CRO is an often overlooked, but essential part of performance marketing. If the traffic you’re driving potential customers to via channels like paid media isn’t converting, your paid media teams may get blamed… But having a good look at how that page is laid out and making what may seem like minor adjustments can be super impactful in increasing your results from paid. Ian, our Head of Web, explains in this blog post what exactly CRO is, why it’s crucial in performance marketing and how to go about doing it.
What Is CRO?
What is CRO? Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of optimising your website to increase the likelihood that visitors will complete a specific action. The higher your website’s conversion rate the better. Your website could do brilliantly in all other areas, but if your conversion rate is poor, it will directly impact your bottom line – so it’s essential you make improvements.
There are many different steps you should take to create a website that persuades browsers to perform an action. That action could be enquiring about a service, making a purchase, creating an account, subscribing to a mailing list or getting in touch.
Firstly, the design of the site needs to engender the browsers’ trust. It should be easy to navigate, simple to use and be accessible to as many users as possible by ensuring accessibility guidelines are met. It must also attract traffic in some way, whether it’s through the organic search results or a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. The final step is perhaps the most difficult… All that traffic is worth nothing to your business if it’s not compelled to act in some way, so your website must be able to ‘convert’ by turning a proportion of that traffic into leads, subscribers and customers.
How Important Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
There are a number of reasons why conversion rate optimisation is so important. Firstly, when you’re spending money on SEO or paying for traffic via a PPC campaign, a good conversion rate will provide you with a higher return on investment (ROI). It’s also more cost-effective to convert the visitors you already have rather than attracting more traffic.
The importance of CRO is not lost on digital marketing teams. With an average increase of 80% in conversion rates gained when pain points and questions are addressed on a landing page, more and more businesses are choosing to invest in CRO. At Passion, we want our clients to experience successful conversions, and we work with them on a continuous basis to find opportunities to improve as their business and websites evolves.
How Can Conversion Rates Be Optimised
Conversion rate optimisation can be an extremely simple and cost-effective way for digital marketing teams to have a dramatic impact on the success of their online campaigns. Working in conjunction with a CRO team can be one of the most effective ways to tackle barriers that are stopping your website from maximising it’s ROI.
Conversions can occur all over a website, from the homepage and service pages to pricing pages, the blog and landing pages designed for specific campaigns. Here are a few simple ways those pages can be optimised for conversions.
Homepage
A homepage is not typically the page visitors will complete an action on, but it still has a critical role to play in conversions as it is often the first point of entry for users. It must make a positive first impression on visitors and guide them clearly through your website to the information they want to find.
Here are some elements that should be on your homepage to increase the likelihood of conversion later in that user’s journey.
- Clear value proposition so that users fully understand what they are viewing
- Clear links to product and service information
- Buttons that allow visitors to take quick action
- Contact information
- Features like “Request a call back” or instant messaging services with a team member to ensure the user’s questions or concerns are being met
Landing pages
Landing pages are specifically designed for people to take action. They are often the main destination of paid online marketing campaigns, and a lot of money is spent driving traffic to these pages, so it’s important you get them right. Limiting the number of potential actions visitors can take, clearly articulating the value the product or service and establishing the credibility of the business through social proofing (adding reviews or trusted and recognisable partners) are just a few of the elements you need to consider to optimise conversion rates.
Pricing page
A website’s pricing page is primed and ready for conversion rate optimisation. A visitor who reaches a website’s pricing page could well have the intention to buy, so this is the page that could make or break that decision for them. Giving the visitor a range of pricing options (e.g. prices per week, per month and per year), offering promotions, including discount codes, providing plenty of information about the product features and having simple payment options can all help to increase the conversion rates.
The blog
The blog is an excellent way to answer the questions visitors may have about your products or services and provide more information about the kind of benefits they can provide. That also makes them an effective way to potentially turn readers into leads. Publishing relevant, genuinely helpful content which includes a Call-To-Action (CTA), invites readers to find out more and asks them to submit their email address for more comprehensive information can help you convert.
How Can CRO Benefit Your Business?
The benefits of conversion rate optimisation include:
- You can capitalise on your existing traffic without having to spend money on SEO, PPC and other traffic generating methods
- A higher conversion rate leads to more repeat business and greater customer retention
- Conversion rate optimisation allows you to win customers from your competitors
- By analysing data such as user session recordings and website navigation behaviour, you’ll gain a better understanding of your leads, prospects and customers
- You’ll be able to identify which parts of your website are underperforming and make the necessary improvements
- Having a website that guides visitors seamlessly to their objectives will help to boost brand perception
- Optimised conversion rate also means optimised user experience as CRO looks at improving CTAs and their positioning, providing relevant and informative content which all helps user journeys to become streamlined
Here at Passion, we are always looking for new opportunities to help improve website conversions. Get in touch today to find out how we could help your business.