Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): The Complete Guide

Every business wants their ROI to become more profitable. Increasing your marketing expenditure isn’t a smart move. Your sales and revenue may increase, but your net profit margin will remain the same.

Conversion rate optimization is one proven method to gain higher revenues without expanding your budget. It is an activity of generating more number leads out of visitors than your previous records.

We have highlighted some key focus areas to increase your conversion rate, which you might need to pay attention to. The little time you spend considering and making changes can yield tremendous results. 

Let us understand what it is and how to frame a conversion optimization strategy.

What is the conversion rate, and How do we calculate it?

The conversion rate is the percentage of your web page visitor taking desired actions. It could be anything like signing up for a newsletter/filling out a survey/booking a demo/making a purchase. 

In simple terms, the conversion rate indicates how well you generate leads through a web page.

It is calculated by dividing the leads generated by the total number of visitors and multiplying it by a hundred.

Conversion rate = (Leads Generated / Total Number of Visitors) * 100

For instance, over time, your website has got 1000 visitors, and out of which ten visitors turned to your leads, your conversion rate is,

Conversion rate = (10/1000)*100 

       = 1%

If you want to know the conversion rate of a pop-up banner, you need to calculate the number of pages that have the banner, the number of visitors in these blogs and the number of leads generated through it.

Benchmark for conversion rates

The average conversion rate varies from niche to niche, year to year and country to country.

Here we have found some data on average conversion rates across different industries.

• The average conversion rate of e-commerce [B2C] sites: 2.17%
• The average conversion rate of B2B services: 3.5%
• The average conversion rate of the healthcare sector: 5.6%
• The average conversion rate of the EdTech industry: 2-3%

If you want to set a target for your conversion rate, you can choose either the global average or your competitors. Understand the maximum conversion rate in your geographic location and work toward achieving it.

There is always room for improvement, and you can keep working to maximize your results. Customizing your CRO strategy through an iterative process will yield fruitful results.

Why is conversion rate optimization so important?

Marketing teams or SEO analysts work towards getting more traffic for the website, thereby generating leads. What if your website is getting high traffic and CTR with few conversions? Then some factors need to be added to convert visitors into your leads.

Increasing the spending on ads or creating new landing pages can get more leads. But it would help if you found ways to get the same number of leads without increasing your spending or creating new landing pages. 

It would be best if you did smart work rather than following some conventional practices and getting the same results.

The metrics you can measure for an efficient CRO plan include

• Increase in the number of new leads and customers
• Improved ROI
• Better results on all your marketing strategies

This is where a CRO plan comes into the picture. A best CRO strategy can perform wonders in converting more visitors into leads.

Areas to focus on and execute new ideas

Conversion rate optimization isn’t a set of practices to follow. It is an experimental journey to find what works for you to increase conversion rates. When looking for conversion rate optimization tips, you would have started researching your competitors. 

But what works for your competitors will not always work for you. You need to figure out new innovative ways by thinking out of the box. 

Here is a list of focus areas to experiment with and increase your conversion rate.

1. Homepage design

Visual design and elements are the first things that capture your visitor’s eyes. A good design will help your visitor navigate to product pages and explore your website. For website conversion optimization, having a unique, exciting and relevant design can help your visitor to stay a little longer and take action.

Increase the visitor’s engagement by providing chatbot support or easy sign-up buttons. Add inspiring testimonials and provide a trailer video of your services. Because sometimes people will be intrigued to know the success stories or proof of your works.

2. Smart CTAs

CTA (Call-to-action) are clickable buttons on your landing page, emails, posters, or home page. When clicked, it takes your visitor to forms or can even directly land on a call. 

The copies and colors used for CTA are of paramount importance in deciding your conversion rates. For example, ADT, a Tyco International company, has increased their conversion rate by 60% by changing its CTA from “Book a Free Survey” to “Get a Free Quote.”

3. Provide impactful copies on your landing pages

The headline, sub-headline and all the information you provide on your website will be the key drivers in converting the visitor to a lead. Check the website of growth.cx, where the initial set of questions is answered through the copies.

A creative copy mentioning the values of your product or services added to your clients can significantly impact conversion rates.

4. SEO blogs

Every blog is another chance to showcase your expertise and scale your business. Blogs are intended not only to create awareness or educate your audience. They can also be your powerful tool to capture new leads.

Include actionable CTA’s and keywords with high CTR in the blog page and make it visible to the reader. You can use effective SEO tools like SuiteJar for your SEO conversion optimization.

You can also include resources like eBooks and guides to increase user engagement.

5. Landing page

A landing page is a web page created for specific events or products. The main aim of these pages is to get conversions and form submissions. To maximize the performance, provide compelling and catchy CTAs, creative design elements, attention-seeking headlines and good copy.

Also, make the landing page informative by providing insights into the event or product. Mention and highlight if there are any available offers. And ask for only minimal information in the submission forms that are essential for further communication. (For example, growth.cx)

6. Avoid long survey forms

The survey forms or fill-out forms you provide as a pop-up or by pulling through a CTA are to get only the basic info of your audience. Keep it short and concise to avoid them from jumping off.

Step-by-step processes for your CRO journey

We have learned about the areas to focus on and optimize. Those conversion rate optimization tips must be implemented in an organized way. Don’t just randomly implement your ideas. Try different ideas one by one and observe their results. 

Random implementation or focusing on multiple buckets at one time can make your team exhausting. At times it can also lead you to make some wrong assumptions. 

Here we are going to discuss a detailed conversion optimization strategy.

1. Understand the behavior of your audience

Instincts or guesses doesn’t work. Rather rely on facts and data to create assumptions. Along with the quantitative data, try to understand the psychology of your target audience. If needed, read some marketing case studies.

Study how your visitor interacted with your website or the series of pages a user visits in a session. For this, use a heat map tool or google analytics to find which page gets more visits or traffic. 

Segregate the pages that have high click rates and conversions. It will give you a clear picture of the content you need to target or the products your customer likes.

2. Identify your first points

Before landing on a home or product page, your visitor must have surfed through any other landing pages, blogs, ads, or posts. Use sales funnel tools like factors.ai to identify which channel drives more traffic to your website and one that brings less traffic.

Optimize marketing strategies for low-performing channels. Figure out the driving factors and hook points that made your visitor get converted or frictional factors that made your visitor leave without any actions. It can be any medium, including Facebook, LinkedIn, emails or blogs.

3. Find where most visitors drop off

It is easy to find pages where most visitors drop off. Google Analytics can provide insights into pages with high bounce rates. 

Use a sales funnel tool and get deeper insights into which process or stage your visitor leaves your site. Find whether it is during the payment process or any form-filling process.

Analyzing those pages or processes will help you eliminate the frictional factors that prevent your visitor from getting converted. 

4. Create a checklist

After understanding all your flaws and possible spaces for improvements, create a list of tasks for experimenting. Your list may entail changing the color of CTA, the inclusion of lead flow in blogs, changing the color of the landing pages, changing the quote, or any changes you wish to try out.

Set benchmarks and estimate the time needed to make necessary changes. Define what you want to achieve and set target metrics.

5. Prioritize the tasks

After creating your checklist, sort it based on the expected results and available resources. You can try the P.I.E. framework for this activity. This framework was created by Chris Goward, founder of WiderFunnels, to help marketers.

The three components of the P.I.E framework are Potential, Importance and Ease. Draw a table in your excel sheet and add your checklist to it. Rate each task based on the three factors of the P.I.E framework on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. 

Pick the task with a high score and proceed in descending order based on the score. This methodology will help streamline your process and get the best outcomes.

6. Perform tests

Pick the task one by one and start implementing your ideas. To understand and compare the results, perform the A/B test, which is one of the essential tests conducted for conversion rate optimization.

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a popular method most marketers deploy. It is primarily used when trying different versions of the same website element, i.e. making only one change at a time. For example, try two quotes or two copies of CTAs.

You must perform multivariate testing whenever you need to make multiple changes or try a new approach. This test will help you to spot high-impacting changes in less time.

7. Record your findings and deduce your thesis

Record all your results irrespective of the type of impact. It could be both positive and negative. Add a short note to your records stating the reason (Why that particular method was a success or a failure). This would help your entire marketing team in their upcoming journey.

8. Continue your tests with an iterative approach

The results don’t incur that the new changes will always yield the same results. As stated earlier, it is a journey which has no end. You have to follow these steps repetitively to obtain the best results.

Points to remember

There are no proven strategies to help you achieve 100% of your targets. When you are on your conversion rate optimization journey, you are prone to make mistakes like making biased decisions, running too many tests, writing irrelevant copies for headlines, and placing unnecessary CTAs. 

All you need is to follow the best practices. Never make any false claims or exaggeration in your communications to increase conversion rates, which will make you stumble and fall in the long run.

CRO processes will not only help you to get higher profits. Still, they will provide insights into your customers, which will help build marketing strategies and ideas for process improvement/new products.