Conversion Rate Optimization: 5 Tips to get Started

Once prospective buyers are on your page, the real challenge of keeping them there, keeping them engaged, and leading them to conversion begins. Massive long-term, sustainable growth potential is directly linked to getting more out of your existing traffic as opposed to efforts focused on entirely new traffic.

These efforts, in a nutshell, are what Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is all about.  

Conversion Rate Optimization is the practice of making continual changes to a website with the goal of increased conversion.

In this article, we take a look at 5 tips to get you started with your CRO strategy.

Clearly Defined CRO Goals

Taking time to clearly define your desired objectives and goals is essential for the ultimate success of your CRO strategy. A set of well-defined goals acts as an anchor that grounds all future activities to stay in line with what you set out to achieve. Establishing relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to evaluate all efforts will be important to measure success, and to know when adjustment is needed.  

Let’s look at some good examples of CRO Goals:

Ecommerce:

• Increased Sales
• Positive Return on Investment
• Expand per order value

Lead Generation

• Build on the volume of leads (calls, emails, subscriptions, etc)
• Increased quality leads

Websites Engagement

• Increased time on Page
• Increased subscriptions to your email lists
• Accelerate the amount of returning visitors.

When deciding on your goals make sure to prioritize ones that will have the biggest impact on your business. Be diligent in setting benchmarks, and sticking to them.

Set up CRO Tools for Testing

CRO tools are used to gather information on exactly how people are utilizing your website. It shows what areas of your site visitors are engaging with, what areas they are struggling with, and it analyses the various tactics implemented to increase the overall Conversion Rate. CRO tests provide valuable feedback that will allow you to analyze and optimize the user experience in real-time, ultimately increasing your Conversion Rate.

CRO Tools to consider

Before you start testing, make sure that you have all the proper tools in place. 

• Google Analytics is an extremely useful tool. It is widely considered one of the main sources for collecting website analytics data. 

• HotJar is another useful tool. It allows you to visualize the visitor behaviour on your website with scroll, click, and move heat maps.

• SurveyMonkey is a tool that offers a unique way to collect feedback via survey from your website visitors.

Pro Tip: Make sure your test considers all user options. Consider different browsers that might be used, consider different versions of the page. 

Pro Tip: When one test is complete, pick a winner, make it a control group, and serve up another version. Even if your test loses there are learnings to be had.

Clearly define CRO Testing criteria

With your CRO Tools in place, you need to clearly define what criteria you will be testing for. Criteria can include the following:

• Traffic Sources (Paid, Social, Organic, Email)
• New vs Returning Users
• Converters vs Non-Converters (if it’s a recurring purchase)
• User location
• Devices
• Browsers

Making sure to plan these out when creating your CRO strategies will lead to great opportunities to gain larger insight into your business. Perhaps some tactic or section on the website works better for a new user as opposed to a returning one. Perhaps something specific speaks to visitors from social media versus paid efforts. 

Consistent testing is crucial to unlocking new insights that will continually improve your website and business performance.

Designing Your Test Page

With your objective clearly defined and all your testing tools in place, you are ready to design a test page to allow you to start generating data.

The Test Page is basically a test version of a landing page with changes made to it to give you insight into whether your control group or the test page performs better.

When designing your test page, keeping your CRO goal in mind is important. The changes on your Test Page need to represent a change that is most likely to move you closer to the goal you have prioritized.

If for example, your goal is to increase time spent on-page, the changes on your test page need to reflect this.

It is always a good idea to create multiple test pages to allow you to get a more clear picture of the data. The one that shows the most positive data will become the primary page for the business and subsequently a control page for future tests.

Pro Tip: Once the Test Page has gone live, you shouldn’t stop the test prematurely unless there is a significant error that might throw off the data. Aim for a test to take at least a month, and to generate over 1000 visits. 

Analyzing Your Data

Continually analyzing your data is of utmost importance in achieving your CRO goals. With your CRO tools in place, all activity on your site should be successfully tracked allowing you to get valuable insights into how people interact with your site. 

Set up a regular schedule for Analyzing the data you capture and presenting your findings in a report. The report can be used to educate future business decisions, and to steer the general direction of your company. Click through to learn more about Observation vs Analysis vs Insight.

Final thoughts

Conversion Rate Optimization is an ongoing process that can yield amazing results for your business. Gathering data on how your site visitors interact with your website is crucial in staying relevant and up to date in a very competitive online market. Setting up and managing an effective Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy can seem overwhelming at first. It is always better to have a dedicated team on your side to get everything right the first time. NAV43 is an industry leader in website optimization. Give us a call and we’ll help you implement a winning Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy.