In today’s digital world, converting customers means everything from getting them to sign up for a newsletter to purchasing a product.
On your website, it is imperative that your website is designed for the user experience. Monitor who is visiting your website, what they are doing or looking at while they are clicking, and when they click off your site is also a big part of this.
Much like a storefront, this information will give you insight to your customers behavior, and in turn will help you make informed decisions about how to cater better to your audience to have them coming back to your website, and ultimately, converting more often.
Whatever that action, conversion rate optimization are all pieces of your website that help persuade your audience to take action. When all of your websites are working well together, it caters more to your visitors and your overall user experience (UX).
Knowing what to look for and what to avoid when optimizing your website is called conversion rate optimization.
Ultimately this will save you time and money, but more importantly it will help you uncover new growth opportunities that you may have overlooked in the past.
When strategizing a boost to your conversion rate there are some key areas that marketers will focus on.
4 Things You Need for a Successful CRO Strategy
1. Accurate and Statistical Data
The truth is that every business is different and what works for one doesn’t always work for the other. This is why having accurate, statistical data (that is monitored regularly ) can help you build a successful campaign. This is because your campaign will be rooted in facts, over opinion or guesswork.
2. Campaign Testing
Big tests like redesigning your homepage, re-structuring your site hierarchy, repositioning important elements on your page, and changing headlines are all just some changes that may yield significant results. Don’t be scared to run these larger tests in search of better results.
3. Small Testing Periods
Running too many tests at the same time can dilute the accuracy of your results and interrupt your user experience. Rather than running too many tests at the same time on the same page, try testing only one or two elements . This will help zero in on any necessary changes and really see what works and what doesn’t.
Doing this in smaller increments can also help avoid disrupting the overall user experience.
4. Clear Content and Design
Simplifying the design of your pages is an effective strategy to convey your message in a clear
way and helps showcase your service or product in a straightforward, uncomplicated way.
Things like automatic scrolling image banners and too many pop ups can confuse your audience and leave things looking too chaotic and messy.
You’ll want to streamline your UX design so that it guides people through your product or service page. Ideally, your design should lead people through the content and everything it offers, all the way to your call-to-action (CTA) to ultimately encourage visitors to take the desired action. .
If you have a complex product or service and a lot of features to showcase, video is a great way to engage users and help them convert.
5 Elements of Your Page That Can Be Optimized for Better Conversion
1. Page Design
Page design is meant to deliver a seamless experience to the user. Ensuring that colours, fonts and placement of things like titles or buttons all work together to support your conversion goals and can really make the difference between a visitor being persuaded to convert or not.
Believe it or not, elements such as page colours, fonts, and positioning of buttons, images and text can affect important conversion variables like the clarity of your message, ease of website navigation, and capturing the attention of your audience.
2. Website Copy
As much as visual elements can capture your audience’s attention and make it easier to browse your site, what you say and how you say it is an extremely powerful conversion factor in retaining and converting your audience.
A well written headline can encourage people to keep reading while a well written description can clear up any questions visitors may have about your product or service.
Try to avoid leaving your audience with unanswered questions and make your content easier to read. This includes:
- Using simple language
- Being precise and to the point
- Writing engaging headlines
- Using bullet points and ordered lists
- Adding keywords that rank better
In addition to what you say, is how you say it. Your tone and writing style should cater to the way your audience speaks.
Using stylistic elements like slang, metaphors or adjectives may work well in highlighting elements of your service and help you emphasize aspects that you want to stand out.
3. Call-To-Action Buttons
What is the purpose of your landing page? What action are you looking for people to take, once they reach your page? Whether your goal is to have users add an item to their cart, sign up for a newsletter, submit feedback or re-call a submission, your call-to-action should scream loud and clear.
The stronger and more obvious your CTA, the more leads you can generate. Something as simple as changing the wording of your call-to-action, so that it is more succinct can increase conversions significantly.
Another consideration you should keep in mind is limiting the number of CTAs on a single page.
The more call-to-actions, the more you run the risk of veering away from your conversion goal.
Ideally, your pages should be focused on a single call-to-action and avoid confusing your users.
4. Site Hierarchy and Structure
Your site structure should flow easily, have a seamless navigation and cater to a user experience that is not complicated.
Typically, most websites will highlight their main pages on their homepage with supporting or sub pages nestled into categories.
The goal is to have users navigate to the pages they need in 3 clicks or less. This baseline will tell you how organized your pages are and where there is room for re-organization.
Additionally, internal links help augment your website content and guide visitors to relevant sub-pages.
5. Page Speed
Loading times have a huge impact on the performance of your site. 47% of users expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less.
Not catering to this expectation can lose you conversions and money by having people drop off of your site before they interact with the content.
Our free tool will tell you how fast your pages load and where you can make improvements to reach that 2 second bar.
This is applicable to both mobile and desktop versions of your site
Measuring your CRO
A campaign is only as good as it’s results. As important as it is to create it, it is equally important to monitor customer behaviour to see where you can make further improvements.
Quantitative analysis will help you answer the following questions:
- Which web page people first land on when they enter your site ie: what is their entry point
- Where and how users engage with your site (ie: buttons, scrolling, on-page time)
- Which website or channel referred traffic to your site
- What devices and browsers your audience uses
- The demographic data, and interests of your audiences
- Where your users drop out of your marketing funnel, ie at which point do they exit or leave your site
Investing your time and effort into optimizing the areas of your site that are seeing high engagement and pushing focus into the areas that are most valuable to your users will gain you the largest impact.
Conversion rate optimization is an important part of enhancing your web pages, so that they are in line with your marketing funnel and make it easy for visitors to understand and engage with your content.
Have a question about CRO or SEO in general? Get in touch today or shoot us a message on Twitter. We’re always happy to chat!
