Your website could be working harder and driving even more results for your business. Even if you’re happy with your site performance and its conversion rates – there’s always room for improvement. That’s where Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) comes in handy, providing your organisation with the chance to find out how your website could be doing even better.
CRO is all about taking a structured and analytical approach to identifying changes to your website that will improve the volume of visitors who turn into leads, customers or subscribers.
Conversion rate optimisation means different things to different businesses depending on what you’re hoping to achieve on your site. CRO is all about increasing conversions (when a visitor takes an action you want them to) but this could be filling in a form, downloading an app, contacting your company or making a purchase.
What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
Your conversion rate is the proportion of your overall website traffic compared with the number of conversions. Conversion rate optimisation is therefore all about making the most of your traffic and improving user journeys and experience in order to improve the percentage of conversions stemming from website visits.
Why is conversion rate optimisation so important?
With increasingly crowded marketplaces and so many websites and businesses vying for the attention of people online it can be tricky to get ahead and meet your organisation’s objectives. That’s why regardless of how great your site is performing (whether that’s in relation to visitors, a great user-experience, subscribers, enquiries or sales) - there’s always room for improvement and increased conversions.
By tweaking the user journey, you can ensure your conversion processes is easier and simpler for people to complete - driving conversions and better results for your brand.
Growing visitor numbers is always a positive objective to have but by focussing on conversion rate optimisation you’re making better use of the traffic and visitors you already have which can be more straightforward. By consistently improving your visitor to conversion rate, you’re onto a winner and it means you don’t have to pay for additional traffic to grow conversions either.
That’s why CRO is vital to helping your brand to succeed - so how do you go about increasing your conversion rate?
How to improve your conversion rate
User experience
Evaluate your website’s usability as user-experience (UX) and conversion rate optimisation are interlinked. UX is all about providing a positive experience and making browsing through the site intuitive. Assessing your site’s user-experience provides opportunities to identify any areas for improvement to make conversion processes straightforward.
Understand what users are trying to do – can they find information easily and navigate around the site? Check that it’s simple to fill in forms no matter what device people are using. Ensure any checkouts are straightforward.
Call-to-actions
Ensure you have strong call-to-actions throughout – clearly outlining what you want the user to do using concise phrases and active tenses. For instance, if a conversion is a sale for your business have a ‘Buy Now’ button that is obvious, easy to select on all devices including smartphones and tablets, and is placed above the fold to encourage conversions.
You can also A/B split test your call-to-actions to discover what generates the best results. Test different wording, the colours, the font, or the location of the call-to-action on the page. Be sure to only change one aspect at a time though, so you can plainly see what has an impact and contributes to increased conversions.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays an important role in CRO too. SEO is all about boosting the performance of your site in search engine results so you appear higher up in the list of results when people are searching for keywords relating to your business, products or services. So how does this relate to conversion rate optimisation?
Ensure your SEO efforts are focusing on accurate keywords, insightful meta data and relevant information. If not, visitors may arrive on your site expecting one thing only to discover your brand, services or products aren’t what they were hoping to find from their search. This will mean the traffic your SEO activity is attracting isn’t high-quality or relevant, so you’ll lose traffic quickly and conversion rates will be negatively affected.
CRO and trust
People are more likely to convert if they trust your brand and your site – trustworthiness is key to conversion rate optimisation.
Security is important. Will visitors, especially new ones, trust your site? Ensure the design and brand embodies professionalism and trust. Do you clearly state how you will use peoples data? Are your payment methods familiar and trusted by consumers – for example can people checkout using recognisable systems such as Paypal?
An alternative way to build trust is by displaying reviews or customer testimonials. This lets potential customers know that people have made purchases and have had a positive experience of working with your brand.
If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to conversion rate optimisation - get in touch with our expert online marketing team or request a call back. If you’re looking for a marketing agency in Newcastle Gateshead look no further.
