CRO, conversion rate optimisation, is the process of designing a website or landing page with the goal of increasing the amount of page visitors who turn into customers. Higher CRO = higher ROI.
How does it work?
You know CRO is important when Amazon employs a full time team that deals with the colour of the website and its buttons, constantly changing them and testing them to maximize sales. A full time team! The way it works is this: conversion rate equals total number of conversions divided by total number of visitors on the site. For example, if your website has 10,000 visitors and 100 conversions, that makes for a conversion rate of 1%. The higher the conversion rate, the higher the success of the goals of the website, whether it’s customers clicking a “buy now” button, signing up to an email newsletter, or anything in between.
What do I need to do?
Here are a few tips to improve your CRO:
- Test: Think about what you want. Email click-throughs? Facebook link clicks? Measure as many conversion goals as possible whenever you edit your site to see what gets affected and why.
- Editing a site’s copy is a simple, quick, and easy way to boost ROI and CTR. Be as direct as possible where you can. Cutting down on words can increase action as it takes your audience less effort to figure out what you are asking them to do.
- Images are also simple and quick to change and test. Think about what works for your audience, and test, test, test.
- Technical aspects can take longer and cost more money to fix, so here it’s less about ROI and more about CTR. Loading time, server reliability, and website functions will all affect a user’s judgement of the website and your company.
- Also keep in mind user-friendliness. Just because a site has all the bells and whistles doesn’t mean it’s going to be effective. Think about exactly who your audience is and what they look for in an easy and informative website. Lower the barrier for entry on your landing page, increase the audience’s need to do something, and most of all – keep it simple.
- Observe: Record all of your results in order to make a decision. A good way to do this is to keep an online document (Google docs as an example) for everyone running the tests to keep records of what changed and how it affected conversion rates. At the end of testing you can go through the document and see what worked best and implement it straight away.
- Data: Record all types of data for whatever is relevant. Do your research and know your audience inside and out. This will help you justify changes and understand why certain things work over others. It will also show you and your team where the most time should be spent, whether it’s copy or images or technical details.
We also wrote an introduction post to SEO so have a read through it if you’re interested! For more information on CRO, SEO, web design, and everything else digital, contact us today at Studio Culture web design Brisbane.
