CRO is a process. A process to always improve your website with a focus on the “conversion” metric. Establish the value of your product or service and get customers to take action.
The aim is to find that “magic formula” that will convert users into leads. If you attract 10,000 visitors to your website and 1,000 of those visitors “sign up” that’s a conversion rate of 10%.
There’s a lot of advice on this topic, but what might work for one industry or one website might not work for yours. It’s a game of trial and error, tracking and tweaking, learning and optimising.
Data is key. When we understand how users interact, you can make an informed decision.
First things first, install tracking!
Before going down this path of CRO you need to ensure your website is setup to track the right metrics.
Assuming you’ve got Google Analytics installed, make sure goals are setup. If you have an eCommerce site, be sure to setup eCommerce tracking.
A goal might be newsletter signups or an enquiry via a contact forms. With this setup, you can now track your website conversion.
When we’re asked about a benchmark, my response is to benchmark against your previous month. Swim in your own lane. If you have a conversion rate of 1%, then the aim of next month should be to get that to 2%.
Another option is to work backwards. How many sales per month do you need to meet budget? What’s the company’s conversion rate per sale?
This will give you the amount of leads required per month. Use the following formula to establish what conversation rate required to meet budget.
Visitors per month/leads required = conversation
Resources and skills required to dominate CRO efforts
There are lots of moving parts with CRO. You need a leader with a strategy mindset. This person is in charge of developing a plan, and project manage the teams priorities. You’ll need tools or someone to track website data. This will help uncover information to make data-driven decisions.
Next you’ll need a copywriter to create copy. Have them focus on the customers problems and solutions. This should evolve over time and required a team effort. Involve the whole company. Get a list of questions clients ask. Both existing clients and prospective clients. Find patterns, and answer them throughout the website. Whether in an FAQ format or dedicated pages or blog posts for the more complex answers.
Ensure you have a trusted team of web designs and developers. This is crucial. The designer has to ensure the designs are inline with the brand style guides. The developer needs to turn around tasks fast, without losing quality of code. It’s a fine line.
Beginning CRO with some quick wins
As mentioned earlier, CRO is about trial and error. Although CRO is a long-term process, we generally begin the process with some quick wins to set you up for success.
Quick win #1: Review your copy. Focus on your home page (or the page with most traffic). Does this page clearly clarify your company’s value proposition? Am I clearly asking what I want the reader to do?
Remember: Great copywriting has an actionable outcome.
Quick win #2: Review your call to actions. Further to the above, the call to action needs to be a short pressing sentence. For example, Buy Now, Join our newsletter. Get straight to the point, so the user can take the logical next step.
Remember: Call to actions aren’t always headings, links and form buttons also count!
Quick win #3: Reduce the form on your site. Are some of your forms lengthy? Cut them in half? People get deterred by lengthy forms. Get a name, email and phone number. If there’s more information required, either trigger an automated email to ask the appropriate questions, or, PICK UP THE PHONE!
Setup and review funnels
Once you’ve setup your goals in Google Analytics, it’s now time to set your Analytics on fire! Funnels are the key to understanding the journey you want your customers to take through your website.
On an eCommerce website it might look something like:
Step 1: Home Page
Step 2: Category Page
Step 3: Product Page
Step 4: Add to Cart
Step 5: Checkout
Understanding how many users go through the funnel, and at what points they drop off can help with identifying the bottlenecks within your website, and therefore where to focus your CRO efforts.
This video by the team at Kiss Metrics explains how to setup a funnel:
