Looking to improve your online business with conversion rate optimization (CRO)? Here you can find out everything you need to know about CRO, including the key benefits and how we at Covnertica can help!
Introduction
CRO is one of the most important aspects of successful digital marketing, and it can boost your business's leads, conversions, and revenue. Yet, it is often poorly implemented or overlooked, which means that many businesses are missing out on a powerful method of improving their online business.
However, if you implement CRO effectively, recent studies have shown that it offers an average ROI of 223%. So it's an excellent investment for your business.
In this article, we'll be taking a look at what CRO is in more detail, the key benefits of devoting time and funds to it, and how CRO can ultimately fuel the next stage of your business' success.
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) aims to increase the percentage of your website visitors that convert. What constitutes a conversion varies from business to business - and you should establish what a conversion is early on in the process.
For e-commerce businesses, conversions are most often sales - but form submissions, email sign-ups, or appointment bookings are also conversions that you may be looking to increase.
The purpose of CRO, therefore, is to improve the efficiency of your website at driving traffic towards your business goal (e.g., converting). Effective CROs will use a wide range of techniques and tools to achieve conversions, from customer journey analysis to split testing.
When potential customer visits a website, they often encounter problems and imperfections that prevent them from following through with their action (e.g., making a purchase or signing up for a service). CRO identifies what deters website visitors from converting and finds solutions for them, thereby optimizing your conversion rate.
What Are the Benefits of CRO?
CRO has many benefits. It will increase the success of your business online and boost the satisfaction of your customers. Here we take a look at four key ways that you can improve your business by focusing on conversion rates.
Given that 81% of online users trust recommendations from family and friends, and 30% prefer to purchase from places they've previously shopped, improving user experience is a meaningful way that CRO can improve your business in the long run.
Understand your Audience
To increase the likelihood that a website visitor will convert, it's vital that you understand your audience. Why? Because studying the website navigation behavior of your leads, prospects, and customers will help you find where - and why - they may not be converting.
CRO tools such as user session recordings and customer heat maps can help you identify where in the process potential customers drop out. By using this kind of data, you can improve user experience so that fewer customers are likely to drop out at the identified points.
Improve User Experience
When you perform CRO testing and implement strategies in light of the findings, you get both higher conversion rates and a better user experience. CRO helps you remove barriers to conversion, improve website forms, and clarify site navigation. It means that you create a better, more user-friendly website, which will result in more turning customers and customer recommendations.
Given that 81% of online users trust recommendations from family and friends, and 30% prefer to purchase from places they've previously shopped, improving user experience is a meaningful way that CRO can improve your business in the long run.
Gain Customers from Competitors
No matter the industry you're in, it's likely that you have competitors out there offering similar services and products. CRO can help you become the go-to business in your field.
When you make your website as appealing and intuitive as possible for visitors, they have a legitimate reason for preference. If all images, texts, and navigation work perfectly together for a hassle-free process, customers have no reason to choose a competing site.
Through testing and solutions, you can make sure you're offering an online experience that is superior to that provided by your competitors, thus drawing more traffic and giving you a more significant market share.
Boost your Sales
Ultimately, effective CRO solutions can lead to higher sales. Once you have done testing to find out who visits your site and what stops them from converting, you can utilize your findings to improve user experience and, therefore, the likelihood of making a sale.
When you work to improve your website's conversion rate, you can also shorten the time it takes between lead to a purchase, offering greater efficiency in the sales process.
The main sign that your CRO campaign is working is that you'll get a higher volume of sales from the same number of visitors. This can be achieved through CRO solutions such as split testing, enhancing text content, streamlining forms, and upgrading your visuals.
How Does the CRO Process Work?
There is no one set process for CRO. How you can improve your website through conversion rate optimization depends on the type of business you are and the kind of conversions you need.
Most CRO strategies, therefore, need to start with a review of your current website and monitoring to find out where visitors are dropping out of your conversion funnel. From there, you might expect some or all of the following:
- Website review
- Strategy planning
- Split testing
- Improving visuals, text, and enhancing content
- Integration of successful layouts
- Monitoring and reviewing
Overall, the CRO process shows what your customers respond to, and what the key factors are for driving results. Once you test, you should monitor the results to see how you could continue any further improvements.
Bottom Line
Conversion rate optimization is essential in improving your business and ensuring that your website leads to sign-ups, sales, and revenue. That's why every business should integrate CRO into its sales and marketing strategy.