Why is CRO so important for growing your business online?

With Reuters reporting recessionary clouds gathering on the horizon, as a business, it’s crucial you look to optimise your marketing to generate leads, improve revenue, and safeguard business continuity.

In 2018, Clutch figures reported that web marketing was used by 78% of businesses – a figure that’s almost certainly grown after the remote experience of the pandemic.

A key part of aiming to maximise the returns from your web marketing activities is conversion rate optimisation (CRO), but what is CRO, how does it work, why is it important, and how can you ensure that your CRO is benefitting your business? Read on to learn more.

What is CRO?

CRO is the process of refining your website’s conversion funnels, calls to action, checkout process etc in order to try to gain maximum conversions from your paid advertising, social media marketing, SEO or any other form of digital marketing that directs users towards a conversion.

That conversion could include buying a product, subscribing to a service, signing up to a free demo, or providing contact details to become a lead.

How does CRO work?

You can work out your conversion rate by dividing the number of visitors who complete an action (i.e., those who ‘convert’) by the overall number of visitors / ad clicks etc.

If you have a low conversion rate, it’s possible your activity isn’t persuading users to convert (perhaps due to driving irrelevant traffic), but often it is the design of your website and/or its conversion funnels that could be preventing users from doing so efficiently. Conversely, high conversion rates are often due to users being compelled to act and enabled to do so.

Why is CRO so important?

The practice can be crucial if you want your digital marketing activity to make a difference to your bottom line. Without it, you may be able to generate plenty of traffic via organic or paid activity, but this might not translate into revenue as efficiently as you’d like.

Conversion rates are arguably one of the most important metrics when running any digital business. It’s for this reason that many business owners enlist the skills and knowledge of an agency specialising in CRO, as opposed to trying to organise activity themselves in a haphazard or disconnected fashion. 

What are the key elements of CRO?

There are several ways businesses can improve their conversion rates and galvanise the success of their activity:

  • Consider the customer journey – All of your digital marketing activity should slot into your customer journey. This includes customers gathering information on what you offer, comparing the options available, then making a purchase. Every journey is different, so be sure to conduct in-depth audience research to understand your customer personas, their pain points, drivers, and preferred marketing channels – then look to optimise for these.
  • Think about your USPs – What products or services do you offer? How do these differ from the competition? How are they better than what’s provided elsewhere? By differentiating your offer, making it sweeter than the competition’s, and ensuring your site communicates these unique selling points effectively, you can boost your conversion rate.
  • Call customers to act – Whether you’re producing online content, social ads, or paid advertising, your marketing activity should always have a clear and descriptive call to action. This CTA, typically driving the user to checkout, a contact / subscription page or a phone number should be clear and descriptive, showing the user what you want them to do and where the call to action will lead.
  • Test, test, test – If you’re unsure what steps you need to take, then test multiple variants. A/B or multivariate testing involves providing two or more options to your customers, split by anything, from messaging, to images, to calls to action. By analysing how these different options perform, you can pick the most effective one and roll it out across your site.

CRO is tough, but crucial. Hopefully, with the steps above you can improve your conversion rates and improve your business’ prospects in kind.

Photo by Amelia Bartlett