What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Inbound marketing techniques enable businesses to drive visitors to their websites without investing huge resources. A business can increase its website traffic consistently by running multiple inbound marketing campaigns simultaneously. But no business can achieve preset digital marketing goals without measuring and improving conversion rate optimization.

According to Wikipedia,

“Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors to take the desired action (such as buying a product or leaving contact details).”

As a key digital marketing process, conversion rate optimization (CRO) helps decision-makers measure and increase the percentage of website visitors taking the desired action. Most organizations these days use conversion rate optimization as a key performance indicator (KPI) to know what percentage of website visitors are becoming leads and customers.

Importance of Conversion Rate Optimization for Businesses

Understand Customers Deeply

In the digital age, no business can generate and convert leads without understanding customers deeply. CRO creates opportunities for decision-makers to get an in-depth understanding of customers by performing various tests.

The test results help them understand who is visiting the website, how visitors are interacting with the website, and what bottlenecks prevent visitors from taking the desired action. Decision-makers can leverage the test results to create buyer personas that meet needs and address challenges.

Boost Inbound Marketing Campaigns

Many decision-makers use CRO as a key metric for comparing inbound marketing channels and campaigns. The metric helps them to focus on the right customer acquisition channels as well as optimize the buyer’s journey.

The marketers can leverage the information to boost the performance of various inbound marketing campaigns. For instance, the information helps marketers divert more visitors to the website from search engines and social media through the publication of better content.

Decrease Customer Acquisition Cost

The boost in inbound marketing campaign performance increases the number of website visitors consistently. Hence, it becomes managers to generate and convert more leads through personalization and improvement of customer experience.

The increase in the number of leads and customers helps businesses decrease lower customer acquisition costs. Also, marketers can increase inbound marketing ROI by converting more website visitors into leads and customers.

Increase Customer Lifetime Value

While conducting CRO testing and research, decision-makers focus extensively on measuring and improving customer experience. In addition to converting website visitors into customers, they divide loyal customers into various segments based on buyer personas.

Also, they seduce and retain loyal customers by optimizing buyers’ journeys and making personalized offers and deals. Hence, CRO makes it easier for businesses to generate recurring revenue by increasing customer lifetime value (CLTV) consistently.

Conversion Rate Optimization Techniques Used Widely by Businesses

Decision-makers often calculate conversion rate as the percentage of website visitors who become either leads or customers by taking the desired action. But average conversion rates vary according to the action taken by website visitors. Also, the average conversion rates vary across websites and web pages.

That is why; decision-makers often find it challenging to decide the average conversion rate for a specific business or industry. However, the average conversion rates vary from 1% to 4% across industries. But decision-makers can increase conversion rates consistently by using a slew of CRO techniques and best practices.

Optimize the Website’s User Experience

No website can keep visitors engaged and convert them into leads or customers without delivering an outstanding user experience. A business can easily increase and convert visitors by improving key aspects of a website – accessibility, speed, security, and navigability.

For instance, it can keep visitors engaged only when the website loads in less than 2 seconds and is accessible on mobile devices. The user experience optimization will increase the website’s search visibility as well as drive CRO.

Design Every Page for a Single Purpose

Often businesses make a single web page request visitors to take multiple actions – subscribe to newsletters, download mobile apps, or make a purchase. But they cannot convey multiple messages to a website visitor clearly and effectively using a single headline.

Hence, a web page can increase CRO only when it shows a headline that clearly conveys the desired action to every visitor. The headline will persuade visitors to take the desired action by delivering the message clearly as well as providing relevant information.

Display Important Information Above the Fold

While accessing a web page, visitors scroll down only when the content displayed above the fold impresses them. Often designers make the web page appealing by including the multimedia content in the section. But several studies suggest that visitors scroll down only when they see relevant content above the fold. An organization can easily increase CRO by displaying important information above the flow and moving the multimedia content below the fold.

Use Popup instead of Downloadable

Often businesses use downloadable to convert website visitors into leads. But many businesses these days increase email subscribers using popup as an effective alternative to downloadable. Unlike downloadable, popup delivers both informational and promotional content by appearing on top of the web page content. Hence, they are more effective in conveying the desired message and making visitors sign up.

Reduce the Number of Form Fields

While designing sign-in or checkout forms, decision-makers often include specific fields to capture additional information about website visitors. But most people these days access websites on their smartphones and tablets.

They love web forms with relevant fields. Many users even abandon web pages that require them to fill in additional fields. A business can increase CRO by designing forms only with essential fields and removing optional fields.

Keep CTAs Clear, Direct, and Impactful

Along with headlines and information, call-to-action (CTA) drives a web page’s CRO. While designing a web page, decision-makers must choose the right CTA by performing A/B testing. The test results will help them to create CTA that conveys to the website visitor to take a specific action clearly and directly.

At the same time, designers must make the CTA more appealing by combining the right color, font, and button. They can further increase the font size to ensure that every website visitor sees the CTA and knows the action to be taken.

Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization helps businesses measure and boost the performance of various digital marketing channels and campaigns. Most organizations these days make conversion rate optimization an ongoing process to drive lead generation and conversion activities. But every organization has to fine-tune its conversion rate optimization strategy regularly to meet changing customer expectations.