What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Since the birth of the internet back in 1991, countless new internet-related terms and acronyms have entered the everyday vernacular of millions of people, including URL, IP, SEO, browser, HTTP, click-through, plug-ins, backlinks, HTML and domain.

With the constant development and evolution of technology, increasingly technical terms have become common language amongst people whose livelihood depends on the use of the internet.

One term that some may be less familiar with, however, is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). CRO, like search engine optimisation (SEO), is concerned with increasing online visibility and driving traffic to specific websites.

However, the way it diverges from SEO is in its focus on converting that increased traffic into customers, or in a more general sense, taking the desired action on a webpage. It could involve anything, from filling out a registration form, clicking on an advert banner, buying a product or signing up to a newsletter.

How to calculate conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link. rates

Conversion rates are worked out by dividing the number of times a desired action is carried out by the number of unique visitors to your website. So, if there were 200 sessions in one day and 120 of those sessions converted into sales, the conversion rateA conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action on your site. would be 60 percent.

It is worth noting that the same unique user cannot convert more than once, which means that if they sign up to a newsletter and then come back again later to read a blog post, this will only count as one session and one conversion. For that reason, it is calculated by dividing by the number of visitors themselves, rather than the number of visits those individuals make.

Strategies for improving CRO

Clearly, for the majority of businesses on the internet, the overall aim of driving increased traffic to a web page is to convert that traffic into loyal customers. While some people will simply not be interested in the goods or services you are providing, there are a number of different strategies that can be implemented to improve CRO. They include the following:

1. A/B testing

Fundamentally, A/B testing is an exercise in marketing in which two or more variants of a web page are shown to users at random and statistical analysis is used to ascertain which one performs better with respect to rates of conversion. There is a range of different factors that might be changed, including headlines, images, colour schemes, fonts, words per page, video content and taglines.

While more prominent companies that receive more traffic will be able to test this more effectively, it is important to note that CRO, like search engine optimisation, always has room for refinement as people’s preferences and tastes continually adapt and evolve.

Multivariate testing, on the other hand, uses the same core theory as A/B testing; however it compares a higher number of variables, revealing relatively more information as to how these variables interconnect with one another.

2. Blog page

According to an article published by Hubspot, having a blog is one of the single most significant opportunities for conversion that a business can take. As well as providing a space to promote your goods or services in their best light and offer thoughtful insight into the industry in which they operate, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into customers effectively. It could be by adding linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to landing pages that request a call-to-action (CTA) or present a form that must be filled out in order to receive further information.

Importantly, after you have identified which blog posts have the highest rate of conversion, you should then proceed to apply SEO strategies to those specific posts to improve their visibility online. Make sure that the posts convert to leads and not just number of reads, as traffic does not necessarily indicate anything beyond good copy content.

3. Focus on your homepage

In most cases, your homepage will be the first place visitors go when they click on your website. This means that not only must you be able to make a good initial impression with your content, but it needs to be somewhere that gently guides visitors to the landing pages where you will be able to convert them into customers.

There are a whole host of various methods for doing this, including emphasising links to products, featuring special deals and promotions, offering a free registration button, or having a pop-up chat box that will connect the visitor with a live agent, who can then guide them in person.

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