CXL Institute: Introduction To Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Program Review

Introduction to CRO

This program aims to help students and seasoned professionals alike develop special skills in the following key areas:

• Building programs and conducting thorough optimization research based on data, users, science, and individual insights.
• Learn extensible skills, and the mindset to become a CXL Certified Optimizer.
• How to set up, track and analyze successful A/B tests to realize continuous optimization.
• Gain a broad understanding of people browsing our web pages.

CRO involves running A/B tests that gather essential data about what our audience really wants. We seek to understand what is important to our visitors, what mindset they are in when they begin to search for solutions. We also want to explore various ways that we can make them feel comfortable and motivate them to take a desirable action.

Learning how to identify exactly where to focus optimization efforts is vital if you want to increase conversion rates. Every Conversion Rate Optimization Expert must know right off the bat how to turn existing traffic into more leads and more sales. More than ever before, they must know when and how to do this for every business. Unfortunately, this does come easy for all marketers!

It is a fact that most if not all businesses need Optimization Experts who readily know what they are doing and have a clear end in mind. It is the clear mandate of such Experts to develop a proven process detailing exactly of what to test, what to skip, how to do it and when is the right time.

Landing page experience

Various factors influence the landing page experience that visitors get upon opening such pages. Therefore, it is important to gain a foothold of the below areas of a landing page:

• Understand all the factors that influence the landing page experience and what specific role the landing page itself plays.
• Understand the characteristics of an effective landing page so you know what to aim for and what to avoid when building landing pages.
• Develop a broad overview of the landing page optimization process so you know what steps are involved and where you should start.
• Understand the difference between fast and slow thinking and how these two different “modes” affect your users’ decision-making process. 

Landing page wireframing and information hierarchy

A logical and well-structured information hierarchy is the backbone of any high-converting landing page. Building wireframes early on helps you visualize, structure and critique the ideas you have in your head and facilitate collaboration.

• Learn how cognitive biases like framing and priming affect the user experience and how/when they can backfire.
• Learn how to use cognitive biases to guide the user through the landing page experience in a clear and logical way. 

Introduction to brain chemicals – Dopamine & Cortisol

Brain chemicals affect and influence human behavior. This is especially true in marketing psychology, and more specifically dopamine and cortisol affect human decision-making and human behavior in more profound ways than originally thought to be the case. Here, you learn:

• How brain chemicals affect human user experience so you can take this into consideration when building new landing pages.
• How dopamine and cortisol drive human behavior and how you can use these to create optimal user experiences.
• Insight into the most common cortisol triggers that negatively affect the landing page experience so you can avoid pitfalls. 

Quantitative Landing Page Optimization – via Google Analytics

Gathering quantitative data is an important step in LPO. This insight gives you an overview of what users are doing and where things are going wrong. Moreover, it provides you with important insight into who your target audience is and how they interact with your landing page. The key highlights to learn are:

• How to get important insight from Google Analytics in less than an hour.
• Get an introduction and guided tour of the most insightful standard reports in Google Analytics to use in your LPO research.
• Learn how to create a manual step-drop analysis so you can pinpoint where users are abandoning the conversion funnel.

Qualitative vs Quantitative Landing Page Optimization Research

Where quantitative research helps you answer “where”, “what” and “who”, qualitative research helps you answer “why” questions. Here, you learn how to conduct a full-funnel walkthrough.

Moreover, you also learn more about how to get important insight from user testing, interviews, and customer reviews. Key points to understand here are:

• Learn how to conduct a full-funnel walkthrough that focuses on finding the weakest points in the landing page experience.
• Get tips for how to use customer review sites to get insight to inform what content to include and how to write your copy.
• Get a list of questions you can ask during interviews with Customer support, Sales, and customers as well as guidelines for how to conduct these interviews.
• Learn how to get insight from Session Recordings and how to incorporate these insights in your LPO work.
• Get practical advice for how to use Feedback Polls effectively in your LPO work – this includes a set of questions that you can run right away on your landing pages.
• Learn more about Heat Maps and what to look for when analyzing data that you have collected. 

How to write impressive copy for a landing page

Under this section, you learn the fundamentals of landing page copywriting and a simple approach that will help kickstart your writing process. You also learn how to:

• Understand how to use your information hierarchy, a guide for how to prioritize elements and structure your copy.
• Get a simple technique for finding out how much copy to include on any landing page you work on.
• Get a deeper understanding of what copy elements to focus your attention and energy on. This helps you prioritize your copy efforts and write more effective copy.
• Get a deeper insight into how to use copy to mitigate drive motivation and mitigate negative emotions.
• Get a set of formulas and templates that will help kickstart your writing process and keep you focused on the right elements. 

Designing effective and high-converting landing pages

The program details what to focus on so as to put together an effective landing page experience, emphasizing the following points:

• Understand the basics of designing effective, high-converting landing pages.
• Learn the 6 most important landing page design elements so you know what to focus on. This will help you save time and stay away from the less important aspects.
• Learn how to use your information hierarchy and wireframes as a guideline for your design efforts.

Social proofing:

Social proofing is a phenomenon where people infer and interpret the words or actions of others to help them decide upon a course of action. Science does indeed play a key role in marketing, especially the science of psychology.

The use of social proof can be found in many areas of both offline and online marketing.