Introduction to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) & Best Practices — Review

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the process of improving your website to convert more prospects to sign up, subscribe or buy from you. However, any action you take or any change you make to the website must be data-driven.

Why CRO?

Why is CRO important? Because it helps you make more money. More acquisitions. More Revenue. More growth.

A well-known e-commerce website, which had a lot of traffic and conversions, decided to go for a complete redesign because they thought their website design was old and needed improvement. They thought doing a complete redesign will attract more customers. Their new website included a lot of high-quality images, attractive fonts and a lot more.

After redesigning the whole website, they witnessed a loss of over $30 million in just one month. What they had done wrong?

A lot of decisions we make are affected by biases. Humans have a tendency to like cool things, novel ideas and things we already agree with. But this does not mean things we like will always work and bring profit. In fact, most of the time, these don’t work.

When we talk about CRO, we want these biases to get out of the way so we can make our decisions based on science and data.

What is the most important thing for CRO? Testing? Ok, but what do you test?

You test ideas.

And, these ideas can come from literally anyone. From your customers, from your mind, from stakeholders or any other source. Ideas and tests are two things which are very important in CRO.

While there is no fixed formula which guarantees better conversion rate, here are some of the best practices in CRO which can help you boost your conversions.

Best Practices CRO

Website Forms

Optimizing website forms is important because these bring us sales, or at least leads (which eventually turn into sales). Form with less friction can increase your sales. These are so important yet most forms we see on websites today are poorly designed and optimized. 

Website forms are something that people hate doing—unless you are offering them a million dollars. So, it is important to keep it short and easy for the customer. Most forms on the internet today ask the following questions, even if they don't need it.

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address
• Birth Date
• Address
• Phone Number

Now let’s assume you are a digital marketing agency and someone comes on your contact us form and you ask them for the following information. Birthdate and address really? Why should I tell you these? As optimizers, it is our responsibility to reduce the friction as much as we can. Asking for just email or phone number is enough in a contact us form (most of the time). 

There is only one condition when we want to keep our forms long and this is when we don’t want unqualified leads. So, we increase the friction in order to filter the low-quality leads. 

Here are 5 ways to better optimize website forms:

• Set clear expectations. No surprises. Be transparent and tell the customer what’s the next step. Many companies ask for payment abruptly and see huge dropoffs 
• Keep as fewer form fields as you can. If you only need an email, then be it.
• If your form has too many fields, divide it into several steps. Don’t show an extremely long form at once. This can be intimidating for some people. Divide it into 3 or 4 steps
• People are lazy. Autofill any form field you can.
• People dread captchas. Try to use an alternative anti-spam method

Here is an example. Simple, an online bank, has divided there form in several steps to reduce friction.

Call to Action

Call to actions are created to guide users. What he or she should do next. The chances a user will click on a CTA depends on the following:

• They are able to notice it
• You are not forcing the next step, it is obvious
• They have the motivation to go to the next step

For every page on your website, you must have one Hero CTA. This is the most coveted action you want your users to take. You can also use secondary CTAs on your page, but your Hero CTA must stand out.

Let’s look at Netflix: Try Now For Rs20, a dominant CTA in red — stands out and catches attention.

Let’s take a look at Medium’s homepage: They have two CTA. Get started and Sign In. Since they want people to sign up after choosing topics which interest them, they have made Get Started their premium CTA.

This is so basic yet so many marketers make these silly mistakes.

Here are some additional tips for a better CTA:

• Make it obvious what happens when someone clicks on your CTA. 
• Give them a benefit in CTA
• Include trigger words

Above the Fold

Above the fold (ATF) is the content users can see without scrolling down. Any content that requires a scroll to be visible is called below the fold. This can vary depending on the screen size of the user.

Many people think above the fold is only for homepages. That’s not true. While homepages are really important (I have a separate section for it in this blog) — every page of your website must have important content above the fold. From add to cart pages and checkout pages to about us and our services pages. 

Here are some good practices for different pages:

• For the checkout page, the whole checkout thing including CTA must be ATF
• For add to cart page, the checkout CTA must be ATF
• For any form page, try to keep it ATF or divide it into several steps if it’s long

Home Page

Homepage is like the main artery of all the blood vessels present in the website. Most users land to the homepage and most backlinks send users to home. There are two main purposes of a homepage

• To give the crucial information to the users (especially above the fold)
• To help the user further navigate towards additional information

When a user lands on a homepage, he has the following questions in his mind:

• What can do I here?
• Why should I do it?
• How is this unique or better than other product/services?

When you are designing a homepage, you should have one goal: to throw traffic from the homepage to other pages.

Let’s take a look at Paypal’s homepage:

• A clear value proposition for the audience
• One clear CTA
• Encourages users to move towards the funnel by offering the right information (Sign Up, Login, Personal, Business)

E-commerce

There are three important things for e-commerce CRO:

1. Shopping Cart Pages
2. Checkout Pages
3. Internal Search

Shopping Cart Pages

Once the user clicks on add to cart, don’t show a tiny button or notification that the item was added to your cart, especially if you have older demographic in your audience. Older people struggle with noticing things on the screen.

Show a large window which stays on the page until the user checks out. Try to keep the checkout button high in the visual hierarchy if not then make sure the checkout button is the most noticeable one on your checkout page.

See how Dolce & Gabbana make their Checkout button noticeable and actionable. 

Checkout Pages

Here are some important tips to optimize the checkout pages:

• Payment info should be the last thing in your checkout process. First, ask for easy information to reduce friction. Small commitments are easier
• The credit card form should be organized and easy to fill
• It should look secure
• Store the card information. So, the next time user buys, it is easy for her

Dolce & Gabbana have made the card form seamless and easy to fill:

They tell people that their payments are secure:

Internal Search

If your website has a lot of products, you better have a search button. Informed buyers who are in the bottom stages of funnel make searches when they know what they are looking for.

Bonus tip: Product images which appear as the user enters text have shown to improve conversions.

Website Speed

I won’t stress on this point because everyone already knows how important website speed is for conversions. Have a slow loading website and watch your bounce rate skyrocket.

While many beginners look at average load speed, they don’t realise that average document interactive time is another important thing as it tells you how many seconds before your page is usable.

47% expect your website to load within two to three seconds and 57% visitors abandon the page if it does not.

There are numerous other factors which play a role in website speed and since I am not a technical person, I won’t dive deeper into this. I will recommend you to get your website checked by an SEO technician. 

Design

Design can make or break your website. People pay attention to what they see more than what they hear or smell. Design can stimulate your customers’ senses if used correctly. 

Since design plays an important role in optimizing conversion rate. Let’s take a look at the principles of persuasive design:

• Clarity & Visual appeal: Our brain processes images 50 times faster than text. Your visuals must appeal to your audience and they should tell your audience what your page is about.
• Strong visual hierarchy: Whatever is most important, should come first and should be larger. Rank each element on your website in terms of importance
• Keep your users hooked and conserve attention: Use subtle elements in your design which tell users what to do 
• One CTA per screen: Don’t bombard your users with a lot of choices. You won’t only seem salesy but it will also confuse them

Look at Huckleberry’s homepage. Without looking at the copy, you know what they are selling.

Redesigning & CRO

Both redesign and testing go hand in hand and are important parts of CRO. However, what type of redesign your website needs depends on several factors. It could be a complete redesign or small redesigns which happen gradually. 

When you should go for a complete redesign:

• You can’t make small changes to the website anymore because you have tried everything
• Your design or technology is obsolete. The first impression of your website is bad and people perceive your design as unpleasant and old
• There is very little traffic which won’t be affected

When you should go for small redesigns:

• When the existing website is performing well but it needs small improvements
• There is substantial traffic on your website who are used to it and you think they will have a hard time getting familiar with the newer one.

Typography & Fonts

Each font has its own personality. The font you want to use on your website will vary depending on your goals. If you want to position trust & reliability you may use a different font, while if you want to position friendliness and cosy atmosphere, you will choose a different one. Do some study on how fonts have different personalities and how users perceive fonts. 

Simple, a digital bank, uses a combination of blue colour and fonts to build trust and rapport. In banking, people hesitate in trusting brands. 

Another thing which affects conversion is the typography, the way you structure your text. Since there is a lot of content out there, people now just scan text to know whether if there is something worth reading or not

Here are the most important tips to improve scanning of your text:

• Have headlines
• Sub headlines
• Use bullet points

These were some of the best practices to optimize the conversion rate I learned from CXL Institute. These courses introduce to you to conversion rate optimization and set the foundation for beginners who are new to CRO.

Do check out their courses, they are doing an amazing job.

Finally, what do you think about CRO or what are some practices you find helpful, tell me in the comment section.