Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) & how to get more sales from the same traffic

Increasing website traffic is important, but these marketing strategies can take a lot of time and effort, and there may be an upper limit of how many people you can reach. That's why it's also important to focus on the traffic you already have and getting more value out of your website visits.

This is achieved through conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

What is CRO?

The conversion rate of a website, landing page or individual offers is the percentage of people who view the page and proceed to complete a transaction. To use the analogy of a brick-and-mortar store, your website visitors are people who browse without spending any money, while conversions are customers who complete a sale.

The higher the conversion rate, the more successful your content is at persuading users to make a purchase and the better your marketing ROI. According to WordStream, the average conversion rate of a website is around 2.35%, but more successful websites have rates 3 to 5 times greater through good optimisation.

CRO involves evaluating your website and your audience, identifying areas where you can improve and implementing the changes that will turn more browsers into customers.

How important is CRO?

All businesses can benefit from improving the quality of their content and their traffic to encourage more people to convert. Combined with a good content strategy, CRO will help your pages and your offers to reach their full potential.

Even a seemingly minor increase in CRO can have a big difference on real sales. If you can improve a struggling website from 1% to 2% CRO, you've already doubled the number of people transacting on your site. While half of these people may have completed transactions before, the other half were persuaded by the improvements you made.

More benefits of CRO

As well as getting you more customers, CRO strategies can benefit your business in other ways, such as:

• Improving marketing ROI – better understanding of your target audiences will help you to tailor campaigns to their interests and get more from your marketing spend.
• Improving SEO – user experience is a ranking factor for search engines. When more of your visitors convert, this reflects well on your website and could see you climb the ranks.
• Saving money – with better CRO, you won't have to spend more on marketing to meet your sales targets as the cost per acquisition will be lower.
• Growing your brand – growing your website traffic only works up to a point before growth slows down or plateaus. CRO builds on your existing traffic and can grow your brand's reputation.

How to improve your conversion rate

There are more ways to optimise your conversion rate than listed here, but this should give you ideas for how to get started. CRO strategies aim to make your offers more enticing and to remove the barriers to making a sale.

Keep in mind that conversions aren't always about making sales. Depending on the purpose of your page, your conversion goals may be for users to request a quote, register an account, sign up to a mailing list or take other actions.

Website conversions

• Good website design makes it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for and to complete transactions.
• Improving page loading times and server issues also enhances the user experience and reduces bounce rates (people exiting your site).
• Chatbots can answer common questions to help solve visitors' problems without leaving the page.
• Sign-up forms should be simplified so there are fewer steps for the user to take.
• Your website needs to be optimised for mobile users.

eCommerce conversions

• Optimise your ecommerce website with clear navigation, persuasive product descriptions and high quality images.
• Give customers more flexibility with several price options and payment gateways to choose from.
• Streamline the checkout process to complete transactions as quickly as possible.
• Offer free shipping or other incentives.
• Send abandoned cart reminders to encourage users to return and complete their purchase.

Content marketing

• Strong headlines for blog posts and other marketing content can increase conversions by 30%, according to HubSpot.
• Include a clear call to action (CTA) on every post to tell the reader what to do next.
• Encourage newsletter sign-ups by offering a free ebook or other exclusive content in a banner or pop-up.
• Updating or improving your best-performing blog posts can have a bigger impact on conversions than publishing new content.

Landing pages

• Landing pages are one of the best tools to increase conversion rates. They should be customised for different offers and audiences.
• Adding a video to a landing page can increase conversions by 86%, according to HubSpot.
• Long landing pages can be more successful for certain types of offers, but this varies case by case.
• Test different landing pages with the same offer to see which is the most successful for your campaign.

Retargeting

• Existing customers are valuable leads. Keep them informed of your latest promotions or offer exclusive discounts for a high chance of conversions.
• Use retargeting tags on your website and social media to deliver marketing messages to the right people at the right time.
• Personalise ads and pop-ups to users' interests for a higher conversion rate.

How do I know what to optimise?

Just like other digital marketing strategies, your CRO strategy should be informed by research rather than guesswork to deliver the results you want. What works for a different company won't necessarily work for your business and your target audiences. That's why your decisions should be based on data.

There are different ways to gather data on your target customers, their habits and their preferences. These include:

• Analytics tools such as Google Analytics that show you how people use your website
• Results from A/B testing of different ads and content
• Feedback from customer surveys

You can also leave it to the experts. If you want some help improving your conversion rate and sales, call our digital marketing specialists in Perth on 9443 2221 or get a quote to find out how iST Digital can help your business.