CRO: 4 common challenges and how to rise above

Conversion rate optimisation, or CRO, is a lot like flossing your teeth. We all know we need to do it, but most of us just don’t want to.

CRO can help you understand your users better and bring in more and better conversions. However, many in-house marketing teams don’t know where to start. You can’t optimise your website perfectly for every single user… right?!

While CRO might sound daunting, it’s one of the best ways to grow your customer base without increasing your marketing budget. And that’s something that resonates with us all in the current economic climate.

So if you’ve been putting conversion rate optimisation off, here are four of the most common CRO complaints I hear, and how to overcome them. Let’s get started!

New to the world of CRO? Here’s a primer to get you up to speed.

1. Understanding your target audience

Before you even start tweaking the colour of those call-to-action buttons, it’s imperative that you know your target audience inside and out.

Most CRO strategies are doomed to fail because the marketing team doesn’t know who they are targeting. This leads to a mishmash of confused changes that don’t increase conversions.

When you understand your target audience, you know what they want to see, how they behave, and what they want to achieve. For example, if your target audience are Gen-Zers that want you to get straight to the point, a 3,000-word landing page isn’t likely to help your cause.

Look at your data, speak to prospective customers, and analyse your competitors to see who you need to sell to.

2. Identifying and addressing the right obstacles

Did you ever watch ‘The Butterfly Effect?’ The premise was that even the smallest changes in circumstance can significantly impact your life.

The same logic applies to your website. Changing images, headings, and even words, can lead to a boost in traffic, dwell time, and even revenue.

However, there are so many variables you can change, it’s a challenge knowing where to begin. Getting a strategy in place means you can approach CRO logically and rationally, rather than changing everything, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best.

Take one page you’d like to increase the conversion rate of, and list everything you could tweak to boost results. Given that you want people to get to the bottom of your page to reach your call-to-action, an excellent place to start is the top. Can you amend your title, opening paragraph, or add an image to entice prospective customers to keep reading?

Make your changes, wait a week, see if the amends did the job. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3. Having the right skillset in your team

There’s a lot of skill in CRO; it’s the perfect balance of analytics and creative thinking. It’s no surprise that conversion rate optimisation specialists are in high demand!

This may mean you don’t have the specific skills to carry out thorough CRO testing, especially if your team is more generalist. The good news is that you can take online courses to improve your CRO knowledge, both free and paid. CXL has an excellent free introduction to CRO, and there are plenty of explanatory videos on YouTube too.

The easiest way to improve your CRO knowledge? Through experience. The more testing and analysis you do, the better you get. You’d be surprised how many marketers got started in conversion rate optimisation to find they had a natural aptitude for it!

p.s If you don’t have the skillset or capacity in your team to carry out CRO, an agency can do the legwork for you. Xigen specialises in eCommerce CRO strategy and analysis, meaning one less thing to worry about.

4. Analysing the data using the right tools

CRO isn’t something you can do once and forget about. It’s something you need to keep on top of. Customer needs evolve and change constantly, so what worked for you last year may not necessarily work for you now.

However, once you have the basics in place, you can easily fit CRO into your daily or weekly routine.

Many people think you need access to expensive A/B testing software and heat maps to become a CRO expert. While the right tools are essential in helping you determine the right outcomes, you can take advantage of many no-cost and low-cost tools.

The best CRO tool by far is Google Analytics, which you can use to track your website activity and conversion rates. Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity offer free heatmaps so you can see how people interact with your site. And while Google Optimise is being sunsetted later this year (RIP), alternative A/B testing providers include Posthog, Flagsmith, and Freshmarketer.

In conclusion: CRO doesn’t have to be a challenge

Many marketers feel uneasy about CRO. There’s a lot of testing and tweaking to be done, which can be a lot to handle, especially if you’re not used to agile working. However, get it right, and you’ll see results fast!

I hope this article has inspired you to get started on your eCommerce store’s CRO strategy. Alternatively, if you want the benefits but don’t have the time, I can help. Drop me a DM, and let’s talk.