CRO: The Way Forward for Better Conversions

In the recent past, conversion rate optimization (CRO) has been doing rounds in the industry and has been a blessing, in disguise, for a lot of marketeers. While, for a lot of people it is still a mystery, there is a lot available on the net, for anyone to read and understand things about CRO. This blog is one, in the series of many, with which I attempt to make CRO and it's features a little more clear for the aspiring marketeers.

Wondering what Conversion Rate Optimization is? Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO as we know it, is a method of increasing the percentage of conversions for any website or application. This includes a lot of different practices, data being the backbone at all times. Today, companies are investing a lot in their CRO strategy to drive more conversions. Until recently, companies used to concentrate only on getting the traffic. The mantra earlier was, more traffic, more money and revenue eventually. With CRO, this mantra has surely changed for good.

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There are a lot of changes that we make to a website based on the ‘industry standards’ or ‘market trends’, without thinking if the changes that we are about to do are actually correct for us or not. A UI/UX that would work for one website, might not necessarily work for another website in the same manner. For example for a website in the real estate or banking sector, if we highlight the Contact Us Call To Action (CTA) and it gives us good results, it is not necessary that the same tweak done to an e-commerce website will also yield the same result. It is necessary to test the changes and be sure before implementing the same. When on the internet, your website is the face of the brand and you wouldn’t want to jeopardize it because of one wrong change.

Here are the 3 basic things you need to keep in mind while working on the CRO for your website-

Understand The Visitors Intent

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Every brand on the internet, has a specific target group/audience that they want to cater to and every user, of that target group/audience in particular and people in general, has a different intent with which they browse the internet and even a particular website.

Understanding the intent of your user is the key. A user coming to an e-commerce website may have an intent to either buy a product or to check the price of a particular product and compare it with other places where the same product is listed. The intent can also be to only browse the website casually and not buy or compare any product. The intent of the user matters a lot. That being said, the intent of every user from every traffic source is also different. A user who would have seen your ad, even though he/she does not have the intention to buy anything, comes on your website because of the amazing offer that he/she saw; a user who comes from direct traffic, his intention of buying something or the other is more than anyone else from any other traffic source.

Pro Tip- Do a thorough research about the user persona and intention. While making any changes, do a traffic source analysis. No point wasting time on optimizing for the wrong traffic.

Invest More Time On New Ideas

Every time I see a website, I try to look for opportunities to increase the conversion rate of that website. No idea is a bad idea. Every idea counts. When you look at your website heuristically, you will get plenty of ideas to make changes to your website. Write them down and then prioritize them. From a simple CTA copy change to a form field change, everything is important. Everything is about ideas and not the tests. If you don’t have any idea, you won’t have any tests to run on your website. Data is the new gold in the modern world. Back your ideas with data to be sure of the kind of tests that you want to run. The more data you have to back your heuristic analysis, the better your tests will be and the results will be there to tell the story.

To manage your ideas, list them down. This will help you maintain a repository of all the changes that crossed your mind. Prioritizing them is also necessary. Most of the ideas might be the ones that would not be implemented immediately, but with changing time and increasing traffic, you might be able to run the tests in the future, and then those ideas could be put to use. Wondering how to come up with good ideas? A good ideation process should have the following 3 things-

• Ask the right questions while looking at your website. These questions should be guided by your goal towards which you are working.
• Increasing the sample size helps eradicate any anomaly in analysis. Take inputs from other people and understand their point of view too. 
• Increase the sample quality. 

Testing Is An Endless Process With Amazing Results-

Now that you have understood the intent of your users and have a list of ideas for your website, the question boils down to what to do next? You could either go on and implement those changes right away and wait for your audience to react. On the other you could also test your idea with the present website UI/UX and when you are sure that your idea is better than what is present on the website, then make the changes according to your ideas. 

A/B Testing comes in handy for this. A/B testing is a method wherein you compare two versions of a page against one another to see which one performs better. It is essentially an experiment where two versions of the same page are shown to users at random and statistical analysis is done to determine which version performs better for a given conversion goal. With this, you won’t have to play the gamble of going ahead with implementing a change without being sure if it will affect your website positively or not. 

Few points to remember while you get started with your A/B testing experience-

• Test one thing (change) at a time. If you run multiple tests on a single page, determining which test is performing better and the amount of positive impact is easier said than done. 
• Make sure that the statistical significance of the test is at least 95% to be sure about the result.
• Be sure you have all data required to put any idea to the test. So that you wouldn’t be wasting your time on testing the wrong idea.

Doing CRO is as easy as it looks. You just have to ask yourself the right questions, understand your users ( target audience) and head-on with running A/B tests. In this fast-paced world, testing is the only thing that guarantees you good results

“The next time someone tells you bad design converts better than good design, punch them in the face.”Peep Laja

If you want to understand more about CRO and how you can improve your website, CXL Institute is an amazing place for all your answers. Subscribe to their blogs today and you are sure to get some amazing insights. 

Stay tuned for more.