Your Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) in Marketing and Why It’s Important

Let’s say you spend hundreds—maybe even thousands—getting your search engine optimization strategy ready. You identify a great keyword your target audience is Googling and your web page ranks spot 1. But once your potential customers click on your site, they get lost in a non-user-friendly experience and end up quickly exiting out. In other words, they didn’t “convert” on the page how you would have liked. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes into play for a successful digital marketing strategy.

What Exactly Is CRO?

Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving your website’s conversion rate. Of course, we first need to establish a conversion and a conversion rate.

A conversion is when a visitor completes a website’s desired action. These actions can vary by website page or business. For example, a conversion can be signing up for emails, filling out a contact form, scheduling a demo, or even making a purchase. The percentage of total visitors who complete this action equals the conversion rate. Once you know your conversion rate through conversion tracking, then you can work to improve, or optimize, the conversion rate. A better conversion rate will result in more sales, customer information, or leads—all depending on what you want your desired action or goal to be.

Why Is CRO Important?

If “more sales or leads,” didn’t initially attract you, then maybe we should look at some stats. For starters, conversion rate optimization is important because the average ROI for companies using CRO tools is 223%. This is a staggering return for correctly targeting visitors and testing a website landing page.

While CRO has an incredible value, it becomes even more crucial because only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Perhaps a large factor behind this is less than 40% of companies have a documented CRO strategy. Not only will a CRO strategy give you more sales and leads, but it will likely give you a leg up over your competitors.

How Does CRO Work?

CRO sounds great, but what does the process look like? What’s the behind-the-scenes work for increasing conversions?

The CRO process involves three primary steps: gathering data through research, making a hypothesis, and testing how to improve the number of conversions. Testing encompasses the bulk of the work. And depending on the CRO professional, company, or tool, there are a few different CRO tests you can do. Most companies, including Helium SEO, primarily use A/B testing (also known as “split testing”) or Multivariate testing.

A/B Testing

Between those two tests, A/B testing is the most common. This test compares two versions of a web page against each other where only one variable is different between the two. For example, one page (let’s call it Page A) has a video that’ll play as soon as a visitor enters a site. Then the same version of that page (called Page B) won’t have a video. A/B testing will determine how visitors interact between the two versions and determine which page works best for that specific goal, such as subscribing to monthly emails.

A/B testing, however, doesn’t even need to be this complex. It can be as simple as Page A having a call to action (CTA) button (like “Get a Free Quote”) in the navigation bar whereas Page B doesn’t have that call to action. Depending on your specific goal, the tests will vary. Surprisingly, small tweaks to a website like this can result in the biggest changes.

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate testing (MVT) takes A/B testing to the next level because it includes more variables. MVT tests a combination of elements within a single version. For instance, one version can have a pop-up video, call to action, and customer testimonials at the bottom. Then, MVT puts that version to the test against other versions with a different combination of elements. Yet, all of these different versions are tested against the control variant (the original version).

So, there can be several variants with several different elements within each one, making it a little more complicated than A/B testing. But multivariate testing is beneficial since a lot of ideas can run at the same time concurrently and you get insight into each added element. Companies might use this strategy just for relatively small testing arrays.

Whatever your conversion goal is, the CRO test and strategy will differ. That’s why it can be a great choice to hire a CRO expert. They can play a role in every step of the process and ensure you’re getting the best results.