Beginners Guide to conversion Rate optimization
Quick summary: Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the process of maximizing the value you get from every visitor you bring to your website.
You must have heard everything ends in marketing when you finally get the customer to convert or enter their wallet details. Yeah, it’s a win-win, everyone celebrates that sales close and wait for the next sales. But, what if you can increase the number of conversions you have on your website without increasing your company’s budget? That will be cool right.
That’s what CRO helps you do.
In this article, you are going to learn how conversion optimization works, how to implement it on your website, ecommerce store, website best practices and more.
Let’s get started:
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
According to Brian Massey from CXL institute, Conversion rate optimization is the process of maximizing the value you get from every visitor you bring to your website. To accomplish this, we use data to understand how changes to our website affects the behavior of visitors & measure conversion.
It describes a way of approaching your website in which you collect data to understand how changes to your website are going to impact your visitors and their willingness to signup, subscribe or buy from you.
To begin with, you should understand that making changes to your website isn’t all about swiping images, text, or videos for something your friend told you is working or will work.
It’s about following due process, creating a strategy that enables you test your assumptions, iterate and implement what’s working.
Managing meaningless ideas
As humans everyone has an idea of how things should go, how we should live our lives, run our business or even make changes to our website. Should we decide to follow every advice or implement every feedback we get, business, particularly our website will suffer a great deal.
Instead, it’s better to manage every idea in a way that aligns with your site optimization goals. Ever since I learnt about this, I use a list myself.
When someone asks me, have you tried this, do you see this, most people are doing this & many other things or even ideas from people who buy from me. Do you know what I do, I simply add them to my list so I can write a suitable hypothesis and also see if the idea passes my ICE test.
Writing Hypothesis:
A hypothesis is a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Think of it, how do you transform your idea in a specific way that it’s measurable.
Here’s to write one:
If I do something_______, I expect this ______________ to happen, as measured by __________,
Example:
If I change the headline text to ________ I expect more clicks as measured by the number of signups.
Now that you have written your hypothesis, you must pass it through the ICE test to see if it’s worth testing or going through with.
I — — — impact
C — — Confidence or proof
E — — Effort to test.
Find out more about the paradox of choice here.
To give your hypothesis more flesh, you need more insight that proves testing it isn’t just a waste of time and resources.
Here’s how to get more insight:
1. Google it (someone might already have such problem)
2. Existing research in the company or some research you did before.
3. Current user personas
4. Analytics
5. User testing through focused groups
6. Data from website heat maps
7. Site visitor’s feedback.
Come to think of it,
Why should you go through all this stress? Let’s find out why you need a conversion rate optimization process.
A good conversion rate optimization program will:
· Get more visitors to return
· Get more customers to buy again
· Tell you what you best visitors want & don’t want
· Help you understand the different kinds of visitors to your site.
· Get your customers to advocate your business
· Optimize revenue from your website current traffic
· Reduce and streamline cost.
The hallmark of CRO is reducing cost while optimizing revenue from your current traffic. Increasing traffic isn’t a real necessity when optimizing your conversion rate.
Conversion Rate Optimization Best practices.
There isn’t one straightforward way to optimize your website but there are some best practices you must follow if you want to get good results if you are working on your website or that of a client.
Let’s take a look at some best practices:
CRO Best Practice for Web Forms
· Start your form with the easiest form fields first. Forms are not all fun to fill, reason why you should put your best foot forward. You don’t not have to bore your site visitor with 50 form fields all because you want to make the best of a single visitor.
· To increase the quality of your leads, intentionally increase form friction: If you are selling high-ticket items or services that require a lot of back and forth, a good practice will be to increase the number of valuable questions.
Please note, if the questions aren’t needed, do not ask your visitors. Avoid optional forms.
· Include progress indicators on multi-step forms: filling a long form is boring. According to __________ % of users say they prefer multi-step form compared to long form fields. Including a progress bar along with your multi-step form works even better.
· Use trust badges especially when you’re asking for sensitive information. Let your visitors understand what the info will be used for so they can give it freely to you.
CRO Best practices for Ecommerce pages
· Please put more emphasis on the product rather than the number of products you have on display. The more the number of products a site visitor can see at once, the more difficult it will be to make a choice.
· Use product badges (eg “New!”, “best”, ``top selection”) to draw your user towards certain products. Be careful the way you use it. Too many badges can make your customers lose focus.
· Use filters and sorting totals to enhance your customer’s product selection. If you are a small stop, use a max of 3 filters.
· Ecommerce site visitors can’t try the product on or see how good it works. Use high quality, large product and product category photos especially if you are selling wearables.
· Allow users to checkout without registration or login into your store. It reduces friction and increases conversion rate. You can always offer account creation or login on the checkout page.
· Avoid using words your customer doesn’t understand. When writing your description, be careful not to place too much attention on features, instead stick with the benefits.
Point of Note
Put yourself in the shoes of your site visitors. All they want to do is find a product they like and purchase it. Don’t make a very hard and stressful thing for them.
It helps to narrow down visitor’s choices to the best performing product according to data or key metrics. So, you can sort products in ways that make sense.
When including a badge, note, it’s not some certificate of honour. You are only using it to make some certain product stand out from others. Image badges work better than text badges.
Badges only work when used sparingly on your website, else it will cause distraction and noise.
Furthermore, badges should be self-explanatory. If visitors cannot understand the meaning of your badge at first glance, it means you will be losing money down the line.
Some example of badges includes:
· Exclusive
· New
· 5star
· Top rated
· New arrival
· Best in class
To end this point, according to __________ of CXL institute, there are three things that help people decide whether they will buy from you or not.
1. Product photo: A high quality photo means better product in the eyes of your site visitors.
2. Name and description that’s specific to what you are selling
3. Price.
CRO Best practices for Buttons and Call to Actions.
· Your CTA buttons should be direct and clear
· Don’t stick with one CTA instead test several to see what works.
· Leave plenty of spaces around your CTA so nothing competes with it.
· Your CTA should tell customers what to expect. Avoid wording like signup, register and other random jargons instead use words that tell them what they stand to get. If you can’t seem to find the perfect CTA, simply use “CLICK HERE”. It works great.
A/B testing tools
You need tools to make the right decisions as CRO is all about testing to see what works.
Here’s some recommended tools:
1. AB Tasty
2. Adobe Target
3. Apptimize
4. Conductrics
5. Convert
6. Dynamic Yield
7. Evolv
8. Google Optimize
9. Intellimize
10. Kameleoon
Some of the above tools are paid and some are free. Their use depends on the goal you want to achieve and what you are testing for. Learn about these tools here.
Dealing with distractions.
It puts me off when clients ask for my service and enquire if they could also make money via display and banners ads on their website. Allowing banner ads on your website or product pages means you’re trading your profit for a few ad cent money.
As you optimize your website for conversion, you must avoid anything that does not contribute to the page.
Remove the following if it courses distraction:
· Cluttered sidebars
· Banners ads, google AdSense
· Unnecessary opt-ins
· Random clutter.
Evaluate every single element on your website. Place a value on every element by asking, does this or that help people find what they are looking for on my website or ecommerce store? If not, test the page without these elements.
Conclusion
There you go. You now understand how conversion rate optimization impacts your business, how it works in a nutshell and what to do to optimize your website, online forms and e-commerce store.
I will be glad to review your website and offer you some free advice when you book a call here.
