OK, so you have no idea about conversion rate optimisation and whether you need it. Fear not; we’re here to help! We’re going to break it down for you in the simplest way, so you can decide whether this is something you need.
A conversion is something your visitor does that you want them to do. That’s the first part of CRO. Let’s say you want your visitors to sign up for your email newsletter or buy a product, and they do. That would be considered a conversion. CRO is a method of using analytics and feedback to optimise your performance and get even more conversions than ever.
Basically, you’re going to take the traffic that you already have and learn how to make the most of it. You will not get good results from CRO by doing these things:
- Making guesses.
- Copying other businesses.
- Trying to get as many visitors as possible regardless of quality.
You will get good results by doing these things:
- Looking at your websites own individual needs.
- Use insights from analytics and user feedback.
There are a lot of things that go into a good CRO strategy – click here to learn about them all. You’ll probably hear terms like ‘call to action’ and ‘split testing’ a lot. These things are changed, used and analysed to get you the results you desire.
One thing many people pay attention to when doing CRO, is bounce rate. However, we’re going to tell you not to. The bounce rate is the number of people who left your site after landing on/viewing a single page. People think they need to focus on this and work out why people are leaving, but forget it. The bounce rate is a vanity term. You need to focus on the number of people who are converting instead.
You wouldn’t believe the number of things that can have an impact on your conversion rates. This is why split testing needs to be done; to find which version works best and then go from there. Making copy longer/shorter, using positive words, and even using a slightly different word for a product can all impact your conversion rates. The things that you think don’t matter that much probably do.
Usually, design as a whole is focused on most to see how more people convert. You’ll change colour, line spacing, alignment, and even the layout to see what works best with your target market. The key though, is to change just one thing at a time to work out what made the big difference. It could be something as simple as changing the colour of your call to action button. Red might convert better than blue, for instance.
If you want to make the most out of your current web traffic and ensure you’re getting the conversions you deserve, CRO is definitely for you. I highly recommend working with a professional company on this. If you remain consistent in your efforts, you can reap big rewards!
