Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is all about getting more of the people who visit your website, landing pages or social media accounts to complete your conversion goals. This may be anything from a newsletter sign-up to an e-commerce transaction.

This service ties in closely with a number of other online marketing tools but perhaps the most important is digital analytics analysis.

Conversion rate optimisation is an ongoing testing and results analysis process where we look for opportunities to improve conversion paths and remove issues that stop people from converting.

Tools such as Google Analytics play an important role however other analytics packages are also used such as heat-mapping and scroll analysis software. These services are the source of terms you may have heard such as split testing and multi-variate testing.

Why CRO is so important

Failing to analyse how, why and when users convert on your website leaves you blind to many opportunities. All of the effort you put into SEO, PPC, email marketing and so on may be wasted if your website is doing a poor job at getting people over the finish line.

Sometimes even the simplest change may have a huge effect on your conversion rate. It may be just a change to an image or the colour of a button that does the job, but if you aren’t testing how will you know?

When using PPC with landing pages it is practically essential that you be performing at least a landing page split test, at all times.

Very rarely will two competing marketing elements ever return the exact same conversion rate. Take two landing pages as an example, one will always outperform the other – a performance discrepancy. Without testing, how can you know which design is performing best? Which one should be terminated? Which elements should be used in future designs?

Do you need it?

As an online marketing consultant I am clearly biased towards using conversion rate optimisation as I see it as a cornerstone of any online marketing strategy. That said, it becomes very important when using paid online marketing channels such as PPC, email marketing, social media advertising – any platform that you pay a fee to reach your audience.

You want to ensure the highest ROI.

If your website has never been assessed or if you are about to inject a large budget into an online marketing campaign then you will certainly want to consider a conversion optimisation review. If your budget allows for it, look to make it a regular part of your digital marketing management.