Your CRO (conversion rate optimisation) strategy can increase your site traffic, bring you high-quality leads and improve your conversion rate.
Once you understand your audience and their intent – you will be able to ensure they have a better user experience on your site and therefore increase your revenue. We’ve written this guide to help you boost your ROI (return on investment) by creating a great CRO strategy for your business.
What is CRO?
Let’s start with the basics. A conversion is the desired action you want your site visitors to take. This usually refers to a sale but could be anything from an email subscription to a callback.
Now, CRO is the process of optimising your site to improve visitor metrics and enable more users to get to that point of conversion. You can take different steps when it comes to CRO, for example:
- Increase site speed
- Avoid clutter on site
- Have a creative call-to-action (CTA)
- Optimise your landing page
- Do regular user tests
Don’t worry, we will go into more detail about how we build a CRO strategy later.
Why is a CRO marketing strategy important?
There are multiple benefits that a solid strategy can bring to your business. We’ve highlighted the five major pros below:
1. Higher ranking
If your CRO strategy is successful, then it will make your site an overall better experience for visitors. Google aims to deliver the most high-quality and valuable links to users. This means that once your strategy begins to pay off, your reputation will improve and Google will reward you with a higher position on SERP (search engine results page).
2. More leads
Of course, not every single lead will turn into a sale, but the more leads you get, the more likely it is that your conversions will increase. If you want to turn your site visitors into potential leads, to increase things like sales, clicks, subscribers and calls – then you’ll need a good CRO strategy.
3. High-quality leads
While more leads is a great achievement, it’s important that these leads are high-quality (likely to convert). Your CRO strategy can ensure that your digital marketing messaging is clear and targeted towards your customer profile. When CRO is done right, you’ll be reaching out to people who are likely to engage with your site. There isn’t much point in generating leads if they’re not valuable to your business.
4. More sales
Once you gain higher quality leads and more valuable site traffic – you will be able to focus on sales. Your CRO strategy can make your site appeal more to those users with high-intent to purchase.
5. Increased ROI
This goes without saying – if your strategy is a success, leads will increase and then your CPL (cost-per-lead) will decrease. This means you can increase your profit. A better overall online presence will help you to earn more, for less.
Creating your strategy
There’s no doubt that a good CRO strategy is needed if you want to really boost your online visibility. But, how do you go about creating a strategy for your business? We’ve explained some of our top tips below.
Increase site speed
Site speed is a crucial part of any CRO strategy. Think of it this way; if a user is leaving your site before it has a chance to load, you’re losing an opportunity to promote what you could be offering them. It can take as little as three seconds for a user to decide to head back to Google and find a faster site. Search engine users (especially on mobile) will be looking for a quick solution to their issue or query – so, your website needs to provide just that.
There are plenty of helpful tools that you can use to improve your site speed. For example, Google’s PageSpeed Insights provides you with reports on both mobile and desktop devices. It can also identify any issues and provide you with suggestions. Recommendations may include things like image optimisation, minifying HTML and JavaScript, and enabling compression.
Increasing your site speed will allow more users to look through your site without any disruption. You won’t be able to get results if users are leaving too soon, so, this is essentially the first step to increasing your conversion rate.
UX Testing
Once you’ve gained a site visitor, you’ll want to make it as easy as you can for them to navigate around your site and convert. You can do a number of things, such as:
- Don’t have too much copy one on page
- Have clear buttons
- Use menus
Here at Summon, we use Userlytics to create smooth and straightforward customer journeys for our clients. It’s a user testing platform that offers insights to help create an improved experience on apps and websites. It can perform tests on both desktop and mobiles. You can specify your targeted device and audience to gain a real understanding of your site’s usability and how to improve it for your customers.
Optimising mobile UX
Considering the number of users that will be on mobiles – your CRO strategy should include specific changes based on mobile UX in particular. To achieve a mobile-friendly site, think about the following factors:
- If you’re using a chatbot (which we often recommend), think about where you place it and make sure it doesn’t make navigation difficult for mobile users.
- Keep your menu in eye-sight when users are scrolling.
- Consider placing your CTA button somewhere that a user could easily reach with their thumb.
- Avoid auto-playing too many videos as this could use up your visitor’s data and cause them to leave your site.
More people than ever are using mobiles to search and discover, so it is essential that you reduce any obstacles on your site for those users. Working on your mobile UX can increase your overall conversion rate.
Use a heatmap
A heatmap is a visual display of data showing how users flow through your site, represented through different colours. Heatmaps reveal all interaction on your website – from clicks and scrolls to taps and mouse movements.
You can use this information to make relevant changes that will benefit your future site visitors. For example, if you find that multiple users are attempting to click on an unclickable image or text – you could consider linking this or adding a button.
Scroll maps reveal at which point a user leaves a page or website. It works by dividing your site into different folds so that you can pinpoint the area that you are losing the most users. If you notice a drop in traffic at a particular point – you’ll know this section needs some work.
User privacy
A conversion will often require some sort of personal information; whether it’s an email address, phone number, name or bank details. Understandably, some users may feel hesitant when giving away these details – so, it is essential to establish a sense of trust with your customers.
You can do this by explaining why this information is needed and how you will use it. For example, stating that something is for marketing purposes. If you’re aiming to increase email sign-ups – it is less daunting if you inform users that they can always unsubscribe if they wish too.
Be transparent
When we think of CRO, we often refer to using data and analytics to improve site performance. However, another great way to turn site visitors into customers is simply by being transparent. These are a few examples of things you should always try to be open about:
- How you work as a business
- Your pricing (no unexpected fees)
- The steps throughout your site (i.e. after a conversion)
- Timings (when to expect a call-back or confirmation email)
Transparency is a way of connecting with people and encouraging them to buy your product or use your service. A user should feel confident and at ease when looking through your site. A smooth conversion process will gain customer loyalty and encourage users to interact with your business more than once.
Contact us
CRO is an integral part of digital marketing and it covers various areas that will improve your online presence. If you have any questions or want us to help you with your CRO strategy to improve your digital marketing results – please get in touch.