by samWhat is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is a way of improving your site through user feedback and analytics. The aim can be to improve many factors, such as bounce rate or click-through, or more usually the conversion of visitors into sales. This essentially means finding out exactly what your visitors are expecting when they land on your page and providing it to them. Whichever area of your website you are trying to optimise, you are trying to convert your current visitors into changing their habits, not aiming to increase the number of visitors. It is more cost-effective than trying to drum up more traffic, and thus will give you a better return on investment.
The process of conversion optimisation involves examining and testing the metrics of your site. These results are most easily collected and viewable in Google Analytics, which is a free program which records and shows traffic to your site. An example of a statistical overview is shown below:
The first step of CRO is discovering your current conversion rate. This is done by dividing your total number of conversions (number of people who did what you want them to) by the total number of visitors to your site.
Next you would look at other factors given to you by Google Analytics, such as bounce rate or the amount of time people spent on your site, or where they are coming from. These would help you to discover potential flaws in your site. For example, your site might not be mobile-friendly and Google Analytics might show you that you get a large proportion of your visitors via mobile. You might then decide that this was affecting your bounce-back rate and thus your chances of successful conversions.
On a far smaller scale, maybe you would like to see if changing the colour of your call to action button makes any difference to its conversion rate. All these changes can be made and tested simultaneously with the original version, and the results can be observed using Google Analytics. This is called A/B testing, and it should hopefully confirm your hypothesis that this change would positively affect your conversion rate.
It is very important to test these factors out for yourself on your website, and not simply to copy other businesses’ successes. Every website is different, even those in the same sector, and there is absolutely no guarantee that what worked for them will work for you. You also don’t know whether their conversion optimisation was carried out rigorously, and therefore how genuine their result is.
It is best to test every single change that you make to your website which you believe will affect the conversion rate – prominent pages such as your landing page, homepage or Contact Us page. This means that you will always have the data to support the changes, and will have the best picture of what gives your business the best conversion optimisation.
Constant testing like this can be time-consuming, especially since it is sensible to take thorough notes with every test and every variation. There is no such thing as a one-time optimisation which magically, permanently boosts your CRO. Constant monitoring and testing is essential. An inexperienced staff member attempting CRO might not run enough tests, or stop their tests too early, before the result is statistically significant.
Thanks for reading What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation? Please let us know your opinions on the article, or on CRO as a whole.
What is Conversion Rate Optimisation? is part 3 of our “What Is …?” series. This series gives the reader a brief introduction to the basics of digital marketing. Check out the rest of the series for information on SEO and PPC, with more to come.
Error: Contact form not found.