Increasing conversion rates, AOVs and customers life time value isn’t an easy task.
But, since you’re already driving traffic to your store why not get the most out of it?
Becoming a better CRO is more than just split testing, being data-driven and customer-centric.
Here are some tips from the experts on how to improve your conversion rates.
Ask your website visitors. Most clients I work with rely on their gut feeling or their friends’ opinion to know what’s wrong with their website and some of the times they are right but alas most of the times they’re not.
Right now surveying your website visitors is something that can be done quickly, easily and most importantly for free. Tools like Hotjar, Google Surveys, Qualaroo they allow you to ask your visitors in real time what they are finding hard to do on your site. This information is priceless.
Most of the times you’ll learn something you didn’t even imagine could be an obstacle to conversion. Your visitors are navigating your website. They experience it first hand. They know what’s going on. You need to know that too. Ask an open question and prepare to be surprised at what comes up.
My #1 CRO tip is: focus on business impact instead of website impact. Especially within small and medium enterprises, business owners and marketers tend to optimize their website and campaigns for more or better traffic and/or conversions instead of more profit.
But how can you imagine that a change that you A/B test in your website, webshop or campaign will still pay off after more then the few weeks that your test takes? Do your newly acquired sales leads or newsletter subscribers actually become customers after the test period? Do those new customers also generate equal or more turnover than your average customer? Don’t they put a relatively higher work or cost pressure on your sales or customer service? In what other ways do they contribute (positively or negatively) to the margin and profit of your company?
There are many more questions to ask about the factors that influence the actual contribution of your conversion optimization to our profit. In short, if you do not measure and analyze the actual business impact of conversion optimization on your turnover, margin and profit, then those efforts are pointless in my opinion. So focus on your customer data and enrich it with data from A/B tests that affect visitors, leads and customers.
Then analyze the behavior of these leads and customers and especially their impact on your turnover, margin and profit over a longer period. Only then you can determine which conversion rate optimization efforts are the real winners. Then use these results as input for new conversion optimization hypotheses and tests that not only improve your conversions but optimize your entire marketing mix.
Frans Jan, Owner at BIImpact & Add to Friends
Browse your own webshop regularly. Just put a monthly reminder in your calendar and pretend that you’re a customer at your own webshop. For instance, look at your homepage and pretend you don’t know what this webshop is selling.
Alternatively, use the filters on the category page while pretending to look for a particular item. Maybe try to compare several similar items, check some product reviews, zoom in on product photos, etc.
Also, be sure to use devices that are similar to those that your target audience is using. Using this simple method, you’ll encounter the same issues that your target audience faces as well, at no cost (other than the time you spent on this). By doing this process regularly, you might spot some new issues every time.
Invest in qualitative user research. CRO is so heavily focused on quantitative data that we often get lost and obsessed with numbers and metrics. If you do some initial qualitative research and testing with your customers (or people who fall into your persona categories) with your product or service, you’ll learn better insights (straight from the horses mouth) into how they see and navigate your website or service.
From there you can make improvements to the acquisition process and your overall user experience (or customer experience) and once you do that, your conversions should increase.
Better user experience = more conversions.
Shannon Kelly, UI Designer II | UX Strategist
When building your landing page/product page/even homepage there are 3 concepts that you need to address via copy.
1) What are the motivations of my audience?
2) What value does my product or service offer [think benefits]
3) What anxieties are they having about purchasing this now [roadblocks or limiting beliefs]?
There is one important way to accelerate growth and get better results with your CRO. Focus on building your process. The process, workflows, strategy, communication is significantly more important than any individual test or even multiple tests.
That is often forgotten to focus on specific test hypotheses or getting stuck in the technical and tactical day to day. Building the competencies as a team to conduct CRO better should be the goal. The results and insights will follow.
Create a 90 day growth plan on a weekly sprint cycle for accountability. Focus on ensuring that your team is aligned on goals and KPIs. Conduct quantitative and qualitative customer research.
Put in place a scientific testing process that allows you to get valid data and insights. Ramp up the testing velocity as you start to streamline the process and workflows. That is going to drive ROI in the short term and help you to grow and make better business decisions long term.
1. Your PPC landing page should be your top priority. One offense that many small businesses make when starting a PPC campaign is they bid on a bunch of different keywords and send all of their traffic to their homepage. Often this results in poor conversion rates and, for some, a belief that PPC just doesn’t work. Unless your homepage has proven to garner incredible conversion rates with a subset of your traffic (which might be the case for branded keywords), it is important to segment your traffic so that your prospects can be directed to specific landing pages which are relevant to each of the keywords and ads in your campaign. Each landing page should employ proper text, images, and a calls-to-action that outline the benefits of your product or service and ultimately entice your traffic to fill out your form or to place a call.
2. Never stop testing your messaging. Even a small uplift in your conversion rate can lead to a substantial increase in overall lead volume. And the best way to make incremental improvements is to experiment. The best marketers are always testing, even if the test encapsulates small iterations of what is already working.
Just about everything can be tested including headlines, content (keep text concise and easy to scan), ad copy, images, navigation buttons (oftentimes fewer buttons are better), form fields (the field count and form placement), colors (especially the call-to-action buttons). Remember to keep things clear, simple, and compelling with your headlines, forms, and imagery.
3. Create a compelling offer for your prospects. Offers that only contain pricing, features, and self-serving promotional videos are not compelling because they serve you and not your customer. However, instructive and educational items like guides, whitepapers, and webinars are compelling because they address a pain point that prospects are likely seeking answers for. Tip: If you are requesting lead information such as email and other data, it’s paramount that you offer meaningful value in return.
Dustin Hovey, Associate Director, Digital Strategy at AbbVie
Conversion rates optimization is a powerful way to increase your business’s revenue.
The experts we surveyed shared their best tips on how you can use analytics and testing to find the conversion rate optimization strategy that works for you.
With the right approach, it shouldn’t be difficult to make some changes in order to see an improvement! So start testing today and become data-driven.
Yaron Been is an Ecommerce Entrepreneur, host of the EcomXFactor podcast and a Conversion Rate Optimization Expert.
