The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of enabling people to take an action when they visit a website. Many websites are designed to convert website visitors into customers. These conversions occur all over the website -- on the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages -- and all of these can be optimized for a higher number of conversions. Landing Pages Landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action. When is conversation rate optimization (CRO) right for your business? Marketers can find the conversion rate of ad clicks, blog posts, websites, and landing pages. Below are three formulas to help you figure out how to tackle CRO at your company, and what goals to set: New revenue goal ÷ average sales price = # of new customers # of new customers ÷ lead-to-customer close rate % = lead goal Leads generated ÷ website traffic X100 = % conversion rate To help you understand the impact CRO could have on your business, here's an example of the formulas in action: If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads -- and subsequently, 10 customers each month -- the website visitor to lead conversion rate would be 1%. Or, you could get more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate. Conversion rate optimization is about getting more from what you get and making it work even better for you. CRO Marketing Strategies to Try 1.

How to Design a Checkout Process That Generates High Conversion Rates
Why growth hacking will transform Asian businesses in 2017
3 Steps to Grow a Successful Live Chat Program
conversion-rate-optimization-cro

Today, most marketing teams are structured to drive traffic toward websites, which then converts into leads for the sales team to close. Once this process starts to deliver results, marketers then seek to generate even more traffic, and hopefully even more success.

It might be an oversimplification, but that’s the standard marketing playbook. Few marketing teams focus on getting more from existing traffic. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.

In this blog post, we’ll teach you all about CRO — what it achieves, why you should do it, and how your team can execute it.

We’ll explain how you can drive more results from your existing traffic so your content can work smarter, and not harder, for you.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of enabling people to take an action when they visit a website. By designing and modifying certain elements of a webpage, a business can increase the chances that site visitors will “convert” into a lead or customer before they leave.

Many websites are designed to convert website visitors into customers. These conversions occur all over the website — on the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages — and all of these can be optimized for a higher number of conversions. The process of optimizing those conversions is exactly what CRO entails.

Here’s a little more detail on how the above website elements can benefit from CRO.

Homepage

Homepages are prime candidates for CRO. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, the homepage is also an opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website. You can do this by emphasizing links to product information, offering a free signup button, or even incorporating a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience.

Pricing Page

A website’s pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g. price per year vs. price per month), describing the product features associated with each price, and including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote.

Blog

The blog is a massive conversion opportunity for a business’s website. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content about your industry, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into leads. This process often includes adding calls-to-action (CTA) throughout an article, inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for a ebook or industry report.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action. An event landing page, for example, can be optimized with a video of last-year’s event to encourage visitors to register for this year’s. A landing page for a free resource can be optimized with preview content from that resource to encourage users to download it.

Conversion rate optimization is a huge, often untapped opportunity for marketing teams, and you might be surprised by the oversized impact you could deliver by fine-tuning your website for conversions.

When is conversation rate optimization (CRO) right for your business?

Once your sales and marketing engine consistently attracts website visitors — and at progressively high amounts — you should start thinking about CRO to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team.

Businesses typically have a finite demand for products and services, so it’s imperative that you make the most out of your existing website traffic. Tools like Google’s Global Market Finder can show you online search volume to give you an idea of your potential customer demand.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

You can calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions a webpage generated by the number of people who visited that page. Marketers can find the conversion rate of ad clicks, blog posts, websites, and landing pages.

Once you determine the threshold of your customer demand, it’s time to nail down how to get more out of your existing website traffic. But setting a conversion goal isn’t as easy as, “this page converted 50 people this month, so we want 100 next month.”

To improve your business’s conversion potential, you need to look back at the term we defined at the beginning of this article: conversion rate optimization. You don’t just want 50 more conversions from a webpage — you want 50 more conversions for every X amount of people who visit it. This is your conversion rate — it’s the percentage of people who convert on your website based on how many people have touched it.

Below are three formulas to help you figure out how to tackle CRO at your company, and what goals to set:

  1. New revenue goal ÷ average sales price = # of new customers
  2. # of new customers ÷ lead-to-customer close rate % = lead goal
  3. Leads generated ÷ website traffic X100 = % conversion rate

To help you understand the impact CRO could have on your business, here’s an example of the formulas in action:

If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads — and subsequently, 10 customers each month — the website visitor to lead conversion rate would be 1%.

What if you wanted to generate 20 customers each month? You could try to get 20,000 visitors to your website and hope that the quality of traffic doesn’t decrease. Or, you could get more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate.

If you increased the conversion rate from 1% to 2%, you’d double your leads and your customers.

The table below shows the impact of increasing your website’s conversion rate:

Company A Company B Company C
Monthly website traffic 10,000 10,000 10,000
# of new customers 10 20 30

The key point here? Trying to generate more website traffic isn’t necessarily the right approach. Think of it like a leaky bucket. Pouring more water into a leaky bucket won’t fix the…

COMMENTS

WORDPRESS: 0
DISQUS: 0