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A Guide to Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
12 min read
Couple the recent dip in startup funding with the stronger competition for market share, and it’s not hard to see why there’s no shortage of failed startups. The lack of funds limits marketing budgets globally. And so, marketers are forced to be extra-creative in how they acquire leads.
It’s common practice for marketing teams to focus on driving fresh traffic to websites for sales reps to close. But thanks to a crucial metric called Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), the best-performing marketing teams know how to get the most leads out of existing traffic.
A high conversion rate yields more leads, which means more revenue at lower acquisition costs. With this, startups can spin up a virtuous cycle where more revenue goes into marketing & sales efforts that further drive conversions to drive growth.
In this guide, we delve deep into CRO and its importance to marketing teams. We also identify crucial conversion rate touchpoints to look out for during the optimisation process.
What is CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimisation, in its simplest form, is a process to help you maximise the value gained from website visits.
In CRO, conversion doesn’t necessarily have to be a purchase. As a startup, it’s typical to successfully convert a customer towards taking a series of desired actions (think signing up for a free e-book, registering for a webinar, downloading a coupon, etc.), where that customer only had one purchase throughout the buyer’s journey.
In this view, CRO can be defined as a data-driven process of turning customer interactions into meaningful customer interactions.
It can also be defined as the process of improving the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on a website.
Benefits of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation).
There are several key rewards.
Increased ROI & revenue.
By increasing the number of conversions on a website or marketing campaign, businesses can potentially increase their revenue. CRO can also help improve the return on investment (ROI) of a website or marketing campaign by increasing the number of conversions while also reducing the cost per conversion.
Better CX (customer experience).
Conversion is also a key indicator of customer satisfaction — if you filled out a sign-up form, there’s a good chance the business owner did something right on his landing page that met your expectations in the early stage of the buyer’s journey.
The opposite is also true. And this makes conversion a reliable measure of the effectiveness of marketing & sales efforts. By improving the user experience of a website or marketing campaign, businesses can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can lead to long-term benefits like repeat business and positive word-of-mouth.
Greater competitiveness.
With valuable user insight obtained from CRO on websites or marketing campaigns, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors to gain a competitive advantage.
Enhanced understanding of customers.
Analysing data and testing different elements of a website or marketing campaign teaches companies more about customers and their preferences to help them reach these customers with the right messaging.
How to calculate conversion rate.
To calculate the conversion rate for a particular website or marketing campaign, you’ll need to determine the number of conversions and the total number of visitors or impressions. The conversion rate is then calculated as follows:
Conversion rate = (Number of conversions / Total number of visitors or impressions) x 100%.
For example, if a website receives 100 visitors, and 5 of them sign up for a webinar, the conversion rate would be calculated as follows:
Conversion rate = (5 registrants / 100 visitors) x 100% = 5%.
What is a good conversion rate?
A good conversion rate varies across industries, products or services offered, and other factors.
For instance, a good conversion rate in e-commerce is generally considered to be above 2%. The average conversion rate for lead generation websites is usually higher, at around 10%. But depending on the business, a good conversion rate generally is from 1%-4%
Due to different factors like changes in consumer behaviour, competition, and economic conditions, conversion rates change over time. Thus, a ‘good’ conversion rate will largely depend on your target audience, industry, niche, traffic channels, and goals.
Elements of the CRO process.
Depending on the goals of a business or campaign, there are several main elements of conversion rate optimisation (CRO):
Data analysis.
CRO involves analysing data about website traffic, user behaviour, and conversions to identify opportunities for improvement. This can include using tools such as Google Analytics to track website performance and identify trends and patterns.
Audience research.
To understand the needs, motivations, and behaviours of visitors on a website, you must gather information about them. This way, you can tailor your website to better meet their needs and encourage them to take the desired action.
There are several ways to gather audience research, including:
Surveys
Surveys can be used to gather detailed information about the audience, such as their demographics, interests, and behaviours.
User testing
User testing involves having real people use a website and providing feedback about their experience. This can help identify issues that are preventing people from converting.
Analytics
Analysing website traffic data can provide insights into the audience's behaviour on the site, including how they arrived at the site, what pages they visited, and what actions they took.
A/B testing
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a website or marketing campaign to see which one performs better. This can be an important element of CRO, as it allows businesses to test different elements, such as headlines, images, and layout options, to identify the most effective versions.
According to this Invesp report, the most-used conversion rate optimisation strategy is A/B testing — it is already used by 58% of marketers, while 35% of marketers plan to use it. A/B testing works, but don’t just stop there: after your findings, you can personalise your website to visitors based on these findings.
Using efficy CRM, you’re able to show more relevant content by tailoring certain headlines and hero images to specific segments of your audience by:
- Re-targeting returning visitors with content that is relevant to what they previously saw, or
- Re-targeting loyal customers with loyalty content like discounts or rewards.
Measurement
efficy CRM’s analysis works best with the Marketing Campaign tool. This feature gives you one single database with a comprehensive view of your marketing campaigns to track conversions.
efficy CRM’s Reporting feature also lets you create KPIs for conversion and track them. You can calculate the conversion rate by benchmarking results against the number of your total traffic.
Optimisation
With new insights, you can optimise your website or campaigns by coming up with more compelling web copy, adding enticing CTAs, or redesigning your website to improve the UX (making it more user-friendly, easy to navigate, and appealing to visitors).
A way to make valuable data available is through a CRM software like efficy, which helps your teams break down data silos and gives them a complete view of relevant insights for their analytics, in order to become truly data-driven. If you want to learn more about how to grow your business with a CRM, download our insightful handbook here.
Conversion Rate Optimisation touchpoints.
iFactory digital suggests that companies find it easy to draw traffic but hard to convert. Yet, getting little value for their website visits doesn’t tell the full story.
Ultimately, not all website visitors will convert, no matter how well-optimised your landing pages are. It’ll be impossible to expect a web visitor seeking branding services from search engines and lands on your landing page to buy your logo creation tool.
But in most cases, a poor conversion rate is a result of barriers in certain conversion touchpoints in your website/landing page that may put off visitors.
Let’s take a deep dive into these touchpoints to test for when running your CRO:
Web Copy.
Copy refers to the words your visitors first read on your site. If it’s not good enough, then don’t expect much. It’s that simple. Good copywriting clearly communicates the value of your offering, speaks to the needs of your visitors, and persuades them to take the desired action.
Tip#1: Use Social Proof
Using social proof entails adding customer reviews and testimonials to your copy for a more persuasive effect on your visitors. With social proof, you can leverage your existing pool of customers and social influence to nudge visitors closer towards conversion.
Imagine how much more likely you are to buy a product after you find out that people within your social/professional connections are already using it. It could be other companies, certification logos that support or partner with you, or the media.
By adding photo and video testimonials to specific landing pages on your website, you can convert visitors better.
Tip #2: Headlines
Per Marketingsherpa, 90% of visitors that read your headline will also read your CTA. Headline copy is a very important part of your web copy and is often the first thing web visitors see, which makes it an important factor in CRO. For a headline to be compelling, it must deliver the entire sales pitch in one single, bold sentence.
Images & Videos.
Whether in video or image format, visuals can be a powerful tool for driving conversions, as they can help to convey the value of a product or service. Optimising images for CRO can involve using high-quality, relevant images that effectively showcase the product or service.
Tip#1: Explainer Videos
Don’t underestimate the power of a video to share your value proposition in the simplest form possible. Video content is all the rave (Hello TikTok!) because the typical internet user has a shorter attention span. (This study about web use says the average attention span is now 8 seconds!)
Capturing attention with texts under 8 seconds might be difficult. Still, videos can quickly engage users within this time, communicating your value proposition and brand’s story to trigger emotional connections that build trust and get them to convert.
This Wyzowl survey finds that 86% of marketers have claimed to increase lead generation with video explainers.
Not convinced? Think about it: An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group says visitors read 28% of words on a website on average. (20% is more likely) And youtube data shows that the average explainer video is watched for about 2.7 minutes.
Ultimately, web visitors get more visual and verbal cues for learning more about your product from watching explainer videos, unlike reading text.
Page layout, design, and speed.
The layout and design of a website can have a big impact on CRO, especially the overall UX (user experience) and the likelihood of a conversion. A clean, well-organised layout that is easy to navigate can be more effective at driving conversions than a cluttered or confusing layout.
Some visitors prefer to skip the initial part of your buyer’s journey to jump on a chat/call with your sales rep. A combination of a visually appealing layout, smart CTAs, compelling copy, and a chatbot (setting you up with the sales team) on your home page/landing page can help you quickly turn visitors into marketing-qualified leads (MQL).
The increase in bounce rate caused by slow page load time makes page speed another touchpoint in CRO. According to this study, web pages taking 2 seconds to load experience a 9% bounce rate, and pages that take 5 seconds to load suffer a 38% bounce rate.
Tip#1: Analyse Bounce & Exit rates
If it looks like there is a lack of engagement from your users on your website or landing page, then it’s time to analyse your bounce and exit rates.
If you find them to be unusually high, you can begin your CRO by checking to see if users feel your website is difficult to navigate with user testing or surveys.
A recent study by We Are Social claims that 46% of web users surf the web with their mobile devices. Going by this data, your best bet will be to optimise for mobile.
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
The call-to-action (CTA) button is an important element of any website or marketing campaign, as it is the final step in the conversion process.
Optimising CTA buttons can be an important element of CRO, as it can involve testing different versions of the button to see which ones are most effective at driving conversions. CTAs like “Submit”, “Sign-up”, or “Register” are viewed as too direct, while more personalised CTAs like “Click Here” or “Click to Get Your Gift” sound more inviting and can aid conversion.
Tip#1: ‘FOMO’
“The Fear of Missing Out” is a powerful tactic used to trigger fear in the minds of the audience that they could be missing out on a solution that can make their lives better if they don’t take the desired action.
An example of FOMO at play is telling visitors your offer is exclusive for a specific time, prompting them to act immediately. You can also state exactly how long your offer remains up for grabs or how many products are left before you run out of stock (or before the price returns to normal)
Tip#2: Colours
Colours influence how people perceive or interact with design elements. By creating different emotions and associations, the right CTA button colour can communicate a desired action to the user.
For example, using a bright, bold colour for a CTA button can grab the user's attention and make the button stand out on the page, which can increase the likelihood that the user will click on it. On the other hand, using a colour that is too muted or blends in with the rest of the design may not be as effective at encouraging clicks.
Forms
Forms are an important element of many websites and can be a focus for CRO efforts. This can involve optimising its layout and design to make it easy to use and testing different elements, such as the number of fields and the language and tone used in the form.
Tip#1: Use lead capture forms
Perhaps the most critical touchpoint, lead capture forms are basically the final point of interaction where visitors go on to become leads or another bounce statistic.
When it comes to forms, the fewer form fields there are, the better. And like with most things in CRO, design matters. A GDPR-compliant CRM like efficy can help you collate information using our online forms feature — integrated directly with the CRM solution — to help create high-converting lead capture forms for you to follow up with leads without delay.
Turn more traffic into sales using efficy CRM.
With CRO tools capable of adding an average ROI of 223% to your bottom line, startups must do well to turn web visitors into leads.
When it comes to conversion rate optimization, you can throw the playbook out the window: your best move is to get more insight into your website visitors, leads, and customers to give them what they want.
And there’s no better tool to get this game-changing insight than a modern CRM software.
Your CRO shouldn’t be a random exercise or a one-off project — it’s an iterative process where you improve your strategy based on insights already gotten from previous iterations.
To help you make smarter CRO choices, efficy CRM has the segmentation, personalisation, and streamlining capabilities (click here to see other amazing features) to help you optimise your campaign and website for better conversion.
Does your pool of leads look like it can benefit from CRO? Wantto see a preview of what efficy’s all-in-one CRM platform can do for you? Request your free demo here.
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