What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Opportunities exist with almost every element of your website to help convert visitors into customers. Conversions happen on more than just lead forms; they’re on your homepage, landing pages, footer, and more. So what is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? It’s the data-driven process of optimizing elements of your website for a higher number of conversions.
What is a Conversion?
A conversion is an action a user has taken on your website that you wanted them to take. It can be anything from clicking a button on a landing page or a navigation item, to signing up for a contest. Conversions are unique to your website and are determined by the goals you want to achieve with your site.
CRO is a process you can use to help drive more results from your existing visitor traffic so that your website works smarter, not harder, for you. It involves more than just changing the colour of a button or making a graphic “pop”, the CRO process requires experimentation, data collection and analysis. Data is your most important tool, you can’t improve conversions if you don’t know how users are interacting with your website.
How Do I Start Optimizing My Conversion Rate?
We recommend diving into your website analytics to study patterns users take to browse your website. You can also add a heatmap tool like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to find out how a user interacts with elements on your website through clicks and scrolls.
Another great exercise is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You know what actions you want a user to take, so try to look at your website with ‘fresh eyes’ and see if it’s easy to accomplish them. Ask yourself questions while you do this; does that button stand out or is it drowned out by four other buttons? Is the content clear and concise? Can I easily get to my contact page from my navigation? Do I even know what the goal of this page is?
Start Testing!
Once you’ve collected data and identified friction points or areas that can be improved, start your CRO experiment. Create a hypotheses (example: reducing the amount of CTA buttons in a section can add more visibility to the remaining buttons), formulate a test (remove 3 call to action buttons in my hero section), and create an objective (get more clicks on my promotional offer landing page button).
When your experiment is laid out, you can run A/B tests, start collecting more data, and iterate on your tests to gain maximum performance.
The world of conversion rate optimization is limitless, and with new behavior insights and optimization tactics being discovered every day, the CRO process is never fully completed.
If you’d like to learn more, join Strathcom’s CRO specialists for an online panel on “How to Increase Conversions on Your Landing Pages” on February 22, 2018.
