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When running a business, it's essential to pay attention to your website conversion rate and the total number of conversions—the number of website visitors who take the desired action on your website. After all, that’s how you turn visitors into customers and keep them coming back for more. But what is conversion rate optimization (CRO) and why is it so important? Let’s take a look.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the number of people who complete an action (such as buying a product or signing up for an email list) on a web page or website. This can be done in various ways, such as by optimizing website design, making sure there are clear calls to action, improving user experience, and more. Ultimately, CRO is about understanding user behavior and how they interact with your site—and then using that data to make changes that will encourage them to take action.
Simply put, without conversion rate optimization your business won't get very far. You can have all the website traffic in the world but if none of those visitors convert into customers you won't see any real returns on your investment. On the other hand, when you focus on improving conversions you can drive more sales and generate more leads in less time than ever before. That's why CRO is so important—it helps ensure that each visitor has an enjoyable experience on your website and takes the action you want them to take!
The importance of CRO goes way beyond converting a visitor one time after an enjoyable experience. Customers are picker than ever, and will gladly leave your site for the competition at the first sign, hint, or whiff of a bad experience.
A CRO Agency aims to create a user experience that’s so intuitive and enjoyable, that the experience itself creates loyalty. CRO is a strategy for sustainable long-term success. Yes, it helps convert more visitors on their first visit to your site, but it also helps increase Average Order Value, Customer Lifetime Value, and loyalty.
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. By testing different versions of your web page, you can determine which design elements, copy, and call-to-actions convert visitors into leads or customers.
If you’re hesitant about starting A/B testing or refocusing on improving customer experience before advertising, think about this one statistic. According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos invested 100x more into customer experience than advertising during the first year of Amazon. Considering Amazon is referenced in practically every article about superior customer experience, it becomes impossible to argue with his strategy.
Regardless of your industry, your business exists to create value for your customers whether it be in the form of a product, service, or content. Every customer interaction with your brand creates a measurable amount of data. But what are you doing with that data? Are you just sitting back and passively collecting it? The best companies aren’t storing their data for later analysis, they actively generate valuable data and customer insights through experimentation. If you want to grow in your industry, then implementing efficient and consistent A/B testing is essential.
The obvious benefit of A/B testing is to improve your company’s value and increase revenue, but there are other benefits to creating an experimentation culture. When you have the ability to quickly run an effective A/B test, your company has more flexibility to test out new ideas and no longer needs to rely on anyone’s “gut instinct”. Remove all of the guesswork from your strategic decisions, and get actionable insights into what does, and doesn’t, work.
In this blog post, we'll share eight keys to successful A/B testing. By following these best practices, you can maximize your chances of achieving significant results from your tests.
Before you begin designing your test, it's important to have a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve. What is the primary goal of the page you're testing? Do you want to increase conversion rates, click-through rates, or time on-site? Once you've defined your objective, you can design your test around that goal.
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you measure progress toward your goal. When choosing a KPI for your test, be sure to select a metric that's directly related to your objective. For example, if you're trying to increase conversion rates, then your KPI should be conversion rate rather than time on site.
It's important to only test one element at a time; otherwise, you won't be able to isolate the factor that caused any changes in your KPI. For example, if you're testing two different headlines, then keep everything else on the page the same. That way, if there's a change in your KPI, you'll know it was caused by the headline and not by some other element on the page.
Make sure your testing doesn’t involve the use of trivial changes for the sake of testing. You want to focus on making the smallest changes with the biggest impact. If that’s not an option, then sometimes you have to go big and bold.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Sometimes seasonality can play a big part in the success of a test for a variety of reasons. Save your old tests and re-run them at different times. The results will often surprise you.
When testing changes, make sure that you’ve identified the specific reason why you think it’s affecting your KPI, and craft your hypothesis as to why this change should improve it. Make sure your addressing your customers' objections for why your goals aren’t being reached, and provide the counter-objections in your test. The last thing you want is to run a test and have no clue why it was successful.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a process that uses data-driven methods to increase the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action (i.e. increase the number of conversions). It’s an invaluable tool for any business that wants to remain competitive in today’s digital marketplace. Let's explore some of the key Conversion rate optimization benefits and how they can help your business thrive.
One of the most obvious CRO benefits is increased revenue. By using techniques such as A/B testing, you can figure out which elements on your website actually increase conversions and ensure they’re optimized for maximum success. As your conversion rate increases, so does your bottom line. If you combine things like digital advertising, you can use conversion optimization to reduce those expenses while simultaneously increasing profit. It’s a magical combination when done correctly.
Conversion rate optimization can be used to increase revenue from new customers and maximize revenue generated from existing customers. By evaluating performance data and customer behavior on your website, you can identify areas where changes will improve user experience and increase sales. A/B testing, for example, is used to compare different versions of a webpage (your control vs. your optimized page) to see which performs better. Then you can continue to adjust layouts and showcase important features more prominently, eliminate unnecessary components that take up valuable page real estate, etc. Ultimately, when implemented well, conversion rate optimization can help businesses realize their full profitability potential by converting visitors into paying customers.
It’s important to remember that CRO isn’t just about increasing sales; it’s also about improving customer experiences. By focusing on creating better user experiences through well-crafted website designs, comprehensive content strategies, and easy navigation tools, you ensure that customers have a positive experience when interacting with your brand online. It leads to higher conversion rates, improved loyalty, customer lifetime value, and satisfaction over time.
E-commerce sites are losing an average of $29 on new customers’ first purchases. Having a strategy that ensures your website, visitors come back for repeat purchases is essential in any economic climate.
If your website isn’t intuitive, easy to use, and building loyalty, then you don’t have a sustainable strategy for longevity. The customer’s journey from start to finish needs gives them exactly what they are looking for while meeting all their expectations. A CRO Agency has the perfect strategy for ensuring you deliver all of this to your customers. And I want to make one last important comment here before I move to #3. One of the biggest mistakes we see is an overconfident business owner, marketing exec, web designer, UX designer, etc., who thinks they know what the customer wants and how that translates into an online process. They spend a lot of time and research putting together personas, wireframes, designs, etc., which is all incredibly valuable and extremely important. Still, it simply does not translate into the purchasing process. And not just the “purchasing process,” the unique process for your business and your product or service.
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In Part 1 we discussed our findings from McKinsey and covered how we can apply lessons from past recessions to help thrive in times of economic uncertainty. If you missed it, you can access it here.
Budget cuts and performance marketing are on every CFO and CMOs mind right now. The most difficult part of navigating tough times is doing more with less. Companies face more pressure than ever to justify their spending, find ways to save money, and prove they’re providing value. Our goal is to help every department get what they want and need while still delivering results.
While the focus of this article is for our CMOs out there, we’re confident the strategy discussed will keep our CFO friends happy as well.
This is always a challenge, but crucial during a recession. There isn’t much budget allocated to awareness campaigns, so retaining customers and creating relationships is more important than ever. Digital marketing is an overcrowded and segmented space. It’s becoming easier for users to ignore messaging and send your brand into the gray. In order for companies to succeed they need to focus on the following:
For the majority of companies, this doesn’t have to be a difficult procedure. Oftentimes it can be as simple as asking or interviewing your best, or worst, customers to see what you got right, and where you fell short. Utilizing your sales and customer service teams can be a great resource for getting in tune with your customer's wants and needs.
Gone are the ways of building 50 pay-per-click campaigns all targeting different and “identical” match keywords throughout the funnel. Big data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence can out-think and perform our marketing instincts.
Utilize the power of big data to target your audience, and focus your efforts on creating meaningful content that speaks directly to your audience. Let the machines help you deliver.
However, it’s important to remember that AI and algorithms are learning “robots”. They are only as good as the data we give them. Garbage in, garbage out. It’s imperative you’re setting up your marketing campaigns with a feedback loop to identify what information and behavior is the most valuable to achieve your goals.
The on-site survey can be a mixed bag, sometimes. When done right you can get a lot of extremely valuable conversion optimization information from customers , but it’s not all gold. As we all know, sometimes surveys can be bothersome or poorly timed. When putting a survey on your site, it’s important to go into it with your expectations aligned.
Most survey tools will assist with the timing and placement of your survey. However, you want to be sure it’s not covering any important content on the page. Typically, the survey should go in the left or right corner so it’s not obstructing anything, and just visible enough so it can’t be entirely ignored by the people who want to engage with a brand they love.
As for the timing, please don’t just show it to everyone who lands on your site. That is the best way to guarantee poor results. First, you need to figure out what information you are looking for, and what people are best suited to give you that information.
The exit survey is ideal for improving your user experience and shows your survey to people about to leave the site without clicking or engaging with anything. You’re identifying and showing this survey to people who are leaving your site because they likely haven’t found what they’re looking for. If you have what they’re looking for, but people can’t find it, then it’s obviously important to know this information.
Typical exit survey questions include:
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In Part 1 and Part 2 we covered lessons from previous recessions and how to make sure you hit the mark with your current strategy during economic uncertainty. By now you should have at least a few valuable insights or confirmed your current strategies or trains of thought. Our last objective is to tie the whole series together and give companies some actionable items instead of just data to ponder.
Stick to tried and true strategies that deliver the highest return on your investment and are the cheapest to launch. Email marketing continues to bring home the ROI trophy each year. If you need help maximizing return on your email marketing campaigns, then check our page on email marketing.
It’s imperative that your messaging speaks directly to your audience's pain points, provides value, and drives them to a page designed to convert. You can’t just email prospects and hope they know what to do once they read your content.
If you're utilizing other digital marketing platforms, identify which ones are driving the highest conversion rates and allocate more budget to those while pulling back on others. If you’re on the display network, make sure you’re measuring customer interactions to create powerful remarketing campaigns. If you’re not sure what to do next, bring in outside help. Now is not the time to stop your marketing efforts. Now is the time to create a lean and efficient marketing machine that measures and delivers on your organization's goals.
Budgets will be cut, and heads may roll. Providing value and measurable results are a must.
Companies need marketing teams to respond on a dime to whatever is thrown their way. They’ll need a broad skill set, and can operate without a playbook, but have the agility and speed to operate in the gray to drive results.
That means you know your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Double down on your strengths, and outsource your weaknesses. Going back to Part 1, speed of response was a huge factor in boosting performance during the last recession. For example, if your team needs two weeks to figure out how to launch a campaign in a new venue, then you need outside support.
Get outside help to fill in the gaps until you can hire and train the right people. The purpose of speed and agility is to be able to quickly capitalize on opportunities during economic times when your competitors may be slower to respond. In past recessions, first movers were rewarded significantly more than their competitors compared to periods of economic boom.
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