What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation And How Can It Grow Your Revenue Quick Smart

If you want to maximise the value of visitors already on your site, then you’ve come to the right place. Making minor tweaks to your website can make a big difference to your bottom line, let me explain. First, let's answer 'what is conversion rate optimisation'?

WHAT IS CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION (OPTIMIZATION IF YOU'RE AMERICAN) IN DIGITAL MARKETING?

Conversion Rate Optimisation is the ‘systematic process’ to increase the percentage of visitors to a website or mobile app that take a desired action on a webpage e.g., make a purchase, book a call or download an opt-in. Surprisingly, it’s a topic we hear very little about but is a very quick way to increase your revenue given the visitors are already on your site and somewhat qualified.

Before we get into it, there is one thing I need to clarify: SEO helps brings users to your website whilst CRO helps you to get them to stay and dare we say convert. CRO is simply about turning visitors that are already on your website into paying customers/clients. If you want to learn more about SEO, check out my blog What is SEO and why is it important?

Now that we've answered 'what is conversation rate optimisation', the next big question is how do you achieve it? You need to look at the data and see where people are dropping off in your sales (conversion) funnel to make decisions around what areas of your website need improvement.

Use data to understand how users move through your site, what actions they take and what’s stopping them from completing their goals (more on this soon). You must give them exactly what they need to convert, so they do!

WHY IS CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION (CRO) IMPORTANT?

Optimising your conversion rate is a simple way to increase profit for your business. By maximising the conversions of users already on your site you will:

• Increase your revenue
• Lower your acquisition costs
• Get more value from your current leads and customers/clients
• Grow your business overall.

You can now see why conversion rate optimization is important.

It’s a win win, I say.

WHAT IS A CONVERSION RATE?

A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that completed a desired goal, out of the total number of visitors.

Conversion Rate: Number of conversions (goals achieved) / Visitors (site traffic)

Multiply this number by 100 to get a percentage.

WHAT IS A GOOD CONVERSION RATE?

The average conversion rate changes and depends on your niche, business model and the type of conversion you’re measuring. You’ll need to run a search specifically for your sector and type of goal. Regardless of where this number sits, it’s always good practice to optimise to increase conversions.

CRO TESTING

There are different strategies to improve your conversion rate. You need to use your own data and insights to make decisions around improvements. Remember: CRO should be an ongoing practice. Constantly test and optimise different elements of your website or app to achieve the best possible results (more conversions) and money in the bank.

You can use website analytics tools or behaviour analysis tools like heatmaps and visitor recordings to make these educated decisions.

Website Analytics

You need to have website analytics in place to track conversion rates across your site and highlight any problem areas on your website such as where customers are bouncing out of your website. Google Analytics combined with your website analytics will be a great start. Be sure to check data across different devices and platforms. Look at metrics like page views, average time on page, page views per session and bounce rate and see if these numbers change across the different pages (and devices).

User Behaviour Analysis Tools

If you’d like to take your research a step further, you can use behaviour analysis tools which will provide you with qualitative data. Types of behavioural measurement tools include heatmaps, scroll maps, visitor recordings and form analysis etc.

Behavioural tools help you visualise where your users spend most of their time on a web page and where exactly you’re losing them. For example, heatmaps are visual website analytics tools. They depict value as colour and detect what is and isn’t working on a web page by showing you data like how far a user scrolls on a webpage. The hottest colours show the most viewed section of the page. Software like Crazy Egg, and Hotjar can help here.

You can also use visitor recordings that allow you to play back a visitor’s session on your website and watch how they interact with it. Another is form analysis. Here, the software analyses your web forms to determine if any fields are causing completion issues.

Use the data you have collected from your website analytics and behaviour tools to identify pages on your website that need improvement along with individual sections on a page. These insights will help your generate ideas on what to test.

Once you have determined what needs to be optimised on your website, you can run A/B tests where you test two variations of a webpage to see which optimises better. The one that provides a better conversion rate is the winner. Improving your conversion rate requires testing different elements of your website to see what your audience responds to and essentially produces the best result.

The elements you test will depend on your insights but could include:

• Headlines

• Copy (including product descriptions)

• Media (images vs. video vs. text)

• Design and layout (including headers, sidebars etc.)

• Colours

• Font size

• Pricing – different prices of the offer but all the display eg. $47.00 vs. $47

STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE YOUR CONVERSION RATE ON YOUR WEBSITE

There are many actions you can take to increase your conversion rate, I have listed a few below to get you started:

Memorable Branding

Present your brand strong across your site from colours, to fonts, tone of voice and messaging. You want it all to be consistent.

Step-by-step Instructions

Create clear, step-by-step instructions that help push prospects further down the sales funnel. When you guide users, they are more likely to achieve both micro and macro goals.

Customer Value Proposition

Your customer value proposition describes the added value you bring to your customers/clients that your competitors doesn’t. It should be consistent across all your products/services. It should state what your users will get, why they should use you and why it’s so valuable. Try and keep it to be a simple one liner.

For example:

Uber: The Smartest Way to Get Around

CrazyEgg: Website Behaviour Tracking at an Unbeatable Price

Clever Copy

Keep the language simple and conversational so that it’s readable by anybody. Keep the copy benefit rich and free of technical jargon.

Powerful Calls to Action

Make it clear and simple. You want to compel a reader to click that button and convert.

Trust factors

Including trust factors like product reviews, testimonials, privacy policies and payment icons are a great way to build credibility with your audience and propel them towards a conversion.

The best measure of success in a business is revenue. Conversions are the next best thing.

Make the most out of users already visiting your site or app by increasing the percentage of those who end up becoming paying customers or clients. This will quickly increase your revenue and grow your business. It’s time to start capturing more of your low-hanging fruit.