When we talk about optimising websites to improve and increase conversions, we’re really talking about conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) includes the processes and practices to increase the number of website visitors who take a desired action on your website to grow your business.

Your conversion rate is expressed as a percentage of people who take a desired action. Optimisation, however, includes the actions you take to increase how many people take those actions on your site.

The goal for any business should be to increase the percentage of conversions for any given goal. For instance, in February, a website had 200 newsletter sign-ups from 1,000 visitors on its sign-up page, a conversion rate of 20%. CRO should be used to increase the sign-up rate.

It’s the process of learning what the most valuable aspect of your website is and how to best optimise this for your visitors to increase its chance to convert. It typically involves generating ideas for elements on your site or app that can be improved, learning which pathways visitors will most likely take to conversion, and then validating those assumptions through A/B testing and multivariate testing to transform learning into actionable insights.

Why is CRO marketing important?

CRO marketing is a crucial aspect of running a successful business. Without it, your website and your business will be limited in its ability to grow, let alone maintain performance.

Here are a few reasons why it’s important to work on conversion rate optimisation marketing:

1. Expands your audience size

Without an audience, you won’t have a business. The most important factor in working on CRO marketing is that you’ll be able to use it to grow your audience.

By implementing the right growth tactics and optimising them, you’ll be able to expand your audience size. For instance, with CRO, you can improve how many people follow you on social media or sign up for your email list.

2. Improves the user experience

Your website is the epicentre of your digital marketing efforts. You can use CRO to improve the experience your customers have. 

For instance, with a simple navigation redesign on your website, you might find that your visitors are staying longer, visiting more pages and subscribing to your email list more.

3. Increases revenue

The biggest advantage of implementing CRO marketing is that you can improve your revenue. One of the most critical elements to optimise is for purchases. With CRO, you’ll be able to see what’s working and what’s not so you can improve the user experience, ultimately turning more visitors into customers.

4. Decrease acquisition costs

While many turn to conversion rate optimisation to generate more sales, one often overlooked benefit is how it can also help reduce expenses like acquisition costs. 

For instance, let’s say a dog collar business called Fred’s Furry Collars spends $15,000 per month on Facebook ads to get 120,000 visitors to their site per month. Of the 120,000 people who visited the site, 1,800 placed an order, resulting in $40,000 in revenue.

After working on improving the site’s conversion rate, they were able to increase it from 1.5% to 2.2%.

This meant they didn’t need to spend as much on Facebook ads to generate $40,000 in revenue. They didn’t need 120,000 visitors to get 1,800 sales. With a conversion rate of 2.2%, they only needed 82,000 visitors to reach 1,800 in sales to get $40,000.

This means Fred’s Furry Collars was able to reduce his Facebook ad spend from $15,000 by 30% to $10,500 per month to generate the same amount of revenue, saving him $4,500 per month, or $54,000 per year.

CRO Marketing: Best Practices

When it comes to CRO marketing, you need to consider two things:

1. Your website or business’ objectives (bigger picture).
2. Your website goals (smaller achievements).

Whatever the aim of your website, this must be your starting point. Figure out what you want your website to do and what you want visitors to get from it. When you do that, you’ll know what conversions to focus on.

1. Define your business/website’s objectives

Do you want the website to drive sales? Is the website a hub to raise awareness for a charity? Do you want to increase readership for your news site?

You need to write down your primary objectives, as these will guide your entire CRO initiatives.

2. Define what your conversion goals are

This helps you narrow your focus so you follow a path to meet your overall objectives. By defining these, you clarify the next actions you should take, such as wanting to funnel users through to a sign-up landing page. Then you’ll need to optimise and test your sign-up landing page. If conversions are low, tweak it and measure the results until you find you’ve increased conversion rates.

Conversion goals can include:

• Purchases in your e-commerce store
• eBook downloads
• Sign-ups to your mailing list
• Visitors successfully filling in a contact form

3. Determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Figure out what your KPIs are and the metrics you need to focus on to achieve them.

For instance, let’s say your conversion goal is to get more purchases in your e-commerce store. Some relevant KPIs might include:

• Total site visits
• Total revenue
• Overall conversion rate
• Conversion rate by category
• Conversion rate by product
• Paid ads (i.e., Facebook) conversion rate
• Email campaign conversion rate

4. Always A/B Test

One of the foundational elements of CRO is A/B testing or split testing. This is a scientific marketing approach where you test what works and what doesn’t to improve your site.

A/B testing is the quickest way to improve your website rapidly.

Here’s an example of how you should constantly be running A/B tests to quickly optimise your site:

Let’s say you have an e-commerce store, and you want to improve the conversion rate of your main product.

Right now, your conversion rate is at 1.9%.

So, you decide to try using a different colour button for your call to action. You switch it from green to black.

One month later, your conversion rate is 2.1%. 

So, you stick with the new button colour.

Next, you decide to change the copywriting on the call to action from “Purchase” to “Buy Now.” 

But you notice your conversion rate dropped from 2.1% to 1.8%.

So, you switch it back to “Purchase,” and you’re getting 2.1% conversion rates again.

Next, you decide to add a few reviews right below your call to action. You see your conversion rate rise from 2.1% to 2.2%. 

Then, you add a video to your product photos as the featured media. But your conversion rate drops from 2.2% to 2.1%. So, you move the video to the last media slot, and you see your conversion rate not just return to normal at 2.2% but actually increase to 2.3%.

In the span of just a few months, you were able to improve your flagship product’s conversion rate from 1.9% to 2.3%. But it didn’t come without a few hiccups along the way. That’s what A/B testing is all about. Sometimes, changes will work, and sometimes, they’ll make things worse. Testing is the best way to find out what sticks and then build upon that.

In this example, let’s say this store owner gets 34,000 visits per month on his main product page, and his product is $40.

Before A/B testing, the owner generated 323 sales at a 1.9% conversion rate for a total revenue of $25,840.

A few months later, with a 2.3% conversion rate, the owner generated 391 sales for a total revenue of $31,280.

That’s over $5,000 in additional monthly revenue by making a few simple changes.

5. Let your data guide you

For numbers people, conversion rate optimisation is a natural extension of their regular thought processes. However, CRO marketing might feel pretty foreign if you’re not a numbers person. 

The only way to be truly effective with conversion rate optimisation is to stay focused strictly on your numbers. You need to let your data guide you. 

For example, let’s say you’re committed to updating your site to make improvements.

So, you spend 80 hours working on a new site design, and it looks beautiful. But, after looking at the numbers, you realised it lowered your conversion rate.

What do you do?

You need to revert to the higher performing version of your website design. No matter how much you think your design looks good, what matters most is that it improves the user experience and improves conversions.

When you use the data you have available to guide your decision-making, you’ll see better and faster results over time. Rather than relying on your feelings, the numbers don’t lie. They’ll tell you whether a site improvement was truly an improvement.