If you’re interested in online marketing, you’ve certainly heard terms like CEO, CMO, and CRO. These acronyms can be easily understood by those most aware of the digital market, but any user of the online medium should also know them. First, we can see that all these terms have one letter in common, the “O” for “optimization”. When it comes to increasing sales on your website or from social media, it’s important to understand how you can use optimization to improve the user experience or the appearance of your ads on search engines.
In this article, we will focus on optimizing the conversion rates of a website, that is, on the CRO, in order to get to know this tool with enormous potential to attract more customers and generate greater revenue value. Good reading!
What is CRO?
CRO stands for conversion rate optimization, i.e. conversion rate optimization. It’s the process of tweaking your website and content to generate more conversions from the traffic you already receive. The vast majority of online marketing strategies that we have looked at are focused on generating more traffic to given websites and attracting the target audience effectively. These methods are undoubtedly very important and without them it would be impossible to generate the conversions that we so want to see.
However, a crucial piece of the puzzle is missing here. People end up neglecting all the work that has to be done once the visitors actually arrive at the desired website. The truth is that millions of websites manage to receive a lot of traffic on a daily basis, but only a few have the ability to convert a good percentage of people into customers. This is explained by the fact that brands focus too much on external marketing and forget to pay attention to optimizing the user experience on the website. Thus, the conversions end up not happening.
What do we mean by “converting customers”?
It is worth addressing the concept of conversion in the context of online marketing. Simply put, a conversion happens when a person visiting your website or other digital platform crosses the line between audience and customer. This happens when a person buys your product/service. However, we can also talk about “conversion” when referring to subscriptions to newsletters, for example.
So, to clarify, a conversion doesn’t happen when people click on a link that redirects them to your website or the time they spend reviewing your content. A conversion happens when there is a transformation, that is, a passage from point A to point B. Normally, this process involves a purchase.
What is the difference between CRO and SEO?
Many people end up easily confusing these two terms that are, in reality, quite different, as they have different objectives. SEO (search engine optimization) usually focuses on keywords and metadata to drive more traffic to a given website. Therefore, its objective is to make a certain brand reach more visibility in search engines. CRO, on the other hand, focuses on increasing conversions, i.e. what happens after people are directed to your website.
Therefore, we can say that both must be used effectively, as they have a certain dependency relationship. The CRO needs SEO to be able to reach potential customers and convert them. SEO, on the other hand, is a crucial marketing effort, which allows you to bring the desired traffic to digital platforms so that, finally, conversions happen.
How to exploit CRO to generate more sales?
According to a study by Wordstream, the average conversion rate for a website is around 3%. This value is clearly very low, especially when taking into account all the effort and expenses involved in the process of directing the public to the website. This is where the importance of CRO arises. From this tool, it will be possible to convert more people into customers, thus generating more revenue. Here are the steps you should follow to get the most out of this tool:
-
This value is clearly very low, especially when taking into account all the effort and expenses involved in the process of directing the public to the website.
You should track metrics, as these allow you to know how users are interacting with your website’s content. Some examples include:
-
Departure fee:
tells you how long users spend on your website before leaving.
-
Cart abandonment rate: lets you know how often people add items to their cart, but then abandon it without making a purchase.
-
Bounce rate:
informs about the number of users who visit only one page of your website and then abandon it.
There are many other metrics that can be considered. Taken together, they all allow you to gain a better understanding of the public’s behavior during visits to your website. From the results, you will be able to discover the points that are failing and what should be improved.
-
Collect data
Collect and analyze the data from your website that you can obtain from the aforementioned metrics and identify the conversions you want to achieve. In addition to metrics, you can also use other methods of obtaining relevant data:
- Conduct surveys with users on the page itself;
- Interview current customers about the buying process;
- Carry out usability tests
-
Interpret the data
Once you have enough data, you should interpret it in order to check the best opportunities for your website conversion process. In other words, try to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and look at your website and buying process through their eyes. Only then can you really understand what is or is not working.
-
Perform tests
The next step is to perform A/B tests, a simple and straightforward tool that will allow you to understand even better what needs to be changed.
-
Track the results
Now that you’ve done all the previous steps, it’s time to monitor the results, in order to see if your strategy worked. If not, re-analyze your metrics and find new ways to get inside the customer’s head. If so, keep an eye on your website performance and your conversion rate. What worked once might not work again, because in the online world everything changes at the speed of light.
Thus, a CRO strategy is absolutely essential to ensure that your page visitors convert into customers. You should think about creating methods that allow you to understand the public’s behavior and thus find ways to increase your conversions.
