What is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

What is your Website Conversion Rate?

Are you like most business owners and have no idea what your website's conversion rate is? One of the main benefits of digital marketing is the ability to measure most aspects of it. And as the famous saying goes, "if you don't measure it you can't improve it". Yet the majority of business owners we come across have websites that don't measure the most basic conversions.

Conversion Rate Optimisation isn't a new concept with the advent of digital marketing. Sales and marketing experts have known long before websites that it is important to look for ways to increase the number of sales you get from the leads you've generated. After all, it makes no sense to spend more time, effort and money on generating more and more leads if you aren't converting many of these into sales. The same goes for online marketing.

Website Conversion Optimisation

We always look at websites in the same way you would look at a physical store. There is no point advertising to get people into your store if they then don't buy anything off you. Similarly, there is no point using search engine optimisation to get more traffic to your website only to have them leave before filling in a form or buying something from your site. So with all our web marketing plans we include some form of conversion rate optimisation.

What is a Website Conversion?

That's a great question and the most important consideration when beginning a website strategy. What do we want visitors to do when they come to your website. If it is an online store then the obvious answer is sales. However, if your website is for a Plumber etc, then it would be an enquiry webform (or maybe a phone call).

A website conversion can be a webform, chat message, phone call, online sale, download, sign up or pretty much whatever you set your website up to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conversions Explained: From Clicks to Customers

View Transcript ▼

0:00 [Music] What are conversions? Conversion is something that we use quite a bit in marketing and sales. Conversion in the general sense is getting someone to achieve some sort of goal that you've set.

0:14 In a marketing term, it's getting someone close to becoming a customer. So, it's generating lead. How much traffic to a website can we convert into web forms, phone calls, chat messages.

0:25 So, that's important. In sales, the conversion would be what do we do? How do we take that lead? and how do we convert that lead into customers?

0:30 What's that conversion rate converting between leads and customers? In a marketing sense, we talk about conversions and leads. You will also come across the term key events.

0:38 Google Analytics, which is the main platform that we all use to measure what's happening on a website, uh they recently rename conversions to key events.

0:48 But at the end of the day, they're all the same thing. It's how many leads are converting from the traffic that we drive to a website. If that all makes sense. [Music]

What about Primary and Secondary Conversions?

Now we know what the conversions are we want on our website, we need to decide which are our primary and what are our secondary. Your primary conversions would generally be those that could lead directly to a sale (eg. online sale or webform). Whereas, your secondary conversion would be those that either move a website visitor along your sales funnel or help promote your website to someone else (eg. newsletter sign up or share on social media etc).

Different types of conversions could be:

• Fill in a webform requesting your service
• Buy a product online
• Join your mailing list
• Download an eBook or Brochure
• Call your displayed phone number etc
• Start a chat message
• View a sales video

What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation is working out how to get more visitors to your website to convert. Similar to bounce rate, before you can improve conversion rate, you first need to understand what is happening on your website. Why are visitors not converting? This involves heat mapping and session recordings.

Some of the main strategies for conversion rate optimisation are:

• Have clear "Call to Actions" throughout your website. Don't make visitors have to look for how to contact you or buy your products or services.
• Use triggers that encourage visitors to convert. A trigger may be something like a discounted offer or guarantee.
• Use personalised images that visitors can relate to. People like to see real people eithe providing a service or using a product.
• Create pages for specific topics so visitors see exactly what they are looking for.
• Ensure your website looks professional and is functional.

Once you've worked on a conversion rate optimisation strategy, it is important that you continue to test and measure it to see if it can be improved further.

Conversion Rate Optimisation Strategies

There are many different ways you can go about improving your websites' conversion rate. Some of the main strategies we use are:

• Split Testing
  This is where we create a second version of a web page and then send half the website visitors to each. This allows us to then track which page converted the best.
• Heat Mapping
  Heat mapping technology allows us to see where people are clicking on your website. This obviously allows us to see if they are doing what we want them to do and we can make changes to see what happens.
• General Analytics
  We are always looking at your website analytics to see if there are any areas of your website that convert better than others. If so, we work out why and make changes.

So if you'd like to know more about conversion rate optimisation, why not talk to us about how we can help. Simply call us on 1300 399 515 or fill in an online enquiry form  .