About 63% of companies lack a structured approach to conversion rate optimization (CRO). Meanwhile, 40% of marketers have a conversion rate of less than 0.5%.
Are you struggling to generate conversions on your website? You might want to consider conversion rate optimization. Conversion rate optimization can help you achieve your marketing goals and boost your business.
Keep reading for these answers and more! By learning more about CRO, you can develop a strategy that sets your business up for success. Then, you can improve your return on investment and grow!
Get started with this guide on conversion rate optimization today!
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
First, let's start with the basics. What is a conversion?
A conversion occurs when a website visitor completes a goal on your website. You can set different goals. For example, maybe you want people to fill out a form or subscribe to your email newsletter.
Perhaps you want to generate more online sales or have people schedule appointments from your website.
Here are a few examples of conversions:
- Purchasing a product on your website
- Subscribing to a service
- Requesting a quote
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Creating an account
- Adding a product to a cart
- Sharing content on social media
- Downloading an eBook or white paper
- Calling a phone number
Goals also come in different sizes. You can create opportunities for both macro- and micro-conversions on your website.
Macro-conversions are your primary goals, such as consumers buying from your online store. Micro-conversions are smaller. For example, someone can sign-up to receive your emails.
Conversion Rates
What is a conversion rate?
The conversion rate is the number of times someone completes a goal divided by your overall website traffic. For example, you can divide how many purchases you generate by the number of sessions on your site.
Here's how to calculate the conversion rate:
- Total transaction / total site visits x 100
Consumers don't always convert when they first visit your website. They might visit three times before they make a conversion.
Conversion Rate Optimization
What is conversion rate optimization, then?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a process that can increase the number of website visitors who complete a specific action. With CRO, you can improve your conversion rate.
The elements involved in conversion rate optimization include:
- Call-to-action (CTA) - which tells website visitors what to do next
- A/B testing - comparison testing that allows you to determine which tactics are most effective
- Conversion funnel - the steps a consumer takes on your site before completing a goal
- Multivariate testing (MVT) - a form of A/B testing that considers multiple variables at once
- User recordings - a tool that records visitor interactions on your website
- Usability - best practices for ensuring your website is user-friendly and friction-free
- Customer development - tools that help you better understand your customers
- Analytics - tools for measuring data, allowing you to make more informed decisions
Improving your conversion rate can improve your ROI.
5 Ways CRO Benefits SEOs
Now that we've answered the question "what is conversion rate optimization," let's discuss how it can benefit your business.
SEO helps businesses rank higher on Google. A higher ranking can help you generate more website traffic. As you generate more traffic, you can boost leads and conversions.
Your conversion rate will improve as a result.
CRO can benefit your SEO strategy. Here are five ways CRO benefits SEOs.
1. Match the Search Intent
How well do you know your customers? Google's machine learning now uses search intent to determine what search results to display. The search intent indicates what customers expect to find during a search.
For example, a transactional search intent indicates the consumer wants to make a purchase. A navigational intent means they're looking for directions.
You can use CRO to gather customer insights. As you learn more about your target audience, you can determine:
- The language they use in a search
- What messaging draws them in
- Which call-to-action language compels them to take action
You can use conversion rate optimization to determine what messaging works for your customers. Then, you can better respond to the consumer's search intent.
Responding to their search intent will help your search ranking rise. A higher ranking will position you in front of more people.
At the same time, you'll make sure your marketing message appeals to the right consumers. You can generate high-quality leads as a result.
2. Improve the User Experience
About 88% of online shoppers won't return to a website after a bad experience. In fact, 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer to load. Meanwhile, bad mobile optimization annoys almost 50% of users.
Another 44% of shoppers tell friends about bad online experiences.
Improving the user experience on your website could yield conversion rates of up to 400%. It can benefit your search engine ranking, too.
Unfortunately, fewer than 60% of businesses conduct user experience testing.
Google considers your bounce rate when determining your search engine ranking. If your clickthrough rate and dwell time drop, your bounce rate will rise. A higher bounce rate will lead to a lower search engine ranking.
The lower you rank, the less likely consumers will see your website.
Conversion rate optimization can help you improve the user experience. You can gather information about how people interact with your website. Then, you can determine which touchpoints require improvement.
Improving your website with the user experience in mind will encourage people to click around and explore. As they click and linger on your site, your clickthrough rate and dwell time will improve. Your bounce rate will decline as a result.
Then, you can rank higher on search engine pages and start reaching more customers.
Without conversion rate optimization, you might not recognize where your website requires improvements. For example, is there a problem with your links and buttons? Do your pages load quickly?
Where do people linger on your pages?
With this data, you can make more informed, results-driven changes in mind.
3. Boost Credibility and Trust
Consumers won't choose your business if they don't have a reason to trust you. CRO can impact how consumers perceive your brand. You can make a strong first impression with customers by improving their user experience.
They won't see a messy, slow, disorganized website. Instead, you can make changes to your website that establish your credibility.
Credibility and authority are important components of SEO. Google looks for content that demonstrates EAT:
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trustworthiness
You can reference your unique experience and expertise in your posts. Then, you can establish your authority by referencing studies and statistics. Backing up your claims can help brand trust grow.
You can further increase brand trust by posting customer reviews on your website.
Establishing EAT will boost your SEO ranking. It can also encourage consumers to trust you.
Does your website have an SSL certificate? If not, consumers might not make a purchase on your website. They could leave and choose one of your competitors instead.
Your bounce rate will rise as a result.
Instead, you can use CRO to show consumers you're reliable, trustworthy, and credible. They'll feel more comfortable sharing their payment details on your website.
Improving brand trust can help you build brand loyalty. You can retain long-term customers and improve your ROI.
4. Gather High-Quality Data
CRO focuses on discovering everything you need to know about your target audience. You can learn about their likes, dislikes, and online behaviors. Gathering this data is essential if you want to improve their user experience.
Answering the question "what is conversion rate optimization" is only the first step. Once you learn how to use CRO, you'll need to review the data you gather.
SEO will determine how people find and reach your website. CRO will tell you what people do on your website and why. You can use this information to develop a more informed digital strategy.
5. Higher ROI
Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results that display on the second page. If your search engine ranking is low, you might not reach customers. Instead, you can use CRO to boost your SEO ranking.
Improving your SEO ranking can help you generate more leads and conversions.
In fact, 60% of marketers say inbound strategies like SEO are their highest quality source of leads. SEO leads also have a 14.6% close rate.
CRO can help you improve the user experience. Visitors will feel more inclined to choose your business as a result. You can then generate more leads and conversions on your site.
As you generate leads and sales, your ROI will improve.
You can then draw in repeat customers, further improving your ROI.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Everything You Need to Know for Online Success
To recap, what is conversion rate optimization? CRO aims to improve your online conversion by offering the best experience for your visitors. You can use data to find opportunities and generate more conversions.
Your clickthrough rate and dwell time will rise, improving your SEO ranking. Then, you can draw in more traffic and generate more business.
As you generate more conversions, your ROI will improve.
Want to achieve online success? We can help.
