Companies need an online presence to reach their target audience and make it part of their strategic business goals. Part of establishing that online presence is creating an effective website to convert website or app visitors to leads. This process of converting leads is essential in increasing the business’s sales.
The process of increasing how website visitors make a desired action is referred to as Conversion Rate Optimization CRO – a process that many online business sellers are very familiar with. These desired actions can be in the form of website visitors making purchases, signing up for the company newsletter, or maybe filling out a form.
With an effective CRO strategy, more website visitors can be converted into leads, which in turn translates into sales.
To calculate your conversion rate, the formula to be followed is shown below:
Conversion Rate = (Total # of Conversions / Total # of Visitors) x 100
For example, if there are 800 website visitors in a month and 200 of them make a purchase, the conversion rate is 25% ((200/800)x100).
The different types of conversions include the following:
With CRO, businesses are pushed to improve the effectiveness of their websites and focus on improving user experience.
One of the most popular conversion rate optimization strategies is A/B Testing. This strategy includes creating two websites with the goal of testing which one of the two will be able to generate the most conversions or engagement.
On occasion an idea to make a change that would seem to improve your website has no guarantees that it would produce the outcome you want to achieve, your engagements might improve after implementing the said change, although not knowing for certain that it was the main reason your website is getting more engagements.
That is when A/B testing comes into play, ideally splitting the traffic 50-50, half of your users will be exposed to the change you are proposing to make and half will be exposed to the same website you are currently presenting to see whether it improves your average conversion rate, if not then you can go through it again to maximize optimization efforts.
It is highly recommended for A/B testing to have some sort of traffic to see statistically whether it made relevant changes. You can still test various angles that would seem to make your user experience a lot easier, which is ideal before deciding to make the proposed change permanent.
A/B testing is just one tool for companies to perform an optimization strategy that makes the decision-making process easier.
Another commonly used conversion rate optimization strategy is User Experience (UX) design although sometimes incorrectly interchanged as User Interface (UI) design. User Experience (UX) design is the process by which the design teams create a product that provides meaningful and relevant experiences for users. The fundamentals in UX design are understanding, ideating, testing, and crafting, although not in that order.
User Interface (UI) design is different from User Experience (UX) design. User Interface is much more like graphics design, in that they focus on the look and feel of the application or the product pages. User Experience is all about the structure of the application, how the user will get from the product page to the checkout page or the next step of the app or website until they get some sort of success screen.
UX design is about designing something that makes the user experience better, basing it all on user behavior, patterns, and habits. It is about the user and shouldn’t be from the point of view of the business perspective first, but rather, the focus should be on the design you want and what the user experience should be.
No matter how appealing your landing page might seem, you will get no engagements if it isn’t user-friendly. Your website or program needs to be useful, usable, and desirable, all at the same time for your target audience. Nailing all these elements means you designed a good user experience which would lead to you having improved conversions or engagements. After all, no one will use a product that serves no purpose.
The following are conversion rate optimization best practices that will help you constantly make improvements on your websites.
Davey Jones is a content marketing specialist with a master’s degree from Eastern University, CEO of Formalytics, and The CEO of BDOW! (pronounced buh–dow, always said in exclamation) formerly known as SUMO, the number 1 Lead Generation Tool, a company that makes it as easy as possible for businesses to have conversations and build relationships with their customers and focuses on helping you build an extensive email list quickly through lead generation.
He also co-founded 2 agencies that have helped businesses grow through brand designs and digital advertising. Davey & Krista, an agency of brand strategists and designers who help creatives build brands that book, and Till Agency, which has helped businesses grow through brand designs and digital advertising, a full-service advertising agency, specializing in digital advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
He is also the co-host of Brands that Book Podcast, a podcast that helps entrepreneurs become more creative, providing tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high-converting websites.
Website Optimization is the process of using tools, strategies, and experiments to enhance the performance of your website. The website optimization approach combines a variety of different elements for your website to perform ideally in all areas, like Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), User Experience (UX) design, web development, landing page optimization, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is the process of increasing your website visibility in different search engines like Google, Bing, Brave, and other search engines whenever users search for the products you sell, services you provide, or information about your business. The better visibility your web page or blog post has, the more likely that it will be clicked on and be optimized by users who will become customers or clients who keep going back. SEO will help generate more traffic from targeted audiences.
Conversion rate optimization tips for better website optimization, focus experiments above the fold, it’s what everyone sees first before they decide to either leave or keep engaging. Use concise headlines with bold visuals. These visuals range from images to videos, and videos are the most effective for the current generation to get someone’s attention and gain conversions.
Some benefits and challenges of website optimization:
The smallest and the simplest things are usually not given that much effort to be given a second thought but anything that improves user experience gives rise to a higher chance for improved conversion hence these are some of the best conversion rate optimization tips for better user experience.
Lead generation is the process of attracting consumers to become interested in a product or service you are offering intending to turn it into a sale. There are many types of digital marketing like social media marketing, email marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Digital marketing lets you advertise to people digitally. It takes advantage of different instruments like search engines, social media platforms, and mobile applications. Helping marketers to understand better the spending habits of their audiences, helps you show your consumers advertisements based on their actions and preferences on the internet. Digital marketing also serves as a cheaper alternative to the traditional forms of advertising.
Digital marketing provides the roadmap for lead generation to be able to create content that will help the company in achieving its goals. With that said, mobile optimization for your website or app should be a main focus. This means it should be user-friendly for smaller screens since the majority of the traffic coming in would be coming from mobile phones or else it would lead to lost conversions. Also, content that doesn’t connect well to your targeted audience won’t produce the outcome you are hoping to achieve.
Digital marketing helps build brand recognition and increases sales through new or existing customers. You can also use social proof as another tool to increase conversions, especially with all the threats to the website that the internet poses. Without social proof, users don’t feel the trust and credibility they need for a conversion. Incorporating customer reviews would most likely lead to the call-to-action button to be pressed.
Thanks to digital marketing, marketers can focus all their efforts in reaching a specific audience. Although it isn’t limited to only reaching a specific target audience, it even reaches a wider array of diverse consumers. Digital marketing is accessible to all types of businesses either big or small, no matter the team size or the marketing budget.
Here are some of the top conversion rate optimization tips in lead generation through CRO:
What’s right for another business, might not be right for you. Different apps and websites have a different user base and provide different user experiences, finding out what works is all that you can do. Although visuals play a valuable role in conversion rate optimization, always remember that the most important aspect of any website or app will always be how your target audience and user experience will be.