The end and beginning of each quarter is a prime time to refocus on the whole reason you’re setting up your business online in the first place – getting conversions. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to have the trendiest, most flashy online presence. But at the end of the day if you want to maximize the amount of visitors who purchase what you offer, you need to understand what CRO is and prioritize it as part of your digital strategy.
What is CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of taking everything that you’ve produced and making it even better. Sounds awesome because it is awesome.
Take a step back for a second and think this through. Conversion is when someone takes a designated desired action (most commonly a purchase) on a page. When we refer to actions, we’re talking about things like:
- Clicking a Button or Banner
- Opting in/Subscribing
- Clicking through a webpage
- Making a Purchase
Conversion rate is how we measure if and how many (conversion rate) of them are doing it. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is making adjustments to what you’ve produced with the intention of increasing the percentage of people who take action.
We think all the work you’ve produced so far is really freaking awesome. But at the end of the day we’re sure we can agree that we want to never stop pushing for the best possible results. CRO is your way to get those results.
Why is CRO Important for your Business?
We believe that last line summed that answer – CRO exists to bring you the best possible results. Think about what it would mean for your business if twice as many people were making purchases when they came to your website.
Three times as many?
FOUR TIMES AS MANY?!
Conversion is an area where even small numbers mean big results. The purpose of improving conversions goes beyond just financial gains. There are so many benefits you’ll see when you consistently optimize your digital presence.
Ways CRO Benefits your Business
Improves User Experience
Imagine going to the store and having to navigate a maze for more coffee beans. Imagine getting to the coffee bean section and finding fish sticks. Personally, we’d be long gone by then. Customers like things simple and easy, same goes for your personas.
Part of your CRO process should be thinking about what your user wants from your website and how you can steer them that way subtly and smoothly. Just like a grocery store has signs and layout for easy navigation, so should your website. This will keep people.
Ensure Cohesive Messaging
Your brand’s presence online should be something that you’re consistently monitoring and updating. CRO is your chance to evaluate how your brand is currently presenting itself online and make any changes to make sure it’s all cohesive.
We’re talking about tone, colors, headlines, you name it! We want everything about your brand to match up. This builds authority with your audience, and will show them that you’re an established company they can trust.
Reach Your Target Audience
CRO helps you identify and understand your target audience’s behavior and preferences. By analyzing user data and feedback, you can update your content and offers to meet the specific needs of your customers.
The more specific you can be, the stronger your connection to your audience will be. They want to see that what you have to offer is valuable to them. Utilizing CRO to build from what’s working to upgrading or changing things that aren’t will help you better articulate your value directly to them.
Data Driven Decisions
If you haven’t learned by now, data is your best friend. You need to use it, rely on it, and let it guide your decisions. Data gives you a clear picture of how people are interacting on your site. Where they’re clicking, how long they’re staying, and what drives them to either convert or leave.
Think about that for a second. You can see exactly what causes someone to leave and change it. With this insight, you have the power to consistently remove roadblocks for your visitors. You can create an engaging experience that will keep them coming back.
How to Create an Effective CRO Strategy
Alright, so now you know why CRO is important. Let’s talk about how to make it happen.
Unfortunately there’s no ‘one size fits all’ strategy that will work for every single business. We wish there was a template that existed that, when applied correctly, would transform your business.
The reality is that every company has different goals, audiences, and challenges. Your CRO process needs to be tailored to your specific needs. Start with a general company CRO strategy to create a simple CRO audit/checklist you want to implement for each campaign.
Let’s walk through some general steps to help you get a better idea of what an effective CRO strategy should entail:
1. Define Your Goals
Before you dive into tearing through your stuff, take a deep breath. It’s way easier to build a sturdy foundation as you go then spend time working on something that will just fall down later.
So, take a moment to breathe and think about exactly what you want to accomplish. Ask yourself questions like:
- What specific action do I want my audience to take?
- How do I articulate my value in a way that resonates with them?
- What are my audiences’ current online needs and behaviors?
- What are competitors doing to engage their audience?
- What do I want to accomplish?
The more specific you are about what you want to accomplish the easier it will be to measure and follow your progress. If you need more help setting specific S.M.A.R.T goals, check out this guide.
Moral of the story is to take a close look at where you are and then figure out exactly where you want to go.
2. Start with Entry Points
Generally, a good place to start optimizing is the entry point of your funnel. This could include emails, blog posts, social media posts, landing pages.
Whatever entry point it is, look and see how it’s performing. Your CRM or other software will have tools to show you how many people are opening your emails, clicking through, and generally how they are consuming your content.
You can use heat mapping and data to see different aspects that are causing your web visitors to bounce (leave). When you identify areas with numbers that could be improved, start brainstorming small adjustments to your entry points to make them even MORE enticing. You want these entry points to be big, shiny, and attractive to your audience.
CRO simply means going through them and cleaning them up when or where necessary.
3. Make Changes Based on Hard Data
Let’s make one thing clear – there is an endless list of things you can optimize. There are no “set” rules here. You can change headlines to blog content to pictures to signatures… ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING! However, we want to emphasize this, only change things when or where necessary.
You don’t want to just go to your site and completely just trash everything. Especially if it’s performing well! CRO is simply looking at the data, seeing what could be improved, and then making improvements.
Where to Monitor and Implement a CRO Strategy
- Home Page
- Landing Page
- Headlines
- CTA Button Colors and Labels
- Email Layouts
- Sales Page
- Blogs
- Forms
Again, the data you pay attention to will depend on the goals you have.
4. Optimize User Experience
You want to constantly be thinking about your target audience and how they would engage with a web page. Think about how they’ll engage on a computer vs their mobile device. What is going to catch their attention? You need to identify what will entice them to take action vs just scrolling through and bouncing.
It’s happened to all of us. We see a cool product, click on the link, and lose interest because of slow loading times or maybe the navigation is just confusing.
Whether they’re there for browsing, shopping, or looking for information, understanding user behavior and making continual improvements to their experience with your page will increase the number of conversions you get.
5. Test your CRO Strategies (Split Test)
Split Testing (A/B Testing) is one of our absolute favorite things about what we do here at Mintun Media.
If you’re unfamiliar with what split testing is, it’s simply just testing two versions of something and finding what performs better.
It could be the simplest little thing too. For example, you could test a yellow versus a blue CTA button. You could test different subject lines for your emails. Hell, you can test how a page performs with or without a picture in a specific place.
Utilize the analytics tools (Google analytics, CRMs, etc.)
Stay Focused on your Target Personas
In any process, campaign, really in anything, you should stay laser-focused on your personas. These are the people who you’ve identified as likely to engage with your brand. Understanding their needs, pain points, and behaviors lets you hone your website to resonate with them specifically.
If you give them exactly what they want, their interaction with your site will be more meaningful. They’ll be more likely to convert, driving higher conversions, and ultimately better business outcomes.
CRO is What Moves your Business Forward Online
In the crazy world of business, CRO is what will take you forward. The point of a website is not just to drive traffic there. You want the traffic that comes to actually do something. CRO is making the desired action for your customer clear and easy to take.
If you’re not making data-driven changes to improve, you’re missing out on potential growth. Don’t let this be you! Sit down, decide what you want to optimize, do it, and see how it performs. Continually do this and you’ll see your numbers improve!
If you’ve read through this and are feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it all, don’t stress. Mintun Media exists for that exact purpose. Click the link and schedule a time to sit down with us and we can go through your existing CRO process and talk about improvements.
