Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a type of digital marketing strategy that’s designed to increase the total percentage of site visitors who perform a specific action. The conversion rate metric allows you to differentiate between visitors who just browse and the ones who become more engaged with your website and what it offers.

There are many CRO techniques you can implement on your website. Before you get started, however, it’s important to understand that you should focus on your existing website traffic. Increasing the percentage of visitors who engage with your content is necessary to grow and gain long-term success.

The advantages of performing CRO include maximizing your PPC spending, increasing your return on investment, and improving your sales. You should also gain a better understanding of your target audience.

Keep in mind that CRO differs from customer acquisition strategies. The purpose of acquisition is to attract leads and bring new people to your website. CRO aims to convert these visitors into paying customers. The following guide explores the CRO meaning marketing and how it can shape the future of your business.

How Does CRO Work for Websites?

When performing conversion rate optimization, websites want to increase the number of conversion events that occur. However, every website has its own types of conversions. If you manage an eCommerce website, your conversion events should include purchases, sign-ups, and adding products to carts. If your company offers an app to customers, you can measure conversions by identifying the number of downloads that occur.

CRO is the process of improving the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions. To optimize your conversion rates, you’ll need to define CRO goals, identify potential improvements, and test them to ensure that customers are more likely to perform a desired action. From downloading content to signing up for a membership, every conversion rate can be a key metric and benchmark for measuring your success.

The Stages of CRO for Website Optimization

Implement the following steps of CRO to optimize your website and gain more customers.

Defining CRO Goals

First, you must identify the target conversion events that you’d like to measure and improve, which can include leads and sales. The most common conversion event involves purchases. However, you can also track smaller events, such as clicking an internal link or signing up for a weekly newsletter.

While micro events don’t automatically lead to additional sales, they are steps that users take on their conversion paths. You can use these metrics to identify qualified leads who may eventually become paying customers.

Once you determine the types of conversion events that you’re looking to track and improve, you’ll need to measure the current conversion rates. Make sure you also set goals for your conversion rates to identify the effectiveness of your optimizations.

Analyzing the Current Situation

Analyze the current situation involving your website. Evaluate user behaviors, issues like slow loading times, and website performance. Once you understand the areas where you’re weak, you can effectively optimize your website to improve conversion rates.

Consider the ways that your current website doesn’t meet the needs of your customers. For example, it’s possible that checkout conversion rates are low because your website loads slowly when customers attempt to make purchases. Properly optimizing your website allows you to remove friction and provide visitors with an excellent user experience. When creating a CRO plan, analyze the following:

• Target audience demographics
• User behavior
• Customer profiles
• What your customers look for in a website

Hypothesis Formation

Once you identify the current issues with your website, you can form hypotheses on how to optimize conversion rates. A hypothesis is an explanation or idea of something that’s based on facts but still needs to be proved. Every hypothesis you create should be tested to see what happens. Effective hypotheses meet the following requirements:

• Each hypothesis is measurable
• Your ideas help you learn
• Testing a hypothesis demonstrates cause and effect

Based on the previous checkout example, let’s say that you discover that the bounce rate for your checkout page is high. You might hypothesize that you can improve bounce rates and increase conversions by removing some of the multimedia elements. You can then test the hypothesis to see if it is correct.

Testing and Experimentation

Every hypothesis you create should receive comprehensive testing. For example, you can do A/B tests to identify the most effective optimizations. Keep in mind that you’ll need two versions of any improvement you make to gain accurate data during A/B testing.

You can also perform multivariate testing, which evaluates multiple aspects of a webpage at the same time. Once you complete these tests, analyze the results to determine which changes should be implemented on your website.

Implementing Changes and Measuring Results

Before you alter the design or layout of your website, you must measure how conversion rates change. The results from A/B and multivariate tests can be measured with powerful analytics software.

You may find that your hypothesis was wrong or that the variables don’t make a difference. Every test you perform gives you valuable data. Use the information you gather to fine-tune your website and make iterative improvements.

Common CRO Strategies for Website Improvement

Below are some of the more common CRO strategies that can help companies improve their websites.

Optimizing Landing Pages

The landing page is the start of the sales funnel for many website visitors, which is why it’s crucial that you offer an engaging one. Your landing page should include the right links and be easy to navigate. Make sure you place several CTAs throughout the landing page to keep visitors engaged.

Speeding Up Page Load Times

If certain areas of your website are taking too long to load, it’s highly recommended that you focus on speeding up load times. For example, you can limit multimedia, use caching, and optimize images.

Enhancing Copywriting and Messaging to Drive Conversions

The copywriting and messaging on your website need to match your brand image. If potential customers spot typos and notice that the language style isn’t optimized for selling, they might take their business somewhere else.

Adding Social Proof

When optimizing your website, consider adding social proof in the form of testimonials and reviews. These elements effectively support your marketing claims and are suitable for increasing conversions.

For example, if a customer is about to leave your website, a popup could display relevant reviews, which might lead to conversions. Customer testimonials allow you to show visitors why your brand is popular. Consider adding testimonials to popups and lead generation forms.

Implementing Chatbots to Engage Users

Website visitors might have questions about your products or services. By implementing chatbots on your website, you can provide visitors with the ability to get answers to their immediate questions.

For example, let’s say that a visitor wants to buy an item you sell but can’t find the delivery estimate. Once the visitor receives an answer from the chatbot, they’ll be more likely to follow through with the purchase.

How CRO Tactics Align with User Experience (UX)

Many online shoppers don’t return to websites where they have bad experiences, which is why you should optimize the UX before you attempt to perform a CRO strategy. You can enhance the UX on your website by:

• Making sure that all forms are easy to fill out
• Implementing easy-to-understand CTAs
• Providing users with compelling content
• Adding live chat and site search capabilities
• Placing more social proof on your site
• Testing and improving site speed

It’s also crucial that you optimize your website for mobile devices by implementing a responsive design. Having a responsive website ensures that users can intuitively navigate your webpages. Test every change to your UX design to understand and address user needs.

Tools for CRO in Digital Marketing

There are many tools that you can use to track and test your CRO techniques. For example, Google Analytics and Google Search Console are free tools that can help you analyze your website’s performance and track any traffic your webpages receive. If you wish to add popups to your pages, use HelloBar.

You’ll also benefit from installing some paid tools to improve optimization. For example, Trustmary allows you to integrate social proof, customer feedback surveys, and forms into your website. Software like VWO offers the tools you need to perform advanced A/B testing. For more effective user behavior analysis, consider installing CrazyEgg.

Best Practices to Maximize CRO on Your Website

To maximize CRO on your website, make sure that you:

• Set realistic goals and benchmarks
• Continuously test and optimize your website to meet customer needs
• Leverage personalization for a better user experience
• Focus on high-impact areas, such as CTA buttons and the landing page design

Research the competition to identify the CRO strategies they might be using.

Conclusion

Every optimization you implement on your website should help you improve your conversion rates. Keep in mind, however, that this strategy has an iterative nature. A single change won’t significantly improve your annual revenue. To regularly optimize and enhance your website, stay up to date with user behavior and web design trends. Start optimizing for conversions now.