Conversion rate optimization requires understanding your customers’ needs and barriers that might prevent a sale. Here’s how CRO benefits your business.
Conversion rate optimization might be the strategy you’ve been looking for to boost your sales and get more out of every marketing initiative you’re engaging. You’re already driving traffic to your website. Now you just need to make that traffic turn into sales.
Once the SEO giant MOZ took some time to review its conversion rates and find opportunities it wasn’t capitalizing on, the company was able to increase revenue by $1 million. The key was in understanding what paying customers found value in and what non-paying customers didn’t know about the service, keeping them from completing a purchase.
Conversion rate optimization has a lot to do with putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. But it also requires an honest assessment of your website design and structure. So what is conversion rate optimization and what are its benefits? Read on for more.
From a business standpoint, conversion rate optimization (CRO) requires a hard look at your website to find ways to increase the number of users who complete the actions you want them to. Desired actions might be completing a form, purchasing a product, clicking a link, etc.
But from a customer standpoint, CRO is all about understanding why your website visitors came to you and what might be standing in their way of doing what they came to your website to do.
CRO that is customer-centric focuses more on the user experience and less on sales numbers. You’ll be amazed at how sales numbers can grow when you focus on the user first. But to do this effectively, you need to know:
Once you get to the bottom of these questions, you’ll create a user experience that helps your audience accomplish their goals.
CRO has many outstanding benefits, in addition to increasing sales and generating new customers. Here’s a look at some of the benefits you might experience.
Going through conversation rate optimization exercises requires that you take a hard look at how well you’re satisfying your customers’ needs. With that, comes an incredible understanding of their needs and what’s holding them back from purchasing with you.
These insights are invaluable. Not only will you know what is missing from your website, but you’ll get new blog ideas, understand how your sales team should be communicating with your customers and gain valuable insights into how to retract and retain new customers.
Not only will you get more conversions, but you’ll see your cost per conversion decrease because you know what your customer needs. You’ll also be able to increase your organic website visitor rates, which can provide free leads and drive down your company’s total cost per conversion.
CRO is based on using the traffic you already have. That means you don’t have to pay to increase that traffic. You just have to adjust your website to better meet customer needs.
This is the benefit most companies set out to acquire when pursuing conversion rate optimization. And because CRO doesn’t require ongoing expenses to increase conversions, that money all goes to your bottom line.
Let’s say you’re currently getting 5,000 visits per month to your website. And your conversion rate is 1 percent. That means that you’re getting 50 conversions. By increasing your conversion rate to 2 percent, you’ll double your website conversions without spending money on advertising.
Now, you’ll likely spend time and resources on the research phase of learning more about what’s stopping website visitors from converting so there will likely be an upfront cost associated with the exercise. But most companies see this pay off within a few months.
As you grow your revenue, you’ll have more resources to invest in your marketing initiatives. And that’s great news for companies on a fast growth track. When revenue grows, so do marketing budgets. With more marketing budget, you can increase leads, website traffic and therefore sales.
But before you invest more in your marketing, you need to ensure you’ve optimized all parts of your sales funnel for best results. The work is never done with CRO. Instead, you’ll need to focus regularly on new opportunities and ways you can meet the needs of new customers and prospects.
For a team of experts who can monitor your website analytics and provide in-depth insights into your customers and their needs, schedule a free consultation with New Light Digital. We provide a suite of digital marketing services that help businesses of all types grow.
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