Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

A How-to Guide on Improving Website Performance & Cusomter Experience

Before Getting Started

Make sure you set up a way to measure your conversion rate and keep track of changes.
You can track conversions on Google Analytics or on most marketing platforms.

Set Up Conversion Goals Using Google Analytics

  1. Go to your Standard Reports section in Google Analytics.
  2. Click on the “Admin” button in the top right.
  3. Click on “Goals”.
  4. Click “+ Goal” to set up a new goal.
  5. Select an option: URL Destination
  6. Enter into “Goal URL” the link of your thank you page or confirmation page where a visitor is directed to after completing a purchase or download. Enter only what comes after the domain. If the full URL is www.testwebsite.com/thank-you, enter only “/thank-you”.
  7. Each time a visitor reaches the page specified, they will trigger the goal to be recorded.

Calculate Conversion Rate on Google Analytics

  1. Using the goal you set above, find the number of total conversions on your site.
  2. Go to Google Analytics > Audience > Overview to find “Users” for total visitors to your site.
  3. Calculate (Total Conversions / Total Visitors ) * 100 = Conversion Rate.
  4. If you want to calculate conversions over a specific time period, make sure you change the dates at the top right of the reports screen in Google Analytics.
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OPTIMIZING CONVERSION RATES

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Ways to improve customer experience and increase conversions through your website:

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    Know Your Audience

    Gather and analyze data about your visitors to foresee what information they need.

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    Personalize Your Site

    Tailor your site for visitors to provide information that is useful to them.

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    Define Selling Points

    Clearly define your unique selling proposition and how you can meet and exceed customer needs.

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    Add Some Reinforcement

    Customer reviews, testimonials and accreditation badges go a long way to increase buyer confidence.

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    Test, Test, Test!

    Identify what strategies work best when engaging customers and incorporate lessons learned into your site.

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KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

GATHER INFORMATION & DATA

Who are your customers?

If you know where to look, you can gather a lot of information about your audience just by exploring your analytics. You can use Google Analytics to get a great overview of your audience or utilize a marketing platform that allows you to dig deeper and track individual customers and their activity on your site.

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How Can You Use Analytics to Personalize Your Site?

  1. Who They Are

    Find out location, age, demographics and interests from Google Analytics’ Audience Reports (Age and Gender pictured left). 

  2. How They Get to Your Site

    Find out what devices used on the Google Analytics Audience Technology Report and browsers used on the Audience Mobile Report. Optimize your site to display properly for the majority of your visitors. 

  3. How They Found You

    Go to Google Analytics > Acquisition Reports > All Traffic > Channels to explore your website traffic. You’ll be able to see how your visitors found your site between Organic, Direct, Email, Referral and Social Traffic. Each channel drills down to provide more in-depth information.

  4. Most Popular Pages & Customer Journey

    Go to Google Analytics > Behavior Reports > Behavior Flow to indicate the most popular pages visited and the flow of how visitors explore your site past the first page. If certain pages are more popular than others, you can examine it to see what might make it more appealing than other pages.

  5. How They Exit Your Site

    Go to Google Analytics > Behavior Reports > Behavior Flow to see where your visitors dropped off your site. Doing so will indicate potential areas of improvement. If visitors are frequently leaving on a certain page, it may be because the form is too long or the images are too large making load time too slow. If they leave at checkout, you might reinforce site security.

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PERSONALIZE YOUR SITE

TAILOR YOUR SITE FOR VISITORS

Provide The Information Customers Need

Now that you’ve gathered customer data, you can update your website according to their behavior and preferences. Use your analytics to personalize customer experience and provide the most relevant information as quickly as possible to maintain their interest in your products and services.

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What Can You Learn From Your Analytics?

  1. Optimize for Devices and Browsers Used

    Ensure that your site is responsive and renders properly on all devices, especially the ones most commonly used by your audience. You can test your site using Google Search Console’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

  2. Personalize Content by Location

    Create variations of your site pages that update based on visitor location. If you provide the information they need as quickly as possible, you’ll be more likely to close the sale. Ask us how we make this possible.

  3. Target Customer Interests

    You can identify helpful partnerships and know where to advertise your products by knowing the tangential interests of customers from the Google Analytics Audience > Interests Report. See other sites they like to visit from the Google Analytics Acquisition > Channels > Referrals Report. 

  4. Make Purchases Convenient for Customers

    Make the checkout process as quick and convenient as possible, only requesting the information needed to complete the purchase. Also be sure to offer multiple options to pay, incorporating payment processing platforms like PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay which some customers prefer.

  5. Allow Customers to Purchase with Confidence

    Notice customers leaving your checkout page without completing a purchase? You may need to reinforce your site security. Offer a link to your privacy policy to show you respect customer privacy and show logos of site security providers showing that their data will be secure as their order is processed.

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DEFINE SELLING POINTS

HIGHLIGHT HOW YOU MEET & EXCEED NEEDS

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

A customer should immediately (within seconds) know what you do and why you’re better than your competition. Placing your unique selling proposition front and center on your website is imperative to capture the attention of your visitors. Your USP should include your product offering but it may also extend to your amazing customer service or various options for ordering products. Remember, you are not just selling a product or service, you are selling your brand.

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Tips on Writing a Unique Selling Proposition:

  1. Get to the Point, Then Provide Details

    At the top of the page, tell visitors succinctly and simply exactly what your product or service can do for them in colloquial terms. Show all pricing up front to avoid surprises that may lose them later. Lower on the page, you can add technical specifications, product details and options. Don’t make visitors sort through long paragraphs in your copy or they may leave your site.

  2. Include Top Search Terms

    When writing your unique selling proposition, do your research. Ask your sales team how customers describe your products or what terms they might search to find you. Look at what terms competitors use on their site. Getting your site to rank high on search engines can help you increase exposure and visitors.

  3. Offer a Bulleted List and Image

    Organize product details and specifications on a bulleted list and provide an image that tells the story of your USP. The faster visitors can find the information they need, the more likely you’ll attract their attention and avoid having them turn to a more organized competitor.

  4. Be True to Your Brand

    Improving conversion rates is not a one-size-fits-all plan. What works for one company may not work for another. When talking about your products throughout your copy, use appropriate tone and language to represent your brand. For example, while it may be appropriate for a pop culture brand to use memes and slang, a financial services website risks losing credibility by doing so.

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ADD REINFORCEMENTS

TO INCREASE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR OFFERING

Provide Proof of a Satisfied Purchase

Show customers they’re making the right decision with visual reinforcement of your unique selling proposition (USP). Provide that extra push visitors may need to convert to customers by showcasing satisfied customers with reviews and testimonials, as well as displaying rewards earned for great products and services. Don’t be afraid to add other media formats like images and video along with your text to boost its value.

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How to Reinforce Your USP:

  1. Add Accreditation and Certification Badges

    Demonstrate responsibility and earn trust. Show visitors they’re working with a legitimate and ethical company recognized by well-known industry authorities.

  2. Display Customer Logos

    Do you service B2B clients? It is influential to show other brands who have benefitted from your products and are pleased with their experience.

  3. Provide Testimonials and Reviews

    Showing testimonials and reviews from real customers can remove skepticism. If the review highlights a specific product or feature, place it on the appropriate page to boost its persuasiveness.

  4. Include Social Proof

    Add social media feeds for your active accounts to reinforce relationships with customers and provide great customer service no matter where they choose to engage.

  5. Show Product Availability

    Create urgency using time or supply. Show a limited duration of time to secure an offer or show product quantity when items have sold out or have a limited quantity still available. Be honest to maintain trust with customers.

  6. Stand Behind Your Policies

    Link to your policies at the bottom of your website and at checkout. Be sure that all service representatives know how you care for customers to provide a consistent experience on chats, calls, on your site and in stores (privacy, shipping, returns, payment processing, and FAQs).

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TEST, TEST, TEST!

IDENTIFY WHAT WORKS BEST

Testing

To truly uncover your opportunity for growth, you’ll have to test various elements on your website. Only through testing you’ll discover that your visitors will react to small changes that make a big difference. You may see changes in how visitors react to content variants on your site. First, look over your analytics and form a few hypotheses about what could be improved to increase conversions. Then, test those hypotheses out.

Suggested forms of testing include A/B testing and multivariate tests, landing page tests, software tests, user testing, and also by conducting surveys and polls to gather real feedback from visitors.

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Make sure you change only one element from variation to variation to isolate the element being tested.

Real Life Example:

Say you want to test font A vs. font B on a landing page. You would show half of your traffic font A and the other half would be presented with font B. If font B performs better (you know this because it shows a higher conversion rate), you’ll implement this change permanently on relevant pages throughout your site to increase conversion rates from then on.
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What Elements Can You Test?

  1. Page titles and headlines

  2. Page layout

  3. Colors of design elements

  4. Placement of design elements

  5. Website design features

  1. Calls-to-action (Text, color, icons)

  2. Placement of calls-to-action

  3. Copy / How you describe products

  4. Font Size

  5. And More

BENEFITS OF A PAID PLATFORM

Google Analytics vs. Paid Marketing Platforms

Google Analytics is an outstanding tool that provides an overview of insights on how your site responds to traffic and generally what types of visitors are coming to your site. These metrics include bounce rate, time spent on site and what the users are doing on your site. You can configure it in a way that will let you compare a few traffic sources and how each affect your site. You can also configure Google Analytics to track conversions, but you must do so for each campaign. Unless you modify it to do so, Google Analytics will only track site traffic and will not aggregate analytics with those from your other marketing tools.

Google Analytics can be somewhat overwhelming in its entirety and can be time-consuming to configure to generate the metrics needed to prove ROI from your marketing campaigns. However, it is a tool that provides a good start for small businesses looking to improve their site.

A Paid Insights Platform enables you to customize your dashboard with ROI analytics at the top as well access more targeted analytics that dig deeper into specific customer behavior. Aggregate and align site analytics with campaign analytics from various channels and automated marketing tools. Evaluate traffic to your site through a variety of viewpoints such as on a campaign level, or by the individual visitor to see how specific customers respond to your content and behave on your site. Use collected customer data to trigger and personalize content by unlimited saved data points such as location or industry. You can also track customer journeys, specific funnels, call to actions, ROI rates and more.

All data is connected and initiated through your marketing platform so you never overlook important details that can make or break campaigns - and your customers never miss out on your content. Once installed, your campaign analytics are automatically tracked in line with your site data.

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