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• Uncategorized , Conversion Rate Optimization ,
• 25 Feb

Billions of people are online, but they have at least 1.6 billion websites besides yours.

Today’s businesses rely on web properties to drive sales and lead generation processes. With more than 1.6 billion websites for users to choose from, grabbing a slice of user attention is no small task. This makes an Effective Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy key to success.

For the average business website, organic search engine traffic continues to be the primary source of visitors. Some statistical analyses suggest that the share of traffic generated in that way can be as high as 50 percent. Is it any wonder? Businesses in the United States are on track to spend upwards of $80 billion in search engine optimization (SEO) services. This spending is per year by 2020.

Driving traffic to a website is a fine goal, but it isn’t an end. You must guarantee the site is compelling to make that traffic worth anything. The site visitors see when they arrive should also be designed to elicit a particular user response. That’s where a different web design discipline comes in: conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Creating an Effective Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy

To get started, first decide what website behavior you want to promote. This is the initial step in creating a CRO strategy. If your company has no existing CRO strategy, it’s best to start small. Changing existing sales processes without a plan can disastrously affect your bottom line.

Start by looking for ways to improve the conversion activity. These activities lead up to making sales. They are generally known as micro-conversions. They include:

• Newsletter or email list sign-ups
• Page-view thresholds (number of pages viewed per visit, an indicator of engagement)
• Comments on site content
• Adding product reviews
• Add to cart button clicks
• Social media shares

Once you’ve selected a target for your first CRO effort, the next step is to collect the correct data. This data will inform your strategy.

6 Ways to Cure Your CRO Woes

Generate a baseline.

The first data you’ll need is a measurement of your website’s performance. It should show how well it is accomplishing the desired conversion. The easiest way to gather this information is by using Google Analytics. It allows users to set goals to track specific activity on their connected websites.

You’ll generally want at least one month’s worth of tracking data. This eliminates the possibility of short-term anomalies providing a distorted picture of performance. For example, suppose your business is now running a deep discount special on a given product. In that case, avoiding using data connected to that product as a baseline is a good idea.

Once you’re capable of gathering a baseline data set for the current conversion rate of your target, your next step is to decide on two things:

• What percentage improvement are you aiming for
• How long are you going to give yourself to achieve that improvement

Take care to avoid the temptation to set unrealistic goals. For example, don’t expect your conversion rate to hit 74 percent. If your website does that, it would be on par with Amazon Prime. Instead, aim for an achievable goal of a 2 percent improvement over your existing conversion performance. Then, it’s time to collect some more data.

7 Tips to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy

Understanding your users.

Once you know your target, it’s time to turn to the most essential part of the conversion equation: your users. It’s critical to gain an understanding of who they are. You need to know what they want. Understand why they are looking elsewhere for it.

The data you’ll need to create a profile of your users will need to come from a variety of sources, including:

User Interviews: Believe it or not, asking users is the best way to find out what they want. CRO experts start their improvement process with user research. They begin with interviews because these techniques can quickly reveal specific barriers to conversion activity. These barriers include user experience (UX) issues, navigation problems, and poor content engagement.

Visitor Recording: Software that records users’ moment-to-moment interactions can reveal valuable insights into user behavior on your existing site. This can help paint a clearer picture of the customer journey. This method allows for comparison between visitors who converted and those who didn’t. Various tools are available to accomplish this task. Each would be an excellent addition to a business’s analytics toolkit.

Heatmaps: A heatmap represents where a website user focuses their attention and in what order. They help you determine the placement of your most vital content. This is done relative to the existing design of the page. Google’s research has shown that eye movements are an excellent predictor of mouse activity. They help paint a picture of which elements work on a page. They also indicate which elements are causing visitors to leave.

5 Tips, Tools, and Tricks for Understanding User Intent

Creating a hypothesis.

CRO strategy focuses on developing theories. These theories determine the best ways to elicit a specific user response. To achieve this, you need to examine your user research data. You should try to identify changes that will lead to better conversion results. For example, if your user interviews revealed that a common pain point in your conversion process is that users find it challenging to determine what action you’d like them to take, and indicated that a clear graphic link would help, your hypothesis would look like:

“I will add a call to action button in a prime location. My heat map will help determine this location. Then users will know exactly what I want them to do. Users will then know exactly what action I want them to take. I have provided them with a clear indication. This is just as they’ve asked.”

The above statement consists of three components:

• A proposed change
• An expected result
• And the data that demonstrates why you believe the change will work

Testing your hypotheses.

After identifying a proposed change, you’ll want to create multiple versions of that change. Base these versions on the data you’ve collected. In the above example, you can try a text-based call to action. Alternatively, experiment with a few different button designs. This will help you figure out which works the best.

To test your versions, you’ll need to conduct A/B or multivariate testing based on the complexity of your proposed changes. Suppose you’re only changing a page design or a single element. In that case, an A/B test will let you check the design’s performance. It does this by randomly showing visitors the original or the new design on your existing page.

Why Your Approach to A/B Testing Is Costing You Sales

Bringing everything together.

You now understand the essential components of a CRO strategy, enabling you to develop a comprehensive CRO plan. To do it, you’ll have to identify multiple areas and conversion activities you’d like to improve, starting with the micro-conversions mentioned here, and working through the list up to macro-conversions, which are things like:

• Completed sales
• Qualified lead generation
• Completed customer contacts

The good news is that micro-conversions are the focus of your initial efforts. This focus will make improving your macro-conversion activity much easier. Getting the little things right helps you refine your CRO strategy. It also builds a design foundation that leaves visitors primed to embrace macro-conversions.

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