What is Conversion Rate Optimization: A Definitive Guide

One of the primary goals of a digital marketer is to increase website traffic and their conversion rate. The sales (also called conversions) are directly related to their website traffic. Increasing sales is any marketer’s ultimate goal. But, you cannot generate traffic and qualified leads with no effort. Generating conversions is an ongoing process. However, it can be done with the help of conversion rate optimization.

But where does the term conversion rate optimization come from? Many marketers focus on getting more traffic from their existing website visitors. That’s how conversion rate optimization comes into the spotlight. Read this blog post to better understand conversion rate optimization, how you can achieve it and why it’s so important.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is how you effectively nudge your visitors to take a specific action when they visit your website. Your website’s conversion rate is a percentage that indicates how effective your website is at influencing visitors to take action. This action could be purchasing something, signing up for services, scheduling an appointment, and many others. You determine your conversion rate by the number of people who took an action, and divide that by the total number of people who visited the website.

You can also form a marketing strategy and fetch leads from those who have signed-up for your services. After a sign-up, your next step would be to send them targeted messages so they convert into leads. Once you get the qualified leads, you pass them onto the sales team who will then strive to close the deal. 

How to Improve Your CRO

You can optimize your conversion rate by redesigning or changing some of the elements of your web page. This is how you can turn more and more visitors into leads or customers before they decide to leave your site. Many marketers design their websites with the sole motive of turning visitors into customers. They must design their landing pages, homepages, and product pages to grab the visitor’s attention quickly.

Some website visitors go to at least two or three pages of a website. Therefore, you need to optimize all these pages to get maximum conversions.

Homepages

Homepages are often the first chance to catch a visitor’s attention. It’s especially important to have this page optimized to maximize your conversion rates. Your visitors usually first land on your home page and decide from there on whether to browse further or not. So, your homepage is your first impression on your visitors. You can put links on your homepage regarding product information. But, what else can you do? You can include a sign-up button, or you can include a chatbot on the homepage, which will simplify your visitor’s dilemma. Also, chat functionality can help you resolve a visitor’s questions, if they bring up any while browsing through your website.

Pricing Page

Suppose a visitor comes to your website, likes a product, and wants to buy it. What is the most important thing that determines their purchasing behavior? Of course, it is the price of the product, the assurance that the product is what they need, and the information they find when they browse through the pricing page. Only after they are satisfied with everything will they actually convert. Conversion rate optimization enables you to change the costs of the products on your pricing page either monthly or yearly as per your requirements. You can convert your visitors into customers when they arrive to your pricing page. All you have to do is describe the features of the products along with the prices. You can also add contact info along with the costs for a price quote.

Blogs

Engaging content always plays a significant part in converting your visitors into customers. You can publish blog posts, articles, and testimonials on your website about your products and services. Good CRO can effectively turn your readers into leads. All you have to do is to add a call-to-action button at the end of the article or blog.

Landing Pages

Landing pages can be surprisingly great exploration opportunities for you and your visitors. They are designed to nudge users to take specific actions. For example– offering resources for free almost always works. You can optimize your landing page where you can offer free resources such as encouraging users to download a free ebook. It would help your new subscribers to know more about how to use your product or your services. Conversion rate optimization can generate a massive impact on your landing pages and overall conversion rates.

When is the Right Time to Optimize?

Now that we already know the elements you can optimize, you may be wondering when is the right time to implement conversion rate optimization. Truthfully, the right time to optimize your website is when you want to get more sales. For most business owners, this is the case the second they start their company. If this is the case for you, then it is time to optimize your website today!

How can I begin with the process?

First of all, you can take advantage of your existing website traffic and get an idea about potential sales. How long do they stay on your website? Which page leads to the most sales? There are various tools to help you answer these questions. One of them is Google’s Keyword Planner Tool, which enables you to view the online search volume. This way, you can decide the best ways to optimize your website to convert customers.

Once you have done this, it is best to set some conversion rate goals. Doing this will keep you on track and will help you know if your efforts are effective.

Steps to Set Out Your Conversion Rate Goals:

• Calculate your conversion rate: Your conversion rate helps you know how much you would like to grow your rate. You can set your target much higher than what you have already achieved.
• The formula for calculating your conversion rate: To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions on a webpage by the number of webpage visitors. With this formula, you can easily find out the conversion rates for your landing pages, pricing pages, and blog posts.
• Achieve more conversions: Once you get an idea of your customers’ conversions, it’s time to analyze how you can achieve more out of your current website traffic. If you have not met your conversion goals or would like the number to be higher, you will need to optimize your website.

Let’s cover an example to know how can you set your conversion goals.

Suppose you have 10,000 website visitors per month, out of which you get 100 leads, and finally 10 of them turn into customers. Your conversion rate would be one percent. Now, your aim is to generate 200 leads per month after optimizing your website for conversions. If you accomplish this, then you still get 10,000 visitors, but your sales will increase from 10 to 20. This means your conversion rate will be doubled. That’s how you can set your conversion goals.

Effective Strategies for Conversion Rate Optimization

To get higher conversion rates, you must take advantage of the existing traffic as well as generating more traffic. Below are some of the effective CRO strategies, so let’s have a look at them.

Include CTAs in your text: 

We have discussed earlier in this blog post to add a call-to-action button at the end of blog posts or articles. But sometimes, CTA buttons do not give us great results. People may overlook the buttons or ignore them. So, another tactic you can use is to add CTAs in your text only. Then, highlight the text and hyperlink to your landing page.

A/B test your landing pages:

Landing pages are an integral part of attracting a customer, as well as speeding up their customer journey. This is because they help convert a website visitor into a lead. So, you can see why one performs better. This is done by optimizing the elements of your landing pages by running A/B tests on them. You can A/B test a page’s design, its content, and its images by creating a variant of the original version of the webpage. Additionally, you can create as many options as you want by testing these different elements.

Turn your leads into long-term customers

Sometimes your lead immediately decides to buy your product. It would be amazing if all leads did this, but unfortunately, that is not the case. But, you shouldn’t stop engaging with them just because they convert quickly.

You can make your customer’s task much more manageable by incorporating a button where they can immediately talk to your sales representatives. A lead usually turns into a qualified sale when they ask for a product demo service rather than a free trial. So, you can see why you nurture your qualified sales. With that being said, you must optimize your website and conversion paths through the processes we have talked about above. Use CTAs for a demo or a call with your sales representative. These can turn the leads into a long-term customers.

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Optimize your blog posts:

Your blogs are the food-for-thought for thousands of readers. Nowadays, people get attracted by the catchy title and content of your blog. You can optimize your blog posts by reviewing the previous blogs which have higher traffic but lower conversion rates. This way, you can optimize your call-to-action buttons which did not work earlier. At the same time, you must consider the blog posts that have higher conversion rates and less traffic. That’s how you know you have to brainstorm fresh and more relevant content.

Retarget your customers:

Most of the time, visitors go through your webpages but do not react to them at all. It is the hard truth of the marketing arena. Here comes the task to reengage them. Retarget your lost customers by tracking them online and showing them ads as they browse through the other websites. It will work for the people who visited your high-converting web pages. All you need is catchy content, compelling images, and reasonable offers.

Conclusion

Now you know how to effectively optimize your website to increase your conversions! You can use heatmaps and A/B tests to introspect your webpages further. Remember to conduct the experiments frequently to come up with productive and successful results. These experiments will give your campaigns a breath of fresh air.

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AUTHOR BIO

Tanmayi is a creative content writer at NotifyVisitors. She believes in the saying, “Writing is not just putting out facts, it is the catharsis of emotions.” She blends imagination with logical facts and pours it out in words. Writing has many facets, she lives every bit of it.