Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Strategies for Boosting Website Conversions

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is an ongoing process aimed at increasing the likelihood of website visitors taking a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service. CRO involves various strategies and techniques to improve the user experience and ultimately boost conversion rates.

CRO may also involve testing different landing pages, website design elements, and navigational options to determine their effectiveness on a shopper’s journey and decision-making process. Here are some key aspects of CRO :

1. A/B Testing: A common CRO technique involves comparing two versions of a webpage (A and B) to see which one performs better in terms of conversion rates. Changes in design, content, or layout can be tested to determine which version is more effective.
2. Responsive Design: Ensuring that your website is responsive means it adapts to different devices and screen sizes. This is crucial for providing a positive user experience, as users may access your site on desktops, smartphones, or tablets.
3. Site Speed: Slow-loading websites can lead to high bounce rates and lower conversions. Optimizing site speed is an essential aspect of CRO, as users expect fast and responsive web experiences.
4. Form Optimization: If your website uses forms for lead generation or other purposes, optimizing these forms can improve conversion rates. This includes minimizing the number of fields, making the form easy to fill out, and reducing friction.
5. Imagery: The choice and placement of images on your website can influence user engagement and conversion rates. High-quality, relevant images can enhance the user experience and encourage action.
6. Ads: If your website includes advertisements, their placement and relevance should be carefully considered. Well-placed and relevant ads can contribute positively to conversion rates, while intrusive or irrelevant ads can have the opposite effect.
7. Site Design: The overall design and layout of your website play a significant role in user satisfaction and conversion rates. A well-designed site that is visually appealing and easy to navigate is more likely to convert visitors into customers.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action on a website. Desired actions can include purchasing a product, clicking ‘add to cart’, signing up for a service, filling out a form, or clicking on a link.

A more user-centric definition of CRO :

Standard definitions of CRO, like the one we just wrote above, place their focus on conversion percentages, averages, and benchmarks. This emphasis on a numerical approach comes with a downside—the more you look at spreadsheets full of conversion data points and actions, the less you think of the individuals behind them.

Here is an alternative, more holistic, and user-centric way of defining CRO: think of it as the process of focusing on understanding what drives, stops, and persuades your users, so you can give them the best user experience possible—and that, in turn, is what makes them convert and ultimately improves your website conversion rate.

focusing on the final action—the conversion—is obviously important, but in reality, a lot happens before that point:

• Specific DRIVERS bring people to your website
• Specific BARRIERS make them leave
• Specific HOOKS persuade them to convert

When you’re working to improve conversions, not every problem is quantifiable, backed by hard numbers, and with a clear-cut answer. Yes: sometimes, an obvious bug is blocking 80% of your users from doing something, and fixing that one bug will save your entire business; other times, your website functions perfectly and yet people still are not converting.

When this happens, you’ll need to dig deeper to understand the why beyond the data you have—you’ll need, in other words, to focus on your users first.

Whether you own an e-commerce site or manage online marketing or SEO (search engine optimization), CRO will constantly be a top-of-mind topic to help your organization grow.

How to calculate the conversion rate :

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions (desired actions taken) by the total number of visitors and multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.

For example, if your web page had 18 sales and 450 visitors last month, your conversion rate is 18 divided by 450 (0.04), multiplied by 100 = 4%.

What is the Average Conversion Rate?

Averages may be useful as starting points for benchmarking, but what do they really have to do with YOUR website?

This figure is sort of meaningless, since:

• Conversion rates differ wildly depending on the conversion goal (ad clicks, checkout completions, newsletter signups, etc.)
• Every website, page, and audience is different
• Most people don't share their conversion data publicly anyway

There is no actual, ultimate industry figure you can rely on or compare yourself against with 100% confidence. Obsessing over an average percentage figure, and trying to squeeze as many conversions as possible just to stay in line with it, is not the best way to think about conversion rate optimization.

Once again, you’re better off focusing on developing an in-depth understanding of what actually matters to your users, so you can give it to them—and then, conversions will naturally follow.

The best conversion rate optimization tools

Your brain, ears, eyes, and mouth are the primary tools you need to understand your customers, empathize with their experience, draw conclusions based on the data,?and ultimately make the changes that improve your?product conversion rates.

How do you use these free tools? ?

• Listen to what your users have to say about your website
• Watch how people use your website
• Immerse yourself in the market
• Talk to whoever designed and built your site (and your product/service)
• Speak to the staff that sell and support your product/service
• Draw connections between different sources of feedback

All the other, traditional optimization tools are simply the means that help you do it. And they help in three ways:

1. Quantitative tools to uncover what is happening

Quantitative tools allow you to collect quantitative (numerical) data to track?what?is happening on your website. They include:

• General analytics tools that track website traffic (e.g., Google Analytics)
• Website heat map tools that aggregate the number of clicks, scrolls, and movements on a page
• Funnel tools that measure when visitors drop off from a sales funnel
• Form analysis tools that track form submissions
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) tools that?measure customer satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10
• Tools that use the Net Promoter System?to measure the likelihood of people recommending your website/product to someone else on a scale from 0 to 10

2. Qualitative tools to uncover why things happen

Qualitative tools help you collect qualitative (non-numerical) data to learn?why?your website visitors behave in a certain way. They include:

• Website feedback tools (on-page and external link surveys)?where visitors are asked questions about their experience
• Website session recording/replay tools?that show how individual users navigate through your website
• Usability testing tools where a panel of potential or current customers can voice their thoughts and opinions on your website
• Online reviews where you can read more about people’s experience of your brand and product

3. Tools to test changes and measure improvements

After you’ve collected?quantitative and qualitative feedback?and developed a clear sense of what's happening on your website, testing tools allow you to make changes and/or report on them to see if your conversion optimization efforts are going in the right direction. They include:

• A/B testing tools that help you test different variations of a page to find the best performer (recommended for high-traffic sites, so you can be certain your results are statistically valid)
• Website heat map + session recording tools that allow you to compare different variations of a page and the behavior on it
• Conversion-tracking analytics tools that track and monitor conversions
• Website feedback tools (like visual feedback widgets or NPS dashboards) that help you collect qualitative feedback and quantify it, so you can compare the before/after response to any change you made.