CRO is like basketball

free image from https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/basketball-hitting.html

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the term for what marketers do to determine which versions of landing pages or sites yield the best conversion rate. The conversion itself depends on the specific goals in place, the call to action (CTA).

The conversion for an e-commerce site is usually completing a purchase. But it can also be just getting that customer to take the first step on the purchase journey. In such cases, the goal may just be having the prospective customer indicate some level of interest and establishing some kind of connection.

That’s why you have to be clear on your metrics for CRO. It can count as a conversion to have the customer sign up for a subscription to a company newsletter, put in a request for a quote, or even just sharing an email address by signing up for an account.

The way CRO works is like finding the techniques a basketball player can use to get more of the balls he throws into the basket. He’s not taking more throws but throwing more effectively to achieve his goal and score points for the team.

 
That doesn’t assure that they will win every game, but it will tilt the odds in their favor.

 

How to calculate CRO

You calculate the conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions generated by the number of visits to that page, whether it’s a home page, landing page, or blog post. That means that if you have 10,000 visits, out o f which you have 150 conversions, you have a1.5% conversion rate. If your optimization results in getting 200 conversions out of the same number of visits, you’ve achieved a 2% conversion rate.

Given that it is a percentage, a high conversion rate is not a function of a larger number of visits but of more of those visits translating into conversions. That’s what it means to optimize the rate, getting more value out of your existing traffic. It’s not about generating new visitors but out of getting more of the ones you draw to convert.

Phases of conversion rate optimization

CRO involves testing various attributes, from colors to picture placement, to button shapes, to the steps involved in checkout. The first phase in the process of CRO is the research and hypothesis phase, in which the particular attributes that are correlated with better conversions are identified. They are then subject to A/B testing to discover if the site with them does indeed perform better with a lower bounce rate than the one without them.

Why conversion rate optimization is important

Before CRO was adopted as a data-driven practice, the only way to discover if something was promoting or hindering conversion was to set up your site that way and wait a while until you had results. You would then have to guess what needed tweaking, and through trial-and-error may have finally arrived at an optimized site. So while you may have arrived at the same point in the end, it would have only been achieved at the cost of lost conversions for all those months of trying to figure out what are the bottlenecks in your conversion funnel. Now A/B testing tools make it possible to discover the most effective way to set up your website by working through different versions to get data on what works more quickly.

Conversion rate optimization best practices

In general, conversion rates improve when visitors have to do less work to find what they want. That means that sites designed according to CRO best practices typically include a clean look like that allows them to easily navigate to where they want to go, obviously placed and colored specific call to action buttons, and no jumping through hoops for the contact information that provides leads and builds connection, whether that is a phone number, email, or live chat. All those contribute to expediting the customer's buying decision.
Benefits of CRO

Applying CRO makes your sites work better to achieve your goals, and that brings several benefits:

Better bang for your marketing bucks
When your landing page delivers more conversions, you get better returns from your ad spend. CRO helps drive site visitors toward what they seek to complete the purchase journey. Having that in places on your site delivers a better return on all of your marketing investments, and you will see revenue growth as a result of more conversions.

Improved understanding of your visitor customer experience

Conversion research reveals both quantitative and qualitative data about visitor responses. It reveals which parts are sticking points that can prevent them from proceeding through their customer journey, as well as what they do find appealing in your site. Working off that information, you can better plan your content and layout going forward based on deeper insight into your target audience.

Getting a leg up on your competition

Better conversion rates indicate increased visitor engagement that can boost your traffic as well as reduce bounce rates. Because Google takes bounce rates into account in ranking, getting visitors to stick around a while on your site can improve your search engine ranking to achieve a leg up on your competition. That, in turn, allows your site to draw more visitors that will convert at a higher rate.

Related posts:

Make your content as accessible as possible

7 ways to grab customer attention in subject lines

What Edison can teach us about SEO

Think marathon rather than sprint when planning content marketing