Most people think that one of the essential things in marketing is to get decent or higher traffic on the website. Well, it’s just half of the entire equation. It’s not only about bringing a greater number of visitors to the website, but also retaining them. Furthermore, you also need to turn potential prospects into valued customers. The website has to take the relationship further by completing the first transaction with customers and convert them into repeat buyers. That is when Conversion rate optimization comes into the picture for providing opportunities to all size businesses.
Optimization of websites and businesses for converting visitors into customers is done through a scientific approach. To know much more about the CRO, we bring you a Conversion Rate Optimization Guide. It will help you in getting started and acquire the best possible outcome from their testing programmes.
This guide could be utterly enlightening for founders, entrepreneurs, and bloggers who are looking out to improve the conversion rates of their website. Besides this, if you’re someone operating any organization like SaaS businesses, non-profit organizations,and eCommerce stores, you must also have a look at this guide.
Without saying much, Let’s get started.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
The term Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) refers to the process of optimizing a website for increasing the number of visitors that take desired action like purchasing something or signing up for a newsletter.
In the times of Internet marketing, there are two major ways of generating profits. Foremost, you can increase your sales by attracting additional traffic to your site. Secondly, you can improve your website by increasing your sales without adding any additional amount of traffic. The second point is where Conversion Rate Optimization focuses on.
The term conversions refer to a certain action you wish your visitors to take on. Suppose you own an eCommerce site, for you conversion, will be buying a new product, whereas if you’re a blogger, then signing up for your email newsletter will be a conversion.
What is Conversion Rate?
The percentage of people that visit your pages and take some desired action is your conversion rate. If you wish to calculate your conversion rate, you can do so by dividing the converted number by people that visited a page.
Let’s take an example of Online Gym Classes where you provide training to people.
Suppose 1000 people visit your home page once a month. If even 100 people out of 1000 subscribe to your channel, the conversion rate is 10%
What is the importance of Conversion Rate Optimization?
It is said that doubling conversions is quite easier than doubling the traffic. Well, there’s no doubt in that, it’s completely true. A little change on your landing page can double the conversion rate of that page. This is the real reason behind the higher ROI of conversion rate optimization.
In simple words, Conversion Rate Optimization is essential as it generates greater sales from the currently acquired traffic. Rather than wasting your precious time and money attracting more traffic, it is quite favourable to convert your current traffic into leads or sales.
According to a survey conducted, almost 68.5% of companies are determined to put CRO as a higher priority in their list for the upcoming year.
Conversion Rate Optimization can sometimes be misleading as most of the time; people look out towards increasing the conversion rate. But remember, this shouldn’t be your primary goal. It’s amazing to have a higher conversion rate, but your ultimate goal of Conversion Rate Optimization must be to increase the revenue generated.
How to Initiate Conversion Rate Optimization?
Start with Google Analytics
Foremost you need to know the current conversion rate of your site. Once you know it, there is a specific goal in front of you.
Now is the time to find out why your pages aren’t converting in the best possible way. For that, you must opt for the one and only – Google Analytics. This tool is capable enough to point out where the conversions are strongest or weakest.
E.g.: Many eCommerce sites go through the problem of cart abandonment. While you’re looking out for faults in your website, Google Analytics will tell you where people are leaving the site. With this, you’ll know where to start the testing process.
Discover Quantitative Data
One of the most effective ways of increasing conversions is Quantitative data. You can make use of several softwares like Crazy Egg and Hot Jar.
Now, if you’re thinking about what these softwares will help you with?
These tools will showcase the ways in which different people communicate with your page. Suppose if you have two helpful resources along with your blog, and according to your heat map, it’s being completely ignored by your audiences.
If you’d wish to enhance your blog’s conversion rates, there will be a need to test different resources in the sidebar or deleting them.
Besides this, you can also opt for a survey tool to tell you why certain people landed on a specific page. One of the best examples could be Hubspot. It offers a list of MCQs to understand their visitor’s or audience’s needs.
Qualitative Data
We all know how efficient Quantitative data is, but to have a crystal clear understanding, we also need to have qualitative data. There are several ways of acquiring qualitative data, such as In-depth surveys, Chat logs, In-person or Skype interviews, and User testing.
So these were the several ways of collecting data for Conversion Rate Optimization. Just a reminder that rather than focusing on the perfect approach, you must be focusing on asking the right questions.
It’s quite clear that the questions will be widely focused on the reasons why people Do or Don’t convert.
Once you have decided the appropriate questions and got responses for the same, it’s time for A/B tests.
How to Perform A/B Test?
Need for Adequate Traffic
The first step towards deciding whether you can perform the A/B test or not is to know the amount of traffic your site attracts. Because if your site doesn’t attract much traffic, there is no way of performing A/B testing.
The reason behind this is that the test will not be statistically significant. One of the best tools for finding out if your site has enough traffic for A/B testing is Optimizely’s Sample Size calculator.
All you have to do is put in the current conversion rate of your page, the conversion rate boost you want, and, last but not least, a statistical significance level. With this information, the tool will tell you the number of visitors you need to hit significance with your test.
Start Point of A/B Testing
People are mostly confused about the page they should start A/B testing from. So, here we are to clear all your confusions. Always start with the high-traffic pages. It is preferable to work on the conversion rate of pages already getting a good amount of traffic because there are higher chances of getting more conversions.
Secondly, you must move on to the worst-performing pages that have the most lower conversion rates. The reason behind this is these pages have nowhere to go. There are times when you’ll get a great improvement on the low-converting page with a single A/B test.
Fabricate a Hypothesis
Now that you’re on the verge of testing, it’s the right time to fabricate a hypothesis. A hypothesis is utterly essential before testing ;otherwise, you’ll end up testing every other stuff without any proper reason. With the help of a hypothesis, you’ll be able to test things based on data and proper logic.
Conducting an A/B Test
While conducting a split test, always start with the testing of big changes. It has been majorly seen that people test tiny changes that are, in fact, the most common mistake one makes in A/B testing rookie. In contrast, you should test the utterly different versions of your page. The page that wins must be then refined with smaller changes.
For conducting an A/B test, you’ll need software too. There are several A/B testing tools available in the market, like Optimizely, VWO, and Unbounce.
Ways to Escalate Conversion Rate With Designs
Inducing with Image Captions
Taking into account all the famous copywriting books, captions have always been getting more eyeballs when compared to a copy without any headline. So, it’s high time that you stop wasting your precious time over writing boring descriptions instead write attractive copy with catchy captions.
Provide Directional Hints to Audiences
Directional hints lead the users to a certain space of your page. Supposedly you see an image of someone looking in a certain direction; you’ll be bound to look at that particular direction.
Promoting Fill In The Blanks
If you’re still stuck to the idea of filling out forms, please move on as it is one of the most boring ideas. There are hardly any people who like to fill such forms. Well, you get people to fill these forms only if you make them interesting enough.
Button Like CTAs
For CTAs, never opt for text or images rather than go for traditional-looking buttons. They work best because people are used to clicking buttons. CTAs looking like images or text will get fewer clicks when compared to button one.
Lesser Options
It is always a good idea to have lesser options rather than having a lot of options and ending up having anxiety. It has been seen that even removing one option can make a noticeable difference. Last but not least, it will be a great idea if you remove all the unnecessary options from your site.
How to Design High-Converting Landing Pages
Negative Words In Headline
According to a research, negative words like “worst” and “never” work better in a headline when compared to positive words like “best” and “always” by almost a high percentage of 63.
Eg: A Certain headline like “6+ Worst food for your healthy and long hair” will grab more eyeballs when compared to 6+ best foods for your healthy and long hair.
Specific Headlines
Always remember one thing, Vague headlines never work no matter where you use them. For a catchy headline, make it as specific as possible, focusing on your product or service. There could be chances of not many people reading, but the targeted audiences will definitely appreciate it.
Utilizing Action-Focused Copy
It’s always a good idea to write an action-oriented copy rather than a passive copy. Don’t talk about the facts; instead, tell what will have once someone uses the product or service.
Showcasing Price on Landing Pages
If you’re providing a product or services at a lower price than average, you must put it across your visitors/audiences because hiding your prices could lead audiences to think that your products and services are utterly expensive and will not fit in their budget.
Using Likes, Users, Followers or Customers as Social Proof
It has been seen that social proofs have quite a strong influence on what people do. In Content Rate Optimization, Facebook likes, and the number of downloads stands as social proof.
Wrapping Up
To be honest, several factors decide whether a visitor will convert or not. One of the basics that matters are simplicity and clarity. Provide your visitors with the information they need to know about the business. But remember, lesser the options on page, the better it is.
One of the best ways to increase your conversion rate is to know what your audiences want. You must be clear and compelling for further testing it.
We hope this guide on Conversion Rate Optimization will help your site in increasing its conversion rate by converting prospective visitors into customers.
If you have any suggestions or feedback, please feel free to share it in the comments.
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