Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing quality traffic to a website using tactics like keyword research, backlinks, and meta descriptions. SEO is well known. In fact, it was the No. 1 tactic used by marketing teams in 2019. Using SEO, you can drive great traffic to your website by capturing users who are already interested in your product. But how do you turn traffic into sales?
That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. What is CRO? It’s the process of getting the maximum percentage of visitors to your business website to perform a certain goal. Using CRO, you can make sure that your website is designed in such a way as to make it appealing and easy for customers to do business with you.
While SEO focuses on building more traffic for your website, CRO’s goal is to move quality customers through a sales funnel. CRO tries to capitalize on the website visitors you already have. While many companies use both simultaneously, CRO can greatly increase a company’s bottom line.
This beginner’s guide to CRO fundamentals will help you obtain a basic understanding of CRO’s processes and strategies. After reading this, you should have an idea of how CRO can help your business’s growth and profitability.
- What Is a Conversation Rate? How Does It Relate to Conversion Rate Optimization?
- Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
- 8 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate
- Create Converting Content Today
What Is a Conversation Rate? How Does It Relate to Conversion Rate Optimization?
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who come to a website and perform a certain action or conversion. There are two main types of conversions you might want a website visitor to take: micro conversions and macro conversions.
The action or conversion can be something small, like signing up for an email list. These are called micro conversions. They don’t make a sale, but they move a customer further along in the sales process.
If a visitor’s action is something big, like purchasing a service, becoming a paid subscriber to a website, the action is a macro conversion. This type of conversion represents the end goal of the sales process.
It’s fairly easy to calculate your conversion rate. To get a CRO calculation, take the total number of conversions you have and divide it by the total number of visitors to your site. Then, multiply the result by 100. You’ll be left with your conversion rate as a percentage. For example, if you have 100,000 visitors to your website, and you’ve made 1,000 conversions, your conversion rate will be 1%. More specifically, check out the CRO calculation below:
(1,000 conversions/100,000 visitors) x 100 = 1% conversion rate
CRO is a way to give companies the best chance to convert traffic into sales. Whereas processes like SEO can take a long time to be effective, CRO can immediately work because it doesn’t rely on attracting more clients, and it can swell your company’s revenue.
There are a few different ways to track conversion rates, including:
- Google Analytics: If you track your site metrics using Google Analytics, you can use the “Goals” feature to track specific conversions.
- Heat maps: There are several tools available that can create a heat map of a site page to visualize where people are clicking and scrolling on your website. This can help you determine not only where to put your calls-to-action (CTAs) but also reveal whether they are successful in driving conversions.
- Internal data: Depending on what programs you use to monitor sales or sign-ups, you’ll likely be able to pull this data to see which pages or specific CTAs are driving the most conversions.
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Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO has a lot of benefits for businesses. It’s all about making your company’s sales process more efficient. If you do CRO marketing correctly, you can make your website content highly targeted toward the customers who are most likely to purchase your services.
Some of the benefits of CRO include:
- You can maximize your company’s marketing ROI. CRO focuses on using resources that your company has so that it can cost less and result in better returns than other options for driving sales.
- CRO lets you understand your customers’ behaviors, patterns, and needs. To effectively market to the right clients for your business, you must develop a picture of who those clients are.
- It helps your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPS) on Google. CRO is all about meeting your customers’ needs, and Google rewards websites that offer what customers search for with more visibility.
- You can get a competitive edge over others in your industry. If your competitor is trying to increase sales by simply increasing traffic or spending without using CRO, you’ll have the advantage of appearing more able to meet your clients’ needs.
- It makes it easier for customers to buy from you. CRO aims to get rid of anything that could make it difficult for a client to do business with you. You don’t want anything keeping you from making a sale.
8 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate
There are several things you can do to improve your conversion rate. CRO is all about making your website operate in a way that drives leads or sales. Learning these will ensure you’re not missing out on easy sales. – Read More
