To increase your website’s revenue, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a must.
Conversion rate optimization process your website to convert more visitors into customers. It can be applied at any customer journey stage, from awareness and research through purchase and post-purchase engagement.
In this article, we’ll discuss what conversion rate optimization is and how you can use it to improve your website’s performance. We’ll also introduce some standard conversion optimization tools and techniques you can use to improve your conversion rates.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion is the visitor’s action on your website that you want them to take. A conversion can be as simple as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. The key is that it is an action you have determined to be valuable to your business.
The conversion rate is the percentage of your website’s visitors taking the desired action. So, if 100 people visit your site and two make a purchase, your conversion rate would be two percent.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) increases the percentage of visitors to your website that takes the desired action. It can help you get more out of your existing traffic. Even a slight increase in conversion rate can significantly impact your bottom line, so it’s well worth the effort.
There are several ways to go about conversion rate optimization. Still, it generally involves using data and testing different techniques until you find what works best for your website and visitors.
To increase conversions, you need to understand what’s preventing people from converting to your site. Is the CTA not visible enough? Is it a problem with the design? Is it a confusing copy? Once you identify the issue, you can test different solutions to see what works best.
Examples of conversions
- Making a purchase
- Filling out a form
- Signing up for a newsletter
- Downloading an app
How to Calculate Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is a crucial metric for any business. It allows you to track the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns and overall website.
There are different ways to calculate, but the most common formula is:
Conversion rate = (Number of conversions / Total number of visitors) x 100
For example, let’s say you have a website with 100 unique visitors daily. Of those visitors, 15 sign up for your newsletter. Your conversion rate would be:
Conversion rate = (15/100) x 100 = 15%
Benefits of CRO in SEO
After knowing the definition of conversion rate optimization and calculating it, let’s see how it benefits your business.
Benefit #1: You can get more out of your existing traffic
If you’re not converting as much traffic as you’d like, conversion rate optimization can help. You can make the most out of having high-traffic sites.
Optimizing your website for conversions makes it more visible and user-friendly, allowing more people to visit your site and see what you offer. It helps you attract more website visitors from organic search.
Benefit #2: You can rank higher in search engines
CRO can help improve your rankings in search engines.
Optimizing your website for conversions also improves your chances of ranking higher on the search engine results page. That’s because searchers are more likely to click on a result that looks relevant and trustworthy. It also makes your website more visible and user-friendly, which helps your SEO efforts.
Benefit #3: You can save money on paid advertising
Conversion optimization is a cost-effective way to improve your website’s performance. Unlike paid advertising, you don’t have to pay for each visitor that comes to your site. Once you’ve implemented CRO techniques, they’ll continue to work for you, driving more conversions and traffic over time.
CRO can get more people to buy from you and make more money, which helps you get leads generated and sales from your marketing efforts.
CRO is a great way to fine-tune your marketing strategy and ensure you’re doing everything to drive as many conversions as possible. By constantly testing and optimizing, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are as effective as possible.
Benefit #4: You can better understand your customers and provide for their needs
CRO can provide users with what they need on a website through various A/B tests and research tools. It is essential to consider what users want when creating a website to provide them with a good experience.
Valuable insights into how your current customers interact with your website can help you understand user behaviour and what motivates them to take the desired action. Creating a user-friendly website can help improve SEO rankings and organic traffic.
CRO Strategies
Companies can use many different CRO strategies, but some of the most popular include A/B testing, personalization, and creating compelling calls to action.
A/B testing
A/B testing compares two versions of a web page to see which performs better in conversion rate. Companies will often test different headlines, images, or calls to action to see the more practical version of getting visitors to take action.
Personalization
Personalization involves showing website visitors different versions of a web page based on their location, demographics, or previous behaviour on the site. For example, a company might offer a different landing page to first-time visitors than it does to returning visitors.
Call-to-action
Creating a sense of urgency is one of the typical conversion rate optimization efforts. You can do this by using limited-time offers and scarcity tactics to encourage users to take action now rather than later.
Creating compelling calls to action is also essential for increasing conversion rates. Call to action should be clear, concise, and persuasive. They are strategically located on the web page, near the top of the page or above the fold.
Here are the most effective call to actions you can use on your website or landing page:
“Buy Now”
“Add to Cart”
“Sign Up Now”
“Get a Free Quote”
“Download Now”
“Request a Demo”
“Watch the Video”
Areas To Implement CRO Strategy
There are a few key areas or pages in your website where it’s essential to implement conversion rate optimization strategies.
Homepage
The homepage is the most significant page on your website regarding conversion rate optimization (CRO). The homepage is often the first point of contact between a business and its customers, so it’s crucial to make a good impression. A well-designed homepage will include clear calls to action, engaging visuals, and easy navigation.
That means that you need to ensure that your homepage allows visitors to easily understand what your site is about and navigate to the web pages they’re looking for.
Some of the critical elements that you should include on your homepage are:
- A clear and concise headline that explains what your site is about
- A powerful CTA that encourages visitors to take the next step
- A brief explanation of what your site offers
- An easy-to-use navigation menu
- Compelling visuals that help explain your message
- Social proof that demonstrates why visitors should trust you.
Landing Page
Landing pages are essential aspects of a CRO strategy. Optimizing it can increase conversion rates and improve your overall marketing results. Here are tips for how to optimize your landing pages:
- Make sure it is relevant to your ad or campaign. If someone clicks an ad for a product or service, you should take them to a landing page that is relevant to that product or service.
- Keep it simple and free of distractions. Too many elements or too much information on the page can overwhelm visitors and cause them to leave without taking action.
- Use strong calls to action as they tell visitors what you want them to do, and make it easy for them to take that action.
- Include social proof. If others have used and liked your product or service, let visitors know with testimonials, reviews, or other social proof.
- Use images or videos. People are more likely to remember information presented visually.
Product or Service Pages
Product and service pages are often the most visited on an eCommerce site, so it’s essential to ensure conversion optimization. Here are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing your service and product pages:
- Make sure your products and services are clearly described and easy to find.
- Use high-quality images and videos to showcase your products and services.
- Use persuasive copy to convince visitors to buy your products or services on your eCommerce site.
- Include customer testimonials and reviews to build trust.
- Use strong calls to action to encourage visitors to take the next step.
Blog Pages
Regarding blog articles, there are a few key areas where you can implement your CRO strategy. Here are some of the most important:
- The headline and title of your blog post: This is what will first catch people’s attention, so make sure it’s effective in communicating what your article is about.
- Your opening paragraph: This is your chance to grab people’s attention and persuade them to keep reading. Make sure it’s clear, concise, and engaging.
- Your content: Obviously, the actual meat of your article is vital in terms of conversion. Ensure you provide valuable, relevant information to help your readers achieve their goals.
- Your calls to action: Throughout your article, you should be including calls to action (CTAs) that encourage your readers to take the next step. These could include subscribing to your email list, downloading a free guide, or taking advantage of a special offer.
- Your design and layout: The design of your blog post can impact conversion. Make sure it’s easy to read and navigate and that your CTAs are prominently featured.
- Your SEO: Finally, don’t forget about SEO! Making sure your blog post is properly optimized for search engines will help ensure that as many people see it as possible.
CRO tools
You can use various optimization tools to improve your website’s conversion rate. Some popular conversion rate optimization tools include:
- Crazy Egg
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- VWO
- Heap
- ServiceForm
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a valuable tool for any website owner who wants to improve their website’s conversion rates. It is a CRO tool that lets you see how visitors interact with your website. You can see where they click, what they scroll through, and where they drop off. This information can help you optimize your website to meet your visitors’ needs better.
Crazy Egg also has a heatmap feature showing where people click the most. You can use this information to ensure visitors see your actual content.
Crazy Egg is easy to use and gives you a lot of information, but it is expensive and hard to understand.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the CRO tools that can help you track your website traffic and performance. By understanding your website’s traffic patterns, you can make informed decisions about how to improve your site’s design and user experience.
Additionally, Google Analytics can help you track conversion rates and other essential metrics. By understanding your website’s performance, you can make informed decisions about improving your site’s conversion rate.
Google Analytics is a valuable tool as it is free and provides a wealth of data, but it can be challenging to interpret. There is a learning curve associated with using the tool.
Hotjar
Hotjar is a powerful CRO tool that allows you to see how visitors interact with your website. You can use Hotjar to heatmap user clicks, track form submissions, and more. Hotjar is a great way to improve your website’s conversions by understanding your users’ needs.
However, Hotjar can also be expensive, requiring a lot of data to be collected before it can provide valuable insights. It is not always accurate, and it can sometimes produce misleading results.
Hotjar only works with websites with a lot of traffic; if your website does not receive a lot of traffic, you may not be able to get valuable insights from Hotjar.
VWO
VWO is a powerful CRO tool that can help you improve your website’s conversions. It offers many features, including A/B testing, heat maps, and user recordings. VWO is easy to use and has an excellent support team.
VWO is a very user-friendly tool that makes it easy to create and track experiments. However, tracking complex experiments with multiple variables can be a bit pricey and complex. Some users have reported issues with the tool’s customer support.
Heap
Heap is a CRO tool that helps you track and improve your website’s conversions. Heap gives you the power to answer any question about your users without writing code. Heap automatically captures every web, mobile, and cloud interaction and makes it available for analysis in real-time.
Heap’s features include:
- Automatic event tracking: Heap automatically captures all web, mobile, and cloud interactions, so you don’t have to write code.
- Real-time data: Heap gives you the power to answer any question about your users without waiting for data to come in.
- Heap SQL: Heap’s proprietary SQL-like language lets you query your data in ways that weren’t possible before.
- Integrations: Heap integrates with all major online marketing, analytics, and advertising tools.
While Heap is a powerful tool, it can be expensive to use Heap on large sites with lots of traffic. It can also be challenging to set up and configure properly and doesn’t work well with certain types of data, such as Flash or Java applets.
Serviceform
Serviceform is conversion tool suite which includes 12 conversion tools. You can use Serviceform to communicate, convert and manage your customers and leads. Serviceform’s conversion suite consists of chatbots, popups, analytics tool, meeting scheduling software and much more.
Even though there are multiple conversion tools included in the package, Serviceform’s biggest strength lies in generating leads. Their chatbots and other conversion tools are designed specifically to smoothly engage web visitors and they’re equipped with AI to provide fast and accurate support.
Serviceform’s specialisation lies in the real estate and automotive industries. But whichever industry you’re in, if your website has a decent amount of traffic and you’re looking to engage them, then it could be worth your time to check Serviceform out.
Conclusion
It would be best to consider using a CRO tool to improve your website’s conversion rate. Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Hotjar, VWO, and Heap are all great options that can help you track and enhance your website’s conversion rate.
When choosing a CRO tool, it’s essential to consider your needs and goals. Each CRO tool offers different features, so you’ll want to select the one that’s right for you.
