Optimising your landing pages can improve their rate of conversion. Image courtesy of Pixabay

(i) Layout

The page layout must be simple. Don’t stack multiple columns or boxes with no reading flow. The idea is to organise your content in such a way that it will funnel customers to a singular CTA

(ii) Length or pages

Old school copywriters swear by long-form sales letters that run into at least a couple of pages. Digital marketers, on the other hand, believe shorter and more concise formats work better since the majority of customers aren’t going to spend time absorbing long content. But you do you – test both formats for your audience. Remember, the relationship between your product or services with your targeted audience is unique – there is no behavioural science which can predict the actions of customers. Otherwise, psychologists would become digital marketers.

(iii) Headline

Headlines determine whether visitors will stay on your website or leave. On average, only 20% of visitors will remain after reading a headline. As such, it is imperative that your headline is attention-grabbing and persuasive.

(iv) Social proof

Word of mouth recommendation is an extremely strong conversion factor. Since you can use the technique online, go for the second best option – testimonials. Make sure testimonials from previous or existing clients are included on the landing page. Subconsciously, testimonials and endorsements will give customers added extra confidence about your service or product.

As a final thought, make sure anyone working on your site is aware of your approach to CRO. What angle are you taking and what vibe do you want to give off? These are all important questions to answer when discussing things with your SEO company, web developers, content writers and/or advertising firm.

The post CRO – Landing appeared first on Internet Of Business.

Web analytics tools are crucial for CRO. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

(i) Poor SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is responsible for a third of the referral traffic going to websites. However, poor implementation of SEO will affect a website’s ranking on search engines. This will not only reduce the number of visitors, the relevancy might also be affected. As such, always make sure that websites have got the basics right. Review the title tags to ensure they are accurate and contain relevant keywords. Check the meta descriptions to see if they are thematically-accurate and whether they are good enough to convert click-throughs. Find out if all the images have been compressed.

(ii) User Experience

Does your website load quickly? Is the navigation menu prominent and smooth? Do you have excessive animations and flash images and video? Is the mobile version of your website equally fast and efficient? Are the buttons for registration/subscriptions/purchase working? How long does it take for customers to find what they are looking for? Does the search function deliver accurate results?

(iii) CRO Tools

Is your web analytics codes correctly installed? Are you able to review, collect and report all visitor data? Are baseline numbers recorded before A/B and multivariate testing are performed? When testing are conducted, are they adhering to internal KPIs? This short list is obviously not comprehensive. However, they are the ones that are most commonly overlooked or taken for granted. Make it a point to go over the basics periodically.

The post CRO – Weakness appeared first on Internet Of Business.

Actually, no. CRO may just be the final piece of the puzzle for your business. Need further convincing?

CRO can drive up revenues while reducing operating costs. Image courtesy of Pixabay

(i) CRO is not a recurring investment

CRO requires no hardware. Depending on the size of your business, you may need to invest in testing software. If you’re responsible for a global e-commerce giant, you’ll probably need to hire or reassign a couple of guys to manage the analysis and testing. Otherwise, you’re good to go – after you’ve invested a sufficient amount of time to learn the fundamentals of CRO, that is.

(ii) CRO improves your conversion and ROI

A properly optimised website will generate more revenue, sign-ups, subscriptions or opt-ins for your company. This is not a debate. The simple act of moving the Buy Now button from the left to the right side of a webpage could immediately improve conversions by 0.2%. Changing the background colour or rich media used on a webpage could persuade customers to stay longer on your website and give your content a chance to convert them.

Regardless of how long you’ve been in business, the sales volume of your company or the state of the market, CRO will improve your conversions, because there is always room for improvement. CRO specialises in identifying weak aspects of a website.

(iii) CRO reduces your expenditure

Companies spend a huge amount of money buying traffic through pay-per-click ads, display ads, or affiliate marketing. The problem is, these referral traffic are not optimised. CRO can analyse traffic sources and identify great and lemon referrals. Over time, CRO will gradually filter out expensive and ineffective traffic, and allow you to focus on those with high ROI. As a result, customer acquisition and conversion costs will drop dramatically.

The post CRO – Importance appeared first on Internet Of Business.

Naturally, three big questions will pop up now, namely, what caused the trigger, can we do it again, and how can we do it better? A proper conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy can answer these questions.

CRO ensures traffic generated by SEO will not go to waste. Image courtesy of Pixabay

Tracking conversions

CRO is not designed based on guesses or opinions. It is based on hard data collected over a period of time. These data will serve as the foundation of the entire CRO strategy. Continuous data aggregation will also be used to refine optimisation of the websites through A/B and multivariate testing.

The range of data collected is quite broad, some of which includes:

• Source of traffic referral

• Location

• Time and length of visit

• Pages visited and browsing flow

• Call-to-actions followed

• Conversion points

A/B and Multivariate Testing

Depending on the level of analysis required, these data will be used to analyse content, content structure, page layout, placements of CTAs, colour, points of interest, media effectiveness, and dozens of other metrics.

In addition, A/B and multivariate testing will also be performed extensively to identify high converting changes.

E-commerce sites are particularly known for their regular testing. Amazon, the biggest online marketplace, is famed for this. Visit their site and view one of their products using your browser in normal and incognito modes. If you analyse the webpages carefully, you will probably find minute differences between the two. This is one of the ways they stay ahead of the competition.

If a hundred billion dollar behemoth is willing to do this, what’s stopping small and medium-sized businesses from doing the same?

The post CRO – Basics appeared first on Internet Of Business.

Another great way to look at CRO is that it is a method of fulfilling the needs of visitors to websites. CRO creates call-to-actions which stimulate and trigger decisive actions on visitors.

Nothing else matters if your website has poor CRO. Image courtesy of Pixabay

Why should you care about conversion rate optimisation?

Short answer: poor CRO translates to lower revenue, and higher cost.

Long answer: generating traffic is a tedious and lengthy affair. So much work goes into generating regular sources of traffic, especially niche traffic. The cost rises even higher if traffic comes from advertisements or affiliates. Without CRO, the valuable traffic will be wasted. It’s like building a steak house in a vegetarian compound – great food, but no buyers.

Benefits of conversion rate optimisation

With a proper CRO strategy in place, your website will return higher rates of conversions. The best part is, the change will happen immediately. You don’t have to wait weeks or months to see changes, because you don’t have to rely on search engines or other external factors. Not only that, continuous tweaks and chances will gradually improve the conversion rate. Your cost efficiency and return of investment will also rise in tandem. The key is learning what your visitors want and giving it to them. It’s such a simple concept.

In addition, CRO doesn’t ask for the sky – you just have to be better than your competitions. It’s not a zero-sum game. Any potential client they lose will theoretically come to you eventually – and if you have a better CRO game, the conversion is as good as done.

How to get started

You can start by looking at your site objectively and coming up with ideas on how and where it could use improvements. Does it lack trust? Look into trust icons, review platforms and adding a more personal touch maybe. Too corporate when your customers are looking for one-on-one service? Tone your sales pitch down a little and connect with the audience a bit more. Short on time? You may want to contact an SEO service company who can also take a look at optimising your site for conversions.

The post CRO – Index appeared first on Internet Of Business.