Conversion rate optimisation, sometimes known as website optimisation is the process of making changes to a website with the aim of increasing the number of visitors taking the desired action, known as conversions.
If you are using marketing channels to drive traffic to your website and your website isn’t optimised to convert, you are losing out on potential new customers or sales.
For example if your website is converting users at 1% and you are driving £100,000 worth of revenue per month and we made small tweaks to the website allowing your website to convert at 1.5% you have created an extra £50,000 per month without needing to drive extra traffic to the website.
There are many things that can affect your conversion rate, here are just a few of them…
By making changes to improve each of these areas, which in turn delivers a much better user experience on your site, you are increasing the likelihood of website visitors converting.
There may be a number of things that are preventing conversions from occurring on your website, and there are ways to identify if this is happening. For example if you are generating more traffic, but you aren’t seeing an increase in conversions, or if the analytics of your site show high exit or bounce rates.
Alternatively an e-commerce site could have a high basket abandonment rate, or the knowledge you have of your customer base doesn’t match up with what you are seeing in analytics or heat mapping software.
How to Approach CRO
The best way to tackle this and to make data driven changes in order to improve conversion rate, is to follow this 5 step CRO process.
Research
- Review all of the data you have access to (analytics, heat mapping)
- Look at what your competitors are doing (remember they might be getting it wrong so apply your knowledge and interpretations)
Plan
- Highlight areas of concern and make educated guesses about how the element / page can be improved
Run Test
- Run an A/B test, or split test a variant of a page
Recommendation – do one thing at a time, test, improve and move on to the next!
Analyse
- Review your test results and implement into your website
- It’s really important you give the tools a fair chance to collect data. Depending on traffic levels a rough guide would be between 4 weeks – 12 weeks
Repeat
- Start the process again, keeping a close eye on the websites metrics
Tools to use to drive your CRO changes
Using a range of analytical and data gathering tools to give you as much information as possible when making CRO changes will benefit your decision making and hopefully your results.
Heatmapping
Heat Mapping software allows you to see how your website is being used by visitors, what actions they are taking, where they spend the most time and where they click. It gives a visual representation of where site visitors pay the most attention and where gets ignored.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is a randomised experimentation process whereby two or more versions of something are tested. For example you could create two versions of a call to action button, such as different colours or text and see which one generates the best results.
Software & Analytics
Web analytics are the measurement and analysis of data to inform an understanding of user behaviour across web pages. You can even get estimated metrics on your competitors on SimilarWeb to inform your decision making.
Remember when testing or changing any elements of your webpage, that different things will have different functions. For example some will act as one of the following:
Drivers – these will bring traffic to the page or site
Barriers – these will make people leave the site and not convert
Hooks – elements that will persuade customers to convert
CRO Best Practices & Tips
And finally, here are some of Wriggle’s top tips, and best practices for CRO to help you get started:
Make your website easy to use. Ensure the navigation flows and is easy to understand for a seamless user experience.
Set your goals before you start testing – what are you trying to achieve? More sales? More newsletter sign ups? Clearly defined goals will keep things simple.
Clearly communicate your products or services and their value, and where possible add social proof to reinforce this.
Have calls to action in the right place and ensure they detail simply and clearly what they are going to do.
Make contact forms a breeze to complete.
Think about mobile users – can they operate your site on a mobile device? Mobile traffic makes up 55% of internet users so it pays to tailor their experience.
For e-commerce sites, use high quality images and videos of the product being used, and use real life imagery not stock!
Ensure a quick, easy check out process using auto filled fields and giving multiple payment methods – apple pay etc. The less the customer has to do the better.
Give as much detail about your product as possible on product pages. Sizes, ingredients, materials. What else might your user want to know about the product?
Our final thought on CRO optimisation, is to remember that what works for one website may not work for another. Every website and business is different, so it’s important to keep an open mind and test and learn what works best for you. Testing and experimenting in a data driven way will help you build this clear picture, to make informed changes that deliver results.
Wriggle’s CRO Services
At Wriggle we have seen some of our clients benefit from three figure percentage rises across KPIs such as revenue, leads and leads as a result of a CRO audit. If you are interested in our CRO services, find out more here, or contact us for an informal chat on 0191 815 0815.
