- What is conversion-rate-optimisation-cro?
- How can conversion-rate-optimisation-cro help me?
- How do we do it?
What is CRO?
CRO - Conversion Rate Optimisation - is the art of converting website visitors into leads or sales. Usually, there are two key stages of optimisation: converting visitors into a checkout process, and converting a greater percentage of the checkout funnel.
The value of conversion optimisation is that it increases the profitability of your website without relying on increased traffic. Of course, when used in tandem with an SEO or PPC campaign, it drives incredibly high Return On Investment (ROI) campaigns thanks to improved conversion rates being married to increased traffic levels.
CRO strategies aim to create a user friendly, highly focused landing page for every target keyphrase from your SEO & PPC campaign. In addition, issues such as confusing site navigation, lack of testimonials, reviews, ratings & poor quality images & product information are all factors in improving your site visitors' confidence in converting to a sale.
The checkout process, in particular, is arguably the most important section of any e-commerce site, and should be treated as such. It is the place where prospective buyers become loyal customers, where window shoppers become members of the converted.
There are various ways to improve and measure a site's conversion rate, using tools which compare alternative page lay-outs. This is referred to as either A/B testing (when two examples are being compared) or multivariate testing (for more than two alternatives)
CRO can really enhance any SEO or PPC campaign, and QueryClick's best performing campaigns have all utilised the transformative power of CRO to improve margins and overall sales. Conversion Optimisation reinforces any on-site changes, as well as capitalising on earlier keyphrase research.
Is Conversion Optimisation Right for Me?
Despite the obvious applications for eCommerce, a conversion needn't always equate to a purchase of a product or service. In fact, a conversion can be one of a number of goals or ambitions you have for the users who reach your site.
Perhaps you would like them to contact you, or register their details, or sign up for a newsletter? All of these actions can be tracked and improved using CRO techniques, improving the underlying business benefit your website delivers for your business.
How Can Conversion Optimisation Help Me?
When you walk into a supermarket, why is it that the fresh milk & eggs are always tucked away at the back? Why is it that there are always magazines & DVDs immediately on your left when you walk in & that you have to go through the fresh vegetables before you can get to anything else?
Quite simply: because by placing these products in those positions customers will spend more on their shopping.
Your website should be your business's supermarket.
There's nothing new about the science of supermarket layout - The Economist has long since revealed the use of 'Decompression Zones' (Our Magazine & DVD area), 'Greeters' (who welcome you in & make you less likely to shoplift), and all the other psychological tricks of the trade that cause us to walk out with a lot more than we planned each time we visit our local supermarket.
What is amazing is how little attention is spent on today's online supermarket shelves: webpages.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) - the science of improving the effectiveness of call to actions on webpages - isn't new either, but it's only very recently that companies have started to pick up on the massive business benefits of improved page conversion rates.
Typically, most websites can expect to see 4-5% improvements in their conversion rates after implementing conversion rate improvements. If your traffic levels are over 1,000 visitors a month, that's an extra 40 sales or leads per month minimum, for free, every month.
Here's a real world example. A client of ours implemented a suite of changes recommended as part of our CRO & SEO work at the commencement of their campaign. In addition, we revamped their PPC campaign to improve their CPCs.
The results?
- 1,248% increase in SEO pageviews over course of the campaign
- Total pageviews over year up by over 4.7 million*
- PPC pageviews up over 900% due to improved CTR (Clickthrough Rate)
- PPC visitors per month up by over eight & a half thousand, pageviews over same period up by over 50,000 per month!
- Organic traffic bounce rate reduced by 47.60%
*Yes, that's 4.7 million more opportunities to click on 'book now', at no extra PPC cost.
You'll find more details in our search engine marketing case studies.
If you'd like us to take a look at your website to see if we can achieve similar results, just drop us a line using the form below and we'll give you a free, no-obligation report. We think that's a pretty good deal!
How Does QueryClick Do CRO?
Fortunately, there's never been a better time to be looking at your conversion rate optimisation, as the web is stuffed full of free tools we can use to increase user conversion by double-digit percentage points.
Google's Website Optimiser is the most obvious tool, allowing you to run sophisticated A/B & multivariate testing to compare different combinations of layouts, colour schemes, ad copy & rich media to best overcome your audience's obstacles to sale.
Unfortunately, it's also equally easy to use these tools as a crutch to avoid spending time on what really makes CRO work: thinking about your service or product & producing compelling content, offers, features or benefits over the competition.
Remember: every company is unique and has its own value-add or service principles that make it the best match for a particular customer. You just have to express it.
You & Your Market
What works for one company online, won't necessarily work for you.
So while it might be tempting to look at your competitor who already has a fully featured website, with any of the following...
- Service offerings broken out by customer segment
- Multiple routes to purchase (via search, categories, image galleries, or brand)
- Special offer spotlights
- User information retention (newsletters, send to a friend)
- Post sales conversion tools (eMarketing, follow up offers, similar products)
...it's not necessarily the best place to start.
Instead, ask yourself some simple questions.
- What is your USP?
- What do your clients & customers have in common?
- Why do they come back?
- How are you perceived in your marketplace?
If you don't understand what makes your clients tick, no amount of multivariate testing will improve their reaction to your webpages.
So OK, My Website is a Supermarket
Now you know what your message is, you need to share it.
If you're delivering a luxury product or experience, you'll need testimonials to back up your position & give a flavour of the service or product quality. If you have any, share reviews - and not just 100% positive ones!
Show you are trustworthy. If you have any accreditations: shout about them. Gone green recently? Tell us.
Engage with your online community (and before you say you don't have a community yet, try searching for terms around your products and services, and look at the review sites, forums, and blogs: that's your community, you're just not engaging them yet).
Be compelling in everything you do in the public sphere. If you don't know how, ask someone to do it for you.
Identify your most important pages. Look at every element on each page and try to improve it. Come up with three or four different variations, and then run multivariate testing.
When you've improved a page, don't just stop.
Look at all your PPC & SEO landing pages, or - and this is where you really start to see the benefit - segment your users arriving via PPC AdGroups to an SEO landing page, and match your SERP Call To Actions (CTAs) in both paid and organic listings to the landing page CTA message, making sure it's visible above the fold.
Once you've completed that process for a single product or service, roll over any learnings to the next group, and keep testing, tweaking, listening & improving.
Be Better Than The Competition
When you improve your conversion rate, your benefit all of your online marketing efforts.
Your PPC cost per acquisition drops, making even the most competitive terms profitable. SEO traffic receives a better experience than your competition, encouraging repeat visits, bookmarking & even - the holy grail - positive reviews & recommendations to their friends.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab your shopping trolley today!