Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has the ability to be a great addition to any company’s digital marketing efforts when done the right way. CRO is the process of optimizing your sponsored search ads, landing pages, and overall website design in order to raise your conversion rate. In simpler terms, this means gathering the highest possible amount of visitors to your site and getting them to actually sign up, make a purchase, or complete whatever action profits your business.
There are an endless amount of studies about business site testing – meaning, switching, or modifying different aspects of a website to see which version(s) yield the highest conversions. Many of the businesses studied had impressive outcomes that left them with more traffic than they had ever had had before. This is all well and good, but the problem is that these businesses didn’t even know what they were looking for, or why they were testing every aspect of their website.
What should you actually be testing when you don’t have much website traffic? Here are the tips to correctly use CRO for your business:
Check out your bounce rates: Two of the most important things to gather when you are using CRO are bounce rate and exit rate. Take note of the pages that have the highest exit rates and then compare them with the pages that have a low exit rate. After you have compared the pages, ask yourself why there are pages with a high bounce or exit rate to begin with. Is there content missing from the page that will leave your audience confused or disappointed? Was the navigation on the page not clear enough, or faulty in code? These issues are often the case when your website loses traffic, so make sure each page on your website is clear to audiences so they don’t leave the site without converting.
Test the Obvious Factors: Call to Action buttons (CTA’s) and Headlines are the go-to aspects of a website to test with CRO because they have the biggest impact on your site visitor’s actions. These two pieces are what ultimately get your goal completed. Changing the message, color, or size of your headlines and/or CTA’s can make a world of difference.
Use User Surveys: Before doing anything with CRO, you need to understand what your users need and what they are looking for. The best way to do that is through user surveys. Make sure the questions are open-ended so you are able to gather specific feedback about how you can make your website more suitable to your audience. After going through each response, you will know exactly what to test with CRO. It can be difficult to get users to actually take the survey, so offering a small discount or deal could provide just the right amount of incentive to ensure you get responses.
Don’t Get Sidetracked: Don’t go crazy with testing parts of your website that don’t need to be changed. The point of doing your CRO study is to figure out what your users are having trouble with on your website, as well as gaining traffic. Going on a website-changing spree will only confuse you and your employees, as it will become difficult to hone in on exactly what yielded the best results. This is why it’s important to change only the substantial aspects of your site, such as headlines and CTA’s. A focused, clear strategy will always provide better results than a few random changes in the hopes of increasing conversions.