I’m sure at some point someone has told you that you should look into Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and you’ve looked at them like they’ve got two heads. For all you know, they may as well have just named the latest diet fad as you have no clue what they're talking about.
Don’t worry, I’m here to break it down for you and give some quick tips and insights to get you going.
It’s extremely important and can transform your business so don’t shy away.
Let’s get stuck in!
So what is Conversation Optimisation?
Wikipedia says “Conversion rate optimization(CRO) is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that converts into customers, or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage. It is commonly referred to as CRO.”
Yawnnnnn.
Bottomline is not so much what it is but why it’s important. By conversion optimizing your site you’re lowering your customer acquisition cost which means you’re getting more customers/leads from your traffic.
And who doesn’t want more, high-quality, customers, right?
How does it work?
As an example, a landing page with 1500 visitors a month and a 5% conversion rate means it will be generating 75 conversions per month. However, if you can increase the conversion rate to 10%, then the number of conversions will increase to 150 per month.
So with a 5% improvement, you could be doubling your leads. All of a sudden it’s starting to make sense, huh?
Whether you get traffic organically, through social media ads, or Google AdWords PPC (pay-per-click), you want to make sure you’re making the absolute most of that traffic. Getting good quality traffic is harder than ever and frankly, increasing the conversion rate is a no-brainer way to squeeze every possible customer out of that traffic.
How to Increase Conversion Rate?
No one’s perfect. Not even professional agencies and I’m speaking from experience. Agencies/freelancers will always have a good idea of what works well in a website and what converts and what doesn’t. This gives a really good baseline but really is just the start. If you leave it there, you’re leaving money on the table. Period.
Specific improvements and optimizations on your website will quickly lead to an increased conversion rate. This is one of the easiest and most comfortable methods to increase your revenue per visitor.
Not sure how to go about it? Here are five effective tips to increase your conversion rate.
1.Test, Test, Test!
I can’t emphasize this enough. Leaving things up to chance means leaving easy money on the table. From headlines to calls to action to lead magnets, test everything. Testing and experimentation is the best way to find out what works for your specific audience and once you find out what works, you’ll reap the rewards.
Run at least one A/B and A/B/C/D test at any given time on your site. Check what is engaging your visitors. Manipulate your content according to that. Do experimentation. Once you know what your audience wants, you can learn and make it close to perfect. If you give them what they want, they will give you what you want. But for this, you need to know what they want and for that testing is the real deal.
Your content, layout, and style all fall under this. Experiment with the position of content on the page. See what happens if you make changes to the style of the layout. Make sure you have the right content. Content that is motivating enough to make visitors convert. You cannot know all of this without experimentation and testing. So, you have to have patience, and once you are through the testing phase, your conversions will increase automatically.
It becomes very important to know what visitors like. Ask yourself questions. Is the headline is persuading enough to make them convert? Is the call to action strong enough? Is the content written in a way that my readers like?
The finished product won’t be perfect, but it’s an improvement and all we are looking to do is to keep on improving. Because of this, never stop testing! With digital marketing, things change all the time so you should be ready at all times.
2. Integrate Strong Calls to Action (CTA)
This is another important step that can help you increase the conversion rate of your site. Giving a clear-cut direction to users about what to do next is vital. To do this, you need to have a strong call to action with an accurate and convincing appeal.
Calls to Action are the key to digital marketing. It is these calls to action that make the users do what we want them to do. Stick to delivering a core CTA for everything you do. If you deliver multiple calls to action you will confuse your user who will perhaps end up taking no action. For CTAs use less process-orientated words but words that also increase urgency. Users go for CTAs that don’t suggest that a long process is awaiting them.
Don’t underestimate the power of ‘Get a Free Quote’ vs ‘Get a Free Quote Now!’.
As CTAs can have a huge impact on your audience and are a great way to increase your conversion rate, it is therefore essential to constantly run A/B tests to make sure you can make the best out of the two or three words used.
3. Earn Their Trust
Earning your visitors' trust is crucial. Once you have their trust, chances of conversion greatly increase. Even if your product/offering is good and you have convincing content on your landing page, users are less likely to convert if they are not sure that the product is coming from a reliable source.
So, you need to make it easy for users to verify your website. Iterate that a real organization is behind the site. Make it look professional and update the content regularly. Avoid pop-ups blinking offers as people usually associate them with scams. If you have pop-ups for ads, make sure you clearly separate them from your content. Last but not least, avoid errors as much as you can and as small as they are.
The key tips I give to those wanting to build trust online are to be visible, be personable and be approachable. People deal with people no matter what size their business is. The way you write your content, the way you position your offering and everything in between will speak testament to who you are as a person and company.
4. Make Buying from you the Easiest Thing EVER
The last thing users want is a complex buying process from a complex website. People lean toward easy things. Therefore, make it clear to the visitors what they should be doing. Instruct them in their own simple language. Avoid providing unnecessary options.
Once they are aware of what to do, make sure you ask them to fill in as few fields as possible, while also collecting valuable information including a couple of pre-screening questions to help evaluate the quality of an enquiry. You want to provide some barrier to entry but you want it to not be too low or too high. I always find asking for a budget is a good barrier for an initial enquiry form.
The key is making sure your whole process is simple and seamless. By doing this along with strong CTAs, you will see an increase in your conversions.
5. Distractions are Deadly
You need to go through the page and hunt down the distractions. The day of horrible popups and crazy animations is over.
If your user is distracted from the primary goal, it is all over. So make sure there aren’t any unnecessary images, headers, and links that might distract the users. Everything should be relevant and clear. It’s fine to supplement the primary goal, but don’t overwhelm it.
Make everything organized and clean. Increase clarity by using high-contrast text on a light-colored background. Again, make sure your primary goal and the action you want that user to take are totally clear for everyone.
You don’t want to be sending mixed messages.
Conclusion
The whole process of learning how to increase the conversion rate isn’t complicated at all when you break it down into easily manageable steps. It only takes a few tips and tricks, to begin with.
Once you get the gist of the stuff you can test, and work on mastering it. You will soon see results and generate more conversions than ever before. I suggest starting with one topic (CTA’s/Content/Image vs Video) and keep working on that and running your tests until you feel it can’t be improved much more, at which time you move on to your next challenge.
Hopefully, these five amazing tips will give you a kickstart. If you are giving Split Hero a go and need some advice, just contact me. I love talking about CRO and want to see you succeed.