4 Tips For Improving Your CRO

Improve CRO

You’ve created a great looking website, you’ve added some catchy content to help attract your target market and you’ve even done usability tests to ensure your customers can engage with your site. So that’s it, right? Well, not quite. While it’s certainly important to have a well-designed, informative, and useable site, ultimately, your website needs to bring in revenue. One way to make your website more profitable is to invest in conversion rate optimization.

Why is CRO important?

Quite simply, it is the most targeted way of ensuring your website is achieving your business goals – turning prospects into paying customers in a way that works specifically for your business model.

For example, if you have a website whose objective is to sell movie rental subscriptions, your conversion rate would be measured by how many site visitors actually sign up for a subscription. If your website is a portal for selling kitchen design services, your conversion rate may be measured in terms of the number of design consultation appointments booked or brochures requested. Smart companies are catching on to CRO and are using their knowledge to convert casual browsers into actual revenue.

If you think your online business could benefit from CRO, here are 4 tips to help get you started on the right track.

1. Use Analytics to Identify Gaps

If you are wise you will already be using analytics data in order to see how much time visitors are spending on your website and which pages are of most and least interest. By looking at this data you can see which of your pages are failing. If one of your pages has a really high bounce rate, you know there’s a problem.

Once you identify the problem areas of your website, you can improve them-thus improving your conversion rate. The solution may be easier than you think. Sometimes just some minor tweaks to your content, design or usability may be all it takes to hook your prospects and generate surprising increases in your conversion rate.

If you haven’t made use of analytics yet, get to grips with a free to use program such as Google Analytics; you can also use your analytics program to carry out A/B test to see which of your page elements can be improved.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Understanding what drives people to your website is vital if you are to understand what prompts their purchase decision and what prevents it. For example, if you’re targeting customers who are interested in ethical or environmentally friendly products, then you could boost conversion rates by putting your environmental certifications and credentials on your product pages.

Similarly, if you are selling products at bargain prices you can be sure your target market will be looking for assurances that your prices are the lowest before they part with their money. Price promises, cash back guarantees and discount messages should be prominent across your site, as should a quick path to purchase.

But remember, knowing who your target audience is and what they’re looking for takes a bit of legwork, so make sure you carefully identify your customers first. There are a few ways you can start this process:

  • Ask for reader feedback in blog articles/blog comments and through your social media platforms
  • Send out surveys (old school but still effective)
  • Hang out with your target audience by going to networking events or conferences they are likely to attend
  • Check out case study reports your competitors publish on their audiences

While you’re doing this research, you should look out for the following information about your audience:

  • What are the general demographics?
  • What/who influences them?
  • What does your audience want/need?
  • What questions are your readers asking?

3. Keep Signup Forms to a Minimum

For the best conversion rate, you need to make the buying process as quick and easy as possible by only asking customers to submit essential information to complete the transaction.

While it may be useful for your market research to know about your customers’ hobbies, employment status, insurance renewal dates and so on, such questions are likely to feel intrusive to first time visitors and could turn them off. This kind of information can be garnered later on through follow up communications or as part of your on-going strategy for customer loyalty and engagement.

Take a look at the signup form Dropbox uses, it only asks for essential information:

Drop box signup form

You could also take an approach like Pinterest and give customers the quick option of signing up via Facebook to complete a transaction:

Pinterest signup option

4. A Quick Click

Most business owners will be familiar with the term ‘call to action’ – the point at which you want to prompt your customer to make contact, subscribe, or buy. However, in order to get the most return from a call to action, you need to make it possible for a customer to take action immediately.

The introduction of a simple ‘buy now’ button that diverts straight to a payment page, or an appointment scheduling widget could be all it takes to get a conversion. Potential customers should clearly be able see how to buy, enquire, or schedule with just one click. In doing this, you eliminate the possibility of customers getting lost in other pages, losing interest, or moving to a competitor’s site.

Conversion rate optimization works differently for every business, making it a completely customizable and strategic marketing tool. Use it well and you will soon grow your business and see a measurable impact on your bottom line.

#improvingcro #tipstoimprovecro
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About Jan
I love to chill and I love to sing. I enjoy every single moment in my life with my lovely family.