The majority of marketing teams are tasked with driving high-quality website traffic, which is then converted into leads that sales teams work hard to close. As this process starts to yield tangible results, marketing teams will strategise to deliver additional traffic that can be leveraged to even greater success to improve your CRO (Conversion rate optimisation).
This is clearly a simplified overview of the standard marketing process, however, it is clear that relatively few marketing teams are focusing on generating additional success from existing traffic. This is precisely the context in which conversion rate optimisation (CRO) becomes important. Many guides to conversion rate optimisation are highly complex, which is why we have put together this user-friendly article designed to give you an overview as to the benefits that an effective approach to CRO can deliver for your business.
What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
Put simply, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a term used to refer to the process of encouraging site visitors to complete a particular action. Businesses can increase the likelihood of their visitors converting into a lead or paying customer by carefully modifying specific aspects on a webpage.
Clearly, a significant percentage of websites are already deliberately designed to convert visitors into customers and these conversions can happen everywhere from a site’s homepage to dedicated landing pages, blog content and pricing pages. Importantly, however, through CRO, there is the potential to further optimise each of these areas in order to deliver additional conversions.
Boosting your conversion rate can generate significant results for your business. Let’s imagine for a moment that your site is attracting 10,000 visitors each month. From those 10,000 visits, you are securing 100 leads and 10 customers. This would give you a 1% conversion rate. If your business wanted to secure 20 customers each month, you could attempt to double your traffic and hope that you don’t see a decline in its quality, or you could optimise your conversion rate and leverage additional leads from your existing 10,000 visitors.
What Does Effective CRO Look Like?
It is likely that a variety of individual pages on your website will benefit from conversion optimisation, so let’s take a closer look at a few of the prime candidates.
Your Homepage
Your homepage should, of course, make a positive first impression on your visitors, but it should also both encourage and guide them to explore other areas of your website. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including leveraging advanced chatbot technology and clearly emphasising product information links.
Your Blog
If you don’t view your blog as a prime opportunity to convert visits into leads and sales, now is the time to rethink your perception. In addition to being a resource through which you can share valuable, helpful and interesting content about your business and your industry, by integrating the right calls-to-action (CTAs), your blog can also help you to boost your conversion rate.
If you have been consistently blogging for a year or more, you will likely have a handful of posts that are actively outperforming others. Posts with high traffic and low conversion rates are going to be ideal candidates for CRO. Start by considering whether your CTA is clear and whether what you are promoting is clearly aligned with the content of that blog post. You will also find it valuable to identify posts generating high conversion rates from low levels of traffic and developing a strategy to drive additional qualified traffic to those pages.
Your Pricing Page
You will find many guides to conversion rate optimisation online and each one will tell you that many website visitors will view pricing pages as a critical make-or-break point. Effective CRO here often breaks down pricing intervals into yearly and monthly figures, ensures that all product features are highlighted and incorporates a phone number with a CTA encouraging visitors to get in touch for a personalised quote.
Landing Pages
Designed to encourage visitors to take a specific action, landing pages can be optimised in a variety of ways to drive meaningful results. If your landing page is there to promote a free resource, optimising that page with content that gives visitors a small preview as to what they can expect to learn and gain from downloading that resource will encourage additional engagement. Alternatively, if your landing page is promoting a specific event that you have also held before, integrating coverage from past events will likely encourage more visitors to register their details for more information or to secure their place.
Since your landing pages should form a core component of your marketing strategy, running A/B tests is imperative. This is an effective way to ensure that everything from your copy to your chosen imagery is encouraging your visitors to complete the action you want them to.
When Should I Invest in CRO?
Ideally, you should start considering CRO as soon as your website is consistently attracting traffic. Most businesses will experience a fixed level of demand for their services and/or products, which is why is it vital to maximise the value of your existing traffic to allow your sales team to convert those valuable visitors into leads.