It's 2021 and conversion rates are still a big deal. In fact, it is more important than ever before because of the increased competition in the market for customers. With so many options to choose from, you need to make sure that your website has all the things that users want or they will leave and never come back. Here are 5 best practices for CRO in 2021:
Know your customer
Test, test, and test some more
Create a conversion funnel that works for you
Don't be afraid to fail
Track what is working
Learn as much as you can about your user behavior.
So let's jump in!
1. Know your customer
Knowing your customer is one of the most important things you can do to increase conversion rates. It's not enough to know who they are; knowing their needs for the product or service that you provide should be a top priority in order to better target them with your marketing campaigns. This strategy will also help when it comes time for putting together an offer, as well.
The best way to learn about customers and how they interact on your site is by conducting surveys and quizzes so that you have more information than just what people tell you (which may be untrue). Surveys allow users to answer questions honestly without feeling any pressure from someone standing there asking questions, which usually leads to higher-quality data because respondents won't feel like they're being judged.
2. Test, test, and test some more
This means that you should be willing to test anything, so long as it doesn't require a lot of manual work. This includes things such as the color scheme or layout of your site. It is likely that changing one variable might not make a big difference in conversion rates, but together with other changes, it can have a much greater impact.
For example: maybe adding some pictures increases visitor engagement and leads to higher conversions...but only if they're placed here instead of there! Split testing lets you identify what actually works for your audience which in turn helps creates a more effective message about what you can offer your users.
Maintaining a user-centered design strategy will help keep visitors happy because their needs are being met and this is why it's important to keep testing.
3. Create a conversion funnel that works for you
One of the best ways to make sure you're focusing on what your visitors want is by using a conversion funnel. A conversion funnel is an easy way for marketers and business owners to see which steps in their sales process are working or not, so they can optimize each step accordingly.
A good starting point would be: where do people come from? What website page did they end up viewing before converting (or not)? And how long have these individuals been browsing our site? All this info tells us about who visits our site, how we market them, and when we close leads with potential customers- it's invaluable information! But there still needs to be someone analyzing all that data--on top of everything else--and making sense of it.
When you're in CRO mode, data is king; the more detailed and accurate your data sets are, the better chance you have to make informed decisions about how to optimize your website's conversion funnel!
4. Don't be afraid to fail
Not everything you test will work. Some ideas will be found to have small or no impact and the data reveals that they should not continue. When this happens, use what you learned from your test to find a new idea. Testing is an iterative process of trial and error but split testing can produce more successes than failures.
5. Track what is working
In order to know what is working, you have to measure it. Your analytics should be able to provide the metrics of success and show which pages are successfully converting visitors into customers. This will help with your A/B testing because you know which page has had a higher conversion rate in past tests. It also allows for an easy way to track results so that changes can be made based on test outcomes rather than hunches or guesses.
Never stop optimizing conversions by split testing your content.
Split Hero makes WordPress AB Testing easier than ever before and will help you track what is and isn't working with your split testing campaigns.
6. Learn as much as you can about your user behaviour.
Whether you are designing the next website, building an app, or implementing a CRO strategy – there is always one constant that we must take into account: the user.
Google Analytics can be a really good way to get some initial insights into your website's user behaviour by analyzing the user flow and page drop-offs. This can give you a great starting point for what pages should form your split testing campaigns.
The best way to learn about your user behaviour is by testing out a few of the different CRO strategies. There are many that have been proven to work with varying degrees of success for particular industries, so make sure you keep experimenting and learning how they can be applied to your business needs.
This will help you find what works best for your company's unique audience.
Conclusion
To sum up, CRO is changing constantly. Here are some key takeaway points;
The user should always be at the center of your campaign
Think about what data sources you have available for analysis
Try out different strategies, and never get complacent!
Analyzing Google Analytics will give you an idea of where to start testing pages. You want variety so always experiment with new approaches.
Keep learning how they work for particular industries or even audiences within each industry; find what works best for yours!
These principles will kickstart your 2021 journey into conversion rate optimization.