What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Get StartedConversion rate optimization (CRO) is not a new idea in online marketing. We’ve been offering these services to businesses for many years, even though there was no official name for it yet. All our clients cared about was that our analytical methods worked; product sales and leads improved without spending more of their advertising budget on increasing traffic.
Recently, we’ve noticed CRO is becoming a popular trend. It seems everyone involved in online marketing is adding basic conversion testing to their services, from search engine (SEO) experts to email marketers to social media consultants. While this technically gives them an advantage over competitors, they often don’t have a full understanding of what it means to increase conversion.
What is a Conversion?
A conversion is any action that takes a person from one state of being into another. For example, you can convert from being a novice tennis player to an expert, or from a desktop computer user to an iPad fan.
Every conversion is made up of many smaller conversions. To become a tennis pro takes many years and you have to convert from a student to a competitor, maybe you convert to a teacher, and so on. The series of conversions continues, milestone after milestone, until the final state is reached or they decide not to convert. Perhaps they choose a different path, perhaps they drop out completely. Lots of things influence decisions and behaviors along the way. Tests are passed or failed, obstacles overcome or not, making the ultimate conversion happen – or not.
Marketing conversion works the same way.
Users come to your website as anonymous visitors, and your goal is to convert them into paying customers. Or you may have other conversion goals, such as converting them into newsletter subscribers, or upselling them on a premium package. No matter what the goal, you’re trying to persuade the visitor to make a transition.
Conversion rate is how often this transition happens.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving your marketing and influencing decisions to make the transition happen as often as you can.
Unlike what some Internet marketers will tell you, there’s no single formula for building an effective conversion strategy. Best practices only take you so far. And guesswork can wind up hurting your business more than helping it. The right way to increase conversion on a web page is by making continual improvements to the design, based on solid data, until more and more people take the desired action.
Many marketers and web designers struggle to succeed with CRO because they think it’s a quick process. They make a change, split test it, and then implement it across the entire site. They’ll move buttons around or change a few colors and take the quick win. But they’re leaving money on the table by ignoring the big picture. There’s always another step you can take.
Graphic design on landing pages and lead generation forms can make or break an entire campaign. Remember, a picture says a thousand words. Are the images on your site really saying what you think they are?
Copywriting is more than just text on a page. The words should speak to a specific audience, demonstrate benefits, overcome objections and provide a strong call to action. It’s easy to get too attached to your copy; edit mercilessly until the page persuades visitors to click, call or sign up.
Just the beginning.
That one big conversion you worked so hard for is actually made up of dozens or even hundreds of smaller conversions. Each one of those microconversions can be optimized, too. It’s easy to see a boost in conversions and get all excited thinking you’ve found the magic bullet that will “fix” your website once and for all. But human behavior can be inconsistent and lead you astray. It takes a keen eye and lots of experience to determine patterns of behavior that prove true over time.
ConversionCore believes in long-term repeatable gains over short-term wins. That’s why we utilize a combination of hard-won knowledge, experience and software tools like Clicktale heatmaps and a wide variety of split testing software from Google, Kissmetrics and more to produce great results for our clients.
Produce long-term gains.
There’s no guarantee that every change you make will increase conversion – every idea should be challenged and subject to statistical analysis. Every area of your website affects other areas in some way. Sometimes a big win on one page will result in a dramatic fail later on. That’s why methodical consistent testing across your entire business is so important. You want all your smaller conversion wins to add up over time and produce a strong bottom line increase in profits.
If you’re looking to hire a specialist to help you increase conversion and generate more revenue, please feel free to contact us. We’d love to talk with you about your business goals.
