Page Contents
If you are an eCommerce owner or a marketer looking for a way to optimize your website conversion rates, you are in the right place. In this mega guide, we are going to slice and dice everything about Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and introduce you to the best methods to skyrocket your rates.
Persuading visitors to buy from you is as complicated as getting them on your site in the first place. But don’t worry. Conversion rate optimization tools are here to make your life easier. CRO is important because it helps you lure more revenue to your business with the visitors and users you already have.
If you are looking for a service to improve your website’s conversion rates and generate more leads, customers, and sales, you should give WatchThemLive a try. This all-in-one CRO tool provides you with a set of different features such as heatmaps, session recording, analytic dashboard, live chat, etc. And it has a FREEMIUM plan!!!
You can sign up for WatchThemLive with just a few clicks (no credit card is required):
Let’s delve deeper to find out what CRO is and how to optimize your conversion rate:
What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
It’s the process of turning your visitors into customers. Conversion Rate Optimization increases the number of visitors who do what you expect from them. Here are some examples of the most desirable tasks you might expect from the visitors:
- Buying a product/service,
- Making a donation,
- Filling out a form with contact details,
- Website signup,
- Subscribing to your newsletter,
- Contacting your business (e.g. a phone call),
- Clicking on a button (e.g. add to cart).
In other words, CRO is a data-based decision-making process that compels visitors to do your favorable action. It eliminates the guesswork and is based on real users’ behaviors and data.
In a customer-centric approach, CRO is the process of understanding what motivates and convinces users to do a favorable action. So, it includes improving the user experience which eventually leads to persuading visitors to convert.
What Are Conversion Rate Types
Here are two different types of conversions that you deal with during the website conversion rate optimization process:
Macro Conversion
Macro conversions are closer to the end of the conversion funnel. They are the primary goals in CRO and include performing a checkout or placing an order. Usually, CRO’s overall strategy is focused on macro conversions.
For instance, an eCommerce macro conversion is when a user makes a purchase. And a consultation agency’s macro conversion goal is when someone books an appointment.
However, it’s almost impossible to get people to click on your signup button or call you so out of the blue. I have never clicked on a button just because they told me to, and I am sure neither have you.
This is where micro-conversion comes into play and smoothens the conversion process.
Micro Conversion
Simply put, micro conversions are baby steps toward macro conversions. They are the necessary steps in buyers’ journey and create trust between the brand and the user.
A micro conversion is each of the smaller conversion goals that visitors complete on your website. They are like milestones toward the macro conversion goal and help you reach your primary goal.
Most of the time, micro conversions result in lead generation. For example, a user might find your blog useful and sign up for the email newsletter of your website to get more blogs like this.
This interaction doesn’t result in a purchase. But, there is a much higher chance that the user frequently visits your website and finally decides to buy from you. They might even introduce you to others and turn into a brand ambassador.
So, the main point of micro conversion is paving the way for macro conversions. And a high converting website results from paying sufficient attention to both of these conversion types.
Recommended article: Micro conversion Vs. macro conversion
Why Should You Include CRO in Your Digital Marketing Plan
CRO has so many benefits. It is the practice of optimizing your website to increase conversions from visitors to customers. Conversion optimization directly increases customer engagement which enhances user experience and brings more sales and revenue.
Instead of increasing the number of visitors, CRO focuses on current users which makes it a much more affordable solution to improve your ROI. Optimizing conversion rates is crucial for overall marketing success. The main benefits of CRO for digital marketing include:
1. CRO Complements SEO
SEO and CRO should always go hand in hand. Why? Because these two optimization techniques have a complementary relationship and the combination of them escalates your conversions and sales significantly.
Search engine optimization brings people to your marketing funnel. In fact, with SEO, you can keep your website at the top of SERP, which increases brand visibility and get people to click on your website.
After grabbing people’s attention, it’s time to keep them engaged and move them toward the bottom of the sales funnel. That’s where CRO comes into play. After all, what is the point of attracting people to your site if they don’t make a purchase?
So, if you only focus on SEO and neglect CRO, users are just gonna click on your URL without responding to your CTAs. And as simple as that, all your marketing efforts go down the drain. Therefore, using a sales funnel software helps you understand from which stage of the customer journey users are leaking so you can take immediate action and boost your CR.
2. CRO Improves Return on Investment (ROI)
CRO saves you money by lowering your cost-per-lead and increasing sales. Visitors who have a positive experience are more likely to become repeat purchasers, increasing the lifetime value KPI.
Imagine you are an eCommerce owner with 10,000 monthly visitors and an average conversion rate of 2%. At this conversion rate, you can close 200 deals each month which is not bad. Still, with a good conversion rate optimization strategy, you can double or even triple the number with the same amount of investment.
In this example, if you earn $10 per sale, you are going to get $2000 monthly. However, since running a website costs a lot, there won’t be much left for you. So, what should you do to increase your ROI?
Doubling your prices might be an option. However, it is definitely going to create dissatisfaction among your customers and they might abandon you for a more affordable product. Instead, you can go for improving conversion rates. CRO increases profit by getting more visitors to buy from you.
Recommended article: How to Calculate Conversion Rate
3. CRO Enhances the User Experience
Boosting website UX to increase conversions is everything CRO is all about. Does improving user experience lead to more conversion? YES! It does.
When customers easily navigate your website and enjoy their time on your platform, there is a higher chance that they decide to invest in you.
Sometimes, minor changes to your website design can significantly enhance customer satisfaction. One of the best methods to detect which areas of your web page require optimization is using heatmaps.
Heatmap tools are among the best solutions for website UI/UX optimization. A website heatmap visualizes how visitors interact with website pages so you can understand which areas work correctly and which areas require improvement.
If you wish to learn more about heatmaps keep reading this article.
4. CRO Improves Brand Awareness
Another benefit of conversion rate optimization is brand awareness. However, this one is more towards micro conversions that eventually might result in a macro conversion.
When users are more engaged with your eCommerce, there is a higher chance that they remember you whenever they want to buy something related to your brand. They might even spread the word about your brand to others.
So, for conversion improvement, it is not always necessary to get the users to click on the signup button. Even keeping them on your site for a few minutes longer and creating emotional connections with them can be considered a conversion goal.
Top 15 Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics and Practices to Boost Conversions
When it comes to increasing revenue, the importance of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is undeniable. It’s a practice that not only drives traffic but also helps ensure that those visitors actually take action and convert into leads or customers. To help you boost your conversions, here are the top 15 CRO tactics and practices for eCommerce:
1. User Session Recordings
One of the most powerful tools for optimizing conversion rates is user session recording services. They can help to identify areas of improvement and pinpoint usage patterns that can lead to more successful results.
By monitoring user behavior during website visits, you are provided with valuable insight into how to improve your web experience and maximize conversions.
User session recordings involve using a session replay software to track website visits, monitor user activity, and record data such as mouse movements and clicks. Later, you can watch these detailed video replays which allow you to gain an understanding of how users interact with your websites, what type of content they engage with the most, where they drop off, and more.
This information helps you make informed decisions on where improvements need to be made in order to drive conversions through optimized experiences tailored specifically for each user.
2. Heatmaps
Heatmaps are visual depictions of user behavior on websites that provide valuable insights into how visitors interact with a page. By understanding where people click or don’t click, you can make tweaks and improvements to drive higher customer engagement.
With the right heatmap data, you can benefit from a better understanding of user activity on your website. You can start by analyzing patterns such as which links users are clicking on and which CTA buttons they’re avoiding.
This information helps you adjust product placement, layout, content style, and overall design for better performance. Additionally, you can use heatmaps to detect any issues like slow-loading pages or broken links that may be causing visitors to leave without converting. In the following, we’re going to introduce four types of heatmaps.
2.1. Simulation Heatmaps (Our Feature)
Heatmaps are created using advanced analytics technology that tracks every action taken by users on a webpage, including mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, and more. The data collected is then organized in layers and shapes representing different datasets like clicks or views for each page element such as images or text boxes.
This helps you identify where people are clicking most often (or not at all) so you can adjust the design accordingly.
2.2. Mouse Heatmaps
Mouse Heatmaps are a powerful tool used in website design and usability testing. They provide web designers with important insights into how users interact with their design elements, by tracking the movement of the computer mouse. By understanding where people click on a page, and what paths they take to get there, it’s possible to identify inefficient navigation flows or confusing design elements.
2.3. Click Heatmaps
With the help of click heatmaps, you can understand where users click on a given page. So, you can identify navigation patterns, pinpoint user frustration points, and uncover areas of untapped potential.
2.4. Scroll Heatmaps
Scroll heatmaps give you helpful insights into scrolling behavior. This includes how deep into a website they scroll, how quickly their mouse moves around the page, and where they tend to pause or linger while browsing.
3. Custom Goals
If you’re looking for a way to measure your marketing performance and identify what works best for your target audience, custom goals are your solution. Creating goals enables you to better track how successful your campaigns are and measure customer engagement with certain elements of your website or product offering such as time spent on each page or number of items added to the cart. This will allow you to refine your approach and optimize user experience accordingly.
4. A/B Testing
Running A/B tests allows you to discover which content, images, and offers are more successful at converting visitors into leads or customers.
When it comes to optimizing your website for conversions, A/B testing is essential. It allows you to test variations of a page or campaign against one another and compare the results based on user activity.
This way, you can determine which variation performs better by measuring metrics such as impressions, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rate, and bounce rate. You can also evaluate how each variation affects overall customer engagement with the site, and potentially uncover opportunities for improvement that were previously unknown.
5. Tailored Landing Pages
Tailored landing pages are essential to the success of any digital marketing campaign. Landing pages can be used to drive conversions, increase brand visibility, and ultimately generate more sales.
With tailored landing pages, you can create powerful, targeted messages that will help you reach your target audience more effectively. Also, it allows you to personalize content based on visitor preferences and behaviors, creating a unique personalized customer experience for each user. This ensures that visitors are exposed to relevant information which has been specifically designed for them – increasing the chances of conversion.
Creating tailored landing pages also offers you the opportunity to showcase your product or service in greater detail than is possible with traditional advertising methods such as banner ads or email campaigns. This type of landing page optimization usually requires landing page optimization tools.
6. Gated Content
Have you ever entered a website and after reading the introduction form popped up and asked you to enter your mail if you wish to read the rest of the article? You might find it annoying, but this is another way to increase your conversion rate optimization. Using gated content allows you to find new leads for your business and keep existing customers engaged.
When creating gated content, it’s important to consider what type of information you want from the users who are accessing it. Depending on your business and marketing goals, you may want users to provide their email addresses in exchange for a valuable resource such as an ebook or white paper. This will help you build a list of potential leads that you can then nurture through targeted emails.
7. Call to Actions
Using proper call-to-actions (CTAs) can successfully enhance your conversion rate optimization. How? They should encourage customers to take specific actions, such as signing up for an email list or buying a product.
When creating a CTA, it is important to ensure its language is straightforward and convincing in order to elicit the desired response from customers.
Moreover, making sure the CTA stands out visually on any page or advertisement will help draw attention from visitors and make them more likely to click on it.
8. Form Subscriptions
Form subscriptions enable you to collect customer information such as contact details and purchase history that is essential for any business. This data can then be used to create targeted campaigns that will appeal directly to the customer’s needs and interests.
Furthermore, regularly providing customers with updates on promotions or new products can help you increase repeat purchases and loyalty.
Analyzing form subscription data gives you insight into customers’ behavior which helps you deliver a personalized user experience and increase the chance of converting.
9. Social Proof
As one of the best tactics for boosting conversion rates, by demonstrating that other customers have found value in your product or service, you can create an environment where customers feel more confident about their decisions. This builds trust and creates a sense of belonging for potential customers, making it easier for them to make buying decisions when they see others having success with your business. So, you can easily increase brand awareness and recognition, which helps further improve conversions down the road.
10. Trust Signals
Trust signals are an essential part of any good sales pitch, and they can help you significantly increase your conversions. A trust signal is defined as a sign or symbol that communicates to customers that they can trust the product or service being offered. They provide buyers with assurance that their purchase is safe, secure, and worthwhile.
They come in many different forms, such as customer reviews, product guarantees, third-party certifications, money-back guarantees, and endorsements from industry experts. Each of these signals help to create a strong sense of confidence in customers so that they feel comfortable making a purchase.
By presenting customers with this information upfront, you are more likely to be successful in converting them into paying customers. Additionally, including visuals like logos or badges will also serve as helpful trust indicators for prospects.
11. Live Feedback
Live feedback works by allowing customers to leave real-time comments on your website or social media pages, giving you immediate insights into how visitors perceive your services and products. Live chat apps create direct channels between your support team and the customers, which makes conversations flow effortlessly.
By taking these conversations seriously and responding effectively, you can use live feedback to identify areas of improvement, increase customer loyalty and boost your conversion rate optimization.
After learning about CRO tactics, it’s time to take a look at some simple, but important tips from digital marketing professionals.
Top 7 CRO Tips from Industry Experts
Planning for CRO is like planting a tree; so you shouldn’t be expecting an immediate response. But when the time comes, the fruit is going to be sweet and tasteful!
This is the first and most important tip about website optimization that you should always keep in mind. But if you want to learn more about CRO hacks and tips from experts, you are in the right place. Here is a list of seven hand-picked conversion rate optimization tips for you.
Tip #1: Use social proof to build trust between shoppers and your brand.
95% of online customers read online reviews before making a purchase. This statistic shows how important social proof can be in improving conversion rates. People are not going to spend money on a website they don’t trust. So, pay more attention to online reviews, surveys, video testimonials, and Influencer endorsements. They’ll directly affect customers’ judgments.
Lilliana Miller, CRO & UX Specialist at Underwaterpistol
Tip #2: Don’t forget about human-to-human connection and personalization.
Since it’s much cheaper to use an AI instead of a human agent for communicating with the customers, lots of brands are shifting towards marketing automation tools. But, bots are not as clever as humans and they can’t make interesting conversations. So, instead of using AI, you can communicate with your customers through a human agent to make your customers feel heard.
Having dedicated customer support that deeply cares about customers’ needs and constantly tries to provide them with the best answers, is one of the best CRO strategies available. You can turn one-time buyers into recurring customers if you make them feel connected to you.
Claire Vignon Keser, Director of Optimization Strategy, Wider Funnel
Tip #3: Tools will seldom give you the answer, use your brain and your experience
CRO solutions and other website analytics tools mostly show you where the problem is, but they can’t tell why such a problem has occurred. So, after generating the primary data, you have to use your brain and experience to piece the information together.
Once you know the why, it’s much easier to plug the leak and make a difference. But once again, you need a human brain to come up with the right solutions. So, to maximize conversion rate optimization, also seek help from experienced people, not just CRO tools.
Steve Daar, Chief Profit Hacker, Conversion for Good
Tip #4: Try to have one main CTA per page
Kaitlyn Fostey, Director of E-commerce at Levitate Foundry, always gives amazing CRO-related tips on her LinkedIn account.
She believes online retailers should make decision-making easy for their users. Giving too many options or links on a web page is confusing. So, always follow one goal one page rule and keep your web page as neat as a pin. This will definitely increase the chance of conversion.
Tip #5: Send open-ended surveys to your recent customers and ask them why they decided to buy from you
You are optimizing your website to get people to buy your product. Therefore, if they are converting, it means your efforts are paying off. So, ask customers what made them pull the trigger and buy from you. Then, highlight the most popular elements in your website optimization.
Lorenzo Carreri, Experimentation Consultant.
One of the best tools for on-page surveys and testimonials is WatchThemLives video testimonials. This service enables you to create personalized pop-up questions and ask specified customers whatever you need to know.
Along with video testimonials, WatchThemLive offers lots of other CRO tools such as heat maps, session recordings, goal tracking, and deep analytics. The best news about this all-in-one CRO tool is that it’s totally free!!! You can sign up for free and see for yourself.
Tip #6: Simplify the checkout process by providing guest checkouts
Shopping cart abandonment is one of the main reasons for low conversion rates. It’s a nightmare for online retailers. So, if you have high cart abandonment rates, you need to take immediate action.
One of the best strategies to reduce cart abandonment is through designing a simple user-friendly checkout page design by providing guest checkouts. Getting customers to signup on your site is very beneficial for you. But, users don’t want to waste their time filling out unnecessary fields on an eCommerce site. So, keep your website checkout process short and simple.
David Shaw, Author of ‘How To Use Psychology To Boost Conversion Rates’
Tip #7: Excite your customers
This is probably the simplest and one of the most effective CRO hacks ever. One of the best methods to create excitement among your users is showing off the end result of your product. Show them the benefits of your service and what is waiting for them if they give you a chance.
In addition, offering discounts creates positive moments and gives customers the incentive to complete purchases right at the moment. After all, who doesn’t like saving up a few dollars?
Moreover, if you are selling goods through your website, you can offer limited-time free shipping and put customers in a hurry to buy from you.
Will Laurenson, Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant, Customers Who Click
Popular Terms Used in CRO
Expanding your CRO vocabulary helps you understand the subject better and easily express the problems. Here, we’ll offer a handy conversion rate optimization glossary with the most popular terms that are frequently used by experts. But if you like to learn every concept related to digital marketing, check this complete digital marketing glossary out.
A/B Testing
A simple CRO method that helps webmasters to eliminate guesswork. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a user experience methodology that consists of experimenting on two versions of the same variable in a randomized test to measure which one performs better.
In the case of eCommerce, the form and color of the CTA button are always one of the objectives of AB testing. The UX designers might design two buttons in different colors, shapes, or locations, and run an A/B test to measure which one results in more conversion.
Above the Fold
It refers to the top of the webpage that’ll be visible to users when the page is loaded. Since the first impression users get from your website is through this area, above the fold is the most important part of your webpage. So, designing a simple and interesting above the fold area can massively decrease the bounce rate of your website.
Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting is one of the broadly used techniques in online advertisements and publishes that uses visitors’ browsing habits to create targeted campaigns and improve conversions. This technique helps you produce highly personalized content and tailor your message to the audience.
Bounce Rate
As one of the broadly used terms in the digital marketing industry, bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors that land on your webpage and leave without taking any action. Having a good bounce rate shows that your web pages are performing as they have to.
Call to Action (CTA)
You can find no CRO glossary without CTA in it. Call to action is a marketing term that refers to a specific action a marketer wants their visitors to take, whether it’s clicking on a signup button, filling out a form, downloading a file, social sharing, etc. CTAs should be written in exciting and persuasive language to encourage the website visitors to take the action. It can be in the form of a button or a persuasive copy. Usually, there is a CTA on every landing page inviting visitors to a micro or macro conversion goal.
Landing Page
The landing pages are the most important pages of your website. It’s because they are the most visited and sometimes the only visited web page of your site. So, it makes sense to spend some time designing a winning landing page layout. The more effective your landing page, the more leads you would capture.
Landing pages can work as a conversion machine or as a bouncy trampoline. It means that a great landing page layout increases conversion rate and a poorly designed one increases the bounce rate. When you finish designing it, testing your landing page can ensure it works in your favor.
Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is a map of all the potential steps users are going to take during the customer journey. Designing a smooth sales funnel has a magnificent effect on your conversion rates.
There are many different sales funnel tools in the market and lots of them are free. You can sign up for one of them and start optimizing your website’s conversion rates. We suggest WatchThemLive as the best sales funnel and CRO tool in the market. Because it’s free and provides you with everything to skyrocket your sales. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.
Usability Testing
Usability testing is a user-centered method of evaluating a website or tool’s performance. Typically, during usability testing, the researchers ask a group of participants to complete a set of tasks on the website or application while they are observing and measuring every movement
If you wish to learn more about usability testing and best tools for running it, check this article: Top 10 Free Usability Testing Tools in 2023
Conversion Rate Benchmarks Across Industries in 2023
Knowing the current conversion rate benchmarks across industries can help companies make informed decisions about how to achieve success.
According to statistics, conversion rates vary greatly based on industry, and understanding these benchmarks can be extremely helpful when creating marketing plans and campaigns that focus on high-performing segments.
10 Best Conversion Rate Optimization Platforms and Software in 2023
In 2023, there are numerous CRO platforms and software available on the market. Many of these offer a wide range of features designed to help you boost your conversions in a cost-efficient way. From A/B testing tools to multivariate analysis and personalization capabilities, each platform provides its own unique set of advantages when it comes to improving website performance. Below, we’re going to explain more.
WatchThemLive: Best Overall CRO Tool
WatchThemLive is an all-in-one CRO tool that enables you to track and analyze qualitative and quantitative data. It helps you analyze your website and users’ behaviors to enhance your UX design and conversion rate.
Let’s find out how WatchThemLive helps you with conversion rate optimization.
WatchThemLive Features
As a user behavior tracking tool, WatchThemLive offers the following features:
Session Replays
To get a better idea of how users interact with your website, you can employ session replays or session recordings. Session replays are CRO tools in video format that you can watch and detect roadblocks in your conversion funnel. So, they can help you fix issues and boost the conversion rate.
Analytics
As mentioned earlier, conversion rate optimization is a data-based solution. Web analytics provide the quantitative data that CRO needs to operate. Data like page views, conversion rate, bounce rate, exit rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, etc. can be extracted from analytics.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are analytical tools that provide qualitative data necessary for the CRO process. These are the visual representation of user data, highlighting the areas that attract most of the users’ attention.
In addition, WatchThemLive offers other features such as goal tracking, visual live chat, video testimonials, and console recording.
You can enjoy all of these features in WatchThemLive’s free plan. However, if you have a high traffic website that requires more agents and sessions, you can upgrade to larger plans.
WatchThemLive Pricing & Plans
- Free Plan: ✅
- Individual Silver: $29/mo,
- Individual Gold: $49/mo,
- Team Silver: $69/mo,
- Team Gold: $99/mo.
WatchThemLive can single handedly manage all your CRO and UX optimization planning. And the best thing about this tool is that you can try everything for free before dividing to signup for its paid plans.
So, what are you waiting for? Are you ready to start your journey toward a better conversion rate?
Since we are trying to keep this conversion rate optimization guide neat and tidy, for the list of the best CRO tools in 2023, click on the link in the introduction.
Best Conversion Rate Optimization Agencies in 2023
With advances in technology and the ever-increasing demand for digital marketing solutions, the best CRO agencies are more important than ever. To help you find the right partner for your business, we’ve compiled a list of the top CRO agencies that will be leading the industry in 2023.
These agencies are known for their expertise in using advanced analytics and innovative strategies to deliver higher ROI and improved customer experiences. From AI-driven optimization services to personalization strategies, they offer a variety of services designed to help you get the most out of your marketing campaigns.
CRO agencies help you track the most important metrics of your website. Keep reading to find out some crucial website metrics that directly affect your conversion rate.
8 Core CRO Metrics to Track
In order to measure the success of your marketing strategies, different metrics and KPIs should be tracked and analyzed. Conversion rate optimization includes multiple factors, but there are specific elements that affect it greatly.
Understanding the effects of these elements on website UX is important in a successful CRO process. Therefore, we are going to discuss eight of the most important CRO metrics to help you determine your marketing performance here.
1. Page Speed
One of the most important e-commerce website metrics to measure is page speed. It has a direct effect on customers’ satisfaction and conversion rates to the extent that reducing page load time to 1 second can optimize your conversion rates 3X higher.
So, regardless of what o ther tests and improvements you have planned, test the speed of your website and landing pages. Make it a priority to fix any issues that make your page load speed slow.
Your hosting provider has a great role in your website’s page speed. It means that optimizing your picture sizes and website caching can help. But, your load times will still suffer from slow and out-of-date hosting.
Simply, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to find out your website page load speed and where it needs improvement.
2. Content
Even if you have the best product or service, your customers need you to communicate your unique selling proposition (USP). That’s when a catchy copy is required. A great copy simply communicates how a certain value remedies a specific problem your customers are dealing with.
Users’ perceived value has a great role in converting customers. Here’s how to write a persuasive and attractive copy:
- Easy-to-read headlines expressing the main value you offer in a few effective words,
- Clear subheadings explaining more about the features of product/service in support of the headline,
- Clarifying sentences that answer users’ potential questions about what you explained in heading and subheading.
3. Win Rate
By measuring win rate a CRO agency can track how well the sales team is performing and whether any optimization is required. Usually, a win rate above 50% is promising. You can calculate the win ratio through dividing the number of sales to the total number of sales opportunities.
4. Cost Per Click
CPC is one of the most crucial CRO KPIs that calculates how much you have to spend on ads to bring visitors to your website. If you spend too much on marketing but have a low conversion rate, you won’t make a lot of money. It’s obvious that in this situation, your CRO strategy is not paying off and you need to make some changes to turn the table.
5. Click and Scroll Depth Analysis
These two metrics help you measure the quality of the content on your website. One of the main objectives of CRO is to increase user engagement to keep them on your website and eventually get them to convert. And analyzing users’ click and scroll depth shows you how engaging your contents are. You can even use this information to improve your website UX design.
6. CTA Conversion
CTA conversion metrics show how many visitors are hooked to your website. If the number of clicks on your CTA button is not heartwarming, using a click map along with a session recording tool helps you detect the problem.
7. Returning Users
Those visitors who have been on your website more than once are considered returning visitors. These visitors are among the most valuable assets of e-commerce and increasing their number equals a better conversion rate.
8. Website Navigation
Your landing page is the last place to showcase your creativity in web design. The role of a website’s navigation helping people go through the different areas on your website. So, for a better conversion rate, you need to have simple website navigation.
Help visitors find what they came for in the first place with minimal effort on their side. This is a practical way to boost conversion and also increase the duration of visitor sessions.
Generally, keep in mind that your website design or redesign shouldn’t confuse new and returning visitors.
CRO Checklist for eCommerce Owners
This CRO checklist will help eCommerce owners ensure they have considered all elements that contribute to an optimized website. It covers everything from content optimization, usability testing and targeting segmentation to A/B testing, tracking and analytics. Each element should be thoroughly analyzed in order to identify areas where improvement can be made and maximize conversion rates.
If you are an eCommerce owner, use this CRO checklist for covering every aspect of your website during conversion rate optimization planning.
How To Optimize Your Conversion Rate In 6 Easy Steps
As you already know, CRO is a must for any online business and can revolutionize its sales and revenue. And the good news is that it’s very easy to implement. By following these simple yet essential steps you can benefit from the unlimited power of CRO:
Step 1 – Know Who you Are Dealing with
Conversion rate optimization begins with identifying your potential visitors and knowing them very well. You should know who they are (demographics), what they are interested in, and what they care about most. Also, you can segment your potential visitors based on users’ psychographic data.
Step 2 – Study Visitor Behavior
Analyze how your users behave on your website. Because research is the baseline for everything. The idea here is to learn what visitors are doing and why so that you can create a better, more converting experience.
As you collect more data, you’ll see patterns and similarities. For example, if 70% of visitors exit from a specific page, that’s a sign you should pay attention to. Otherwise, if most of your visitors convert after visiting your pricing page, you’ve done a great job.
Step 3 – Analyze your Website
Investigate different pages and areas of your website to find your UX design strengths and weaknesses. Then, based on your conversion funnel, you will know where to focus on to make the biggest impact on conversion.
You can find the best analysis tools for CRO in the next section of this article.
Step 4 – Fix Obvious Issues
Prioritizing problems helps you improve your conversion rate faster.
After detecting the weaknesses and problematic pages on your website, it’s time to prioritize them. Fix the most urgent and obvious issues first. For instance, you may detect a bug, on customers’ path to the conversion, that’s causing 10% of traffic to leave. So, by addressing the issue and fixing the bug you get 10% more conversions instantly!
Step 5 – Create Hypothesis
For issues that need more in-depth analysis, you can create a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a three-part statement that can assist you in testing your ideas within a certain time frame. These three sections include:
- A particular change depending on the findings of your analysis.
- It will affect and raise the conversion rate by X percent.
- Based on the logic that you assume will result in the desired outcome.
For example, you can define a hypothesis like this:
‘I believe making the add to cart button bigger will increase purchases by 20% as it becomes easier to spot.’
You can follow a similar structure to create your own hypotheses.
Step 6 – Test Hypothesis
Now that you’ve created a hypothesis, it’s time to test it using CRO testing methods such as A/B and multivariate testing. For the above example, you can run an A/B test to validate your idea.
For the example hypothesis:
1- You make a version (B) of your product page with a bigger add to cart button.
2- Then, you show it to 50% of the traffic leading to that page.
3- You do it for a prespecified time limit and until a sufficient number of user data is evaluated.
4- At the end, you compare the results with the 50% of traffic seeing the old version (A).
So, you can decide if your hypothesis came true or not. If not, you can think of other reasons for a specific failure on your website.
While A/B testing can validate simple hypotheses, multivariate testing or MVT is capable of tests with higher complexities.
Even though this process seems lengthy and laborious, it’s much simpler than you think. With this conversion rate optimization guide your job will be much simpler. In the next section we answered a few questions to give you more information about this subject.
Conversion Rate Optimization Guide FAQs
No matter how complete a guide is, there are always some areas that might be left unchecked. Therefore, we’ll answer some of the frequently asked questions people also asked about CRO.
Q1. Why Is CRO a Game Changer?
Many business owners and marketers underestimate the importance of conversion rate optimization. However, CRO has the most significant role in any online business marketing strategy.
Simply put, you don’t necessarily need to double your traffic or increase your prices to earn more revenue. Using easy-to-implement CRO strategies, you can increase sales and affect your company’s bottom line.
CRO provides you with an advantage over your competitors. Customers will choose you over your competition if you provide a better experience and a simpler path to buying. Employing CRO usually results in a breakthrough for small and medium companies, transforming them into large companies.
This transition can also help you get more organic and advertising traffic. So, you can outperform your competitors in both traffic and conversion.
Q2. What Is a Good Conversion Rate?
There’s no one-size-fits-all rate for conversion, which means you should check your industry-standard conversion rate. Also, the conversion rates of B2B and B2C companies in the same industry can vary. With that being said, generally, a conversion rate between 2-5% is good.
Q3. What Is a CRO Strategy?
A CRO strategy is a technique helping businesses increase their conversion rate by testing website UX improvement ideas. It’s a low-cost revenue-boosting strategy that any online business can benefit from.
Q4. What Is the Purpose of CRO?
The conversion rate optimization efforts are aimed at increasing the chance that visitors complete micro or macro conversion goals.
Q5. How Do I Increase the Conversion of My CTA Button?
Websites can contain a variety of CTAs, as they must cater to a wide range of client needs. But, in order to increase the conversion of a CTA button, landing pages should focus on only one CTA. This keeps people from becoming distracted by too many options. There are just two options for them: convert or leave (and you do everything so they choose the first one).
The Wrap
Learning about conversion rate optimization is a must for every online business. CRO helps them increase their sales and bring more revenue with minimal cost. So, we tried to explain everything about this matter here and introduced you to some of the best CRO tools along the way.
Our favorite choice for conversion rate optimization is WatchThemLive. It’s a feature-reach platform that comes with a free plan and has a user-friendly environment. You can learn more about this tool on WatchThemLive’s Shopify page.
