Experience (UX) and, as a result, the right Conversion Rate Optimisation activities for your website.
While arguably, Amazon keeps leading the way in best practice for ecommerce by setting a very high bar, Gen Z don’t shop in the same way as millennials or boomers do. So, as your customer base changes or ages, their habits change too, and it is essential to fully understand your target audiences if you are to effectively engage with and convert them on your website.
Establishing clear, detailed personas for your target audiences ensures that marketers are able to plan the right content, the right calls to action, the right customer journeys and the right resources and tools to engage with and meet the needs of the people they want to convert. The purpose of developing personas is essentially to step into your customers’ shoes and answer the question ‘What is the job to be done or the need to be met?’ then prepare and deliver the ideal solution, using the right tools, for the right price, at the right time.
There are no cookie cutter best practices in developing the right User Experience on your website, every market and every audience responds differently to different strategies. It’s an iterative test and measure process to determine what works right now for each of your audiences, because what worked last year, may not still work as well next year. Testing, measurement, and data analysis are key. Find what works, test it, use it, evolve it, and repeat. It also never hurts to understand what appears to work well for your competitors either.
It’s worth remembering here that conversions can relate to any number of actions and will be specific to your business and your objectives. Some conversions will be macro (significant) and others will be micro (smaller steps along the customer journey). Conversions to consider might include anything from an online sale to a demo request, signing up to a newsletter, filling in a gated content access form, conversing with a chat bot or even viewing a video.
Effective Conversion Rate Optimisation starts with User Experience. We’ve put together the list below to summarise a few of the key areas to consider as part of an effective Conversion Rate Optimisation strategy. Each business will benefit from a different Conversion Rate Optimisation strategy, tailored to their industry, audience(s), products and services, and objectives. However, the list below is a great place to start when considering how best to make your website a more effective conversion tool.
Once you have fully researched your audience personas and developed a data-led Conversion Rate Optimisation strategy designed to engage with them directly, it is time to test your theories. Testing is essential, it allows you to identify and remove elements that don’t work as well as finding those that do and leveraging them fully.
Here are a few of the ways you can test parts of your Conversion Rate Optimisation strategy to tailor it more closely to your audience(s) needs across the different areas of your website.
You can test changes to your pages with A/B or multi-variant testing. However, if your CMS does not allow that functionality, you can try testing a theory on a few key pages first, then roll it out to other pages if the data confirms it is an effective change.
This will be different for every industry and every business. After all, each business also has its own model and strategy combination. However, you can establish a baseline by benchmarking online, though it is important to maintain these benchmarks as they will fluctuate over time.
(Image created by Ruler Analytics)
Measure conversion rate against the relevant benchmarks, you can track the validity of your Conversion Rate Optimisation efforts. It is worth noting that it is likely that your progress will slow over time as you improve and typically you will reach a ceiling rate eventually.
For more detailed analysis, you should track and benchmark by channel too, as each channel has a different benchmark rate to consider. For example, paid display advertising and social media usually have much lower conversion rates than organic search or email. This is because of the targeting that is possible with organic search and email marketing that is not so available with display and social media.
Building an enviable conversation rate requires experience with a number of skills as we’ve outlined above. However, the basis of great Conversion Rate Optimisation is rooted firmly in common sense and in understanding how people think and act. Close familiarity with your true target audiences is essential, and from there, it is a case of theorising, testing, measuring, and iterating. It’s important that you treat this as a constant process though to ensure your business rides the waves on change in your industry successfully.
Our team of digital marketing experts are skilled at developing, and implementing, effective Conversion Rate Optimisation strategies for our clients. We work closely with our client companies as part of their team to fully understand how they work and who they serve. Our strategic Conversion Rate Optimisation planning is evolved and tested over time, using solid data and deep experience to optimise conversion rate and drive exceptional ROI.
With ample potential and benefits to your brand, incorporating video into your full digital marketing strategy is pivotal for continued business success and growth over time. We understand that being heard above the digital noise online is challenging, but we can help. Explore our diverse range of video services and how you can leverage them for your business.