Supercharge your digital marketing: Using CRO to boost ROI

Most digital marketing talk focuses on getting high numbers of visitors to websites. But until those visitors become customers, the job isn’t complete. CRO might not be as well known as SEO or PPC, but it’s the key deciding factor in how effective they are – and how much return you get for your outlay.

What is CRO?

CRO stands for conversion rate optimisation. It picks up the baton once a user is on your website, and guides them to the finish line, whether that’s making a purchase, requesting a meeting, downloading your brochure – or whatever the goal of your marketing campaign is.

What are the benefits of CRO?

CRO is all about getting better returns from your marketing spend. It won’t directly improve the number of people visiting your website – but it will improve how many of them, for example, make a purchase. And that’s what really counts.

If your marketing campaign currently attracts 10,000 visitors to your site, and 5% make a purchase, you’ve sold 500 units. If you employ CRO to double your conversion rate to 10%, you’ll double the number of units sold, up to 1,000, which essentially makes all of your marketing twice as effective. That goes for the future, too. If you ramp up your marketing and increase your visitors to 15,000, then you’d be rewarded with 250 extra sales without CRO – or 500 more sales with it in place.

What does CRO do?

SEO (search engine optimisation) focuses largely on how computer algorithms interact with your website. SEO’s main goal – through the use of keywords, strategic content and good technical construction – is to convince the robots powering search engines such as Google that your site should be ranked ahead of the competition.

That’s very useful, but getting a high number of visitors is not usually your end goal, it’s a step along the way.

CRO then targets the users who have clicked through to your website. It uses various techniques to take them from “maybe” to “yes”. These techniques are centred around these key themes:

• Make the offer clear
  Once a user is on your website, it needs to be absolutely clear not just what you’re offering but why it’s the best option, and why you’re the best business to deal with. Maybe you’ve got the best prices, or you offer the best quality, or you are truly unique. CRO ensures that this message is loud and clear
• Incentivise
  Once it’s clear to a potential customer what you’re offering, it’s time to highlight why right now is the best time to make the next move. Common methods include sales and free trials, and can be backed up by confidence-boosters such as clear returns policies, guarantees and social proof, such as showcasing independent reviews.
• Remove the barriers
  In addition to signposting all of the great reasons to deal with your business, it’s equally important to remove as many reasons as possible that a potential customer might think twice. The reasons could be technical, such as that your site is difficult to navigate, slow to load or doesn’t show up well on mobiles or tablets. It could be poor marketing, for example your photos are low quality, or your descriptions are unclear or uninviting. It could be that it asks too much data from potential customers – the more personal information required, for example, the less likely people are to input their details at all. It could be that the payment process doesn’t look legitimate enough (it’s up to you to separate yourself from the shady online operators.) CRO is about bulldozing each of these barriers and making the path forward as simple as possible.

How do you optimise conversion rates?

All of the above are examples of what can persuade or dissuade a potential customer, but the exact methods that will work for your site will depend on the sector you’re in, the product or service you’re offering and the make-up of your audience. But if you follow the general formula of: make your offer clear, give an incentive, remove barriers to purchase – then you should see conversion rates improve.

The best place to start is by testing new ideas. Identify something which you believe will improve uptake, implement it, then compare conversion rates before and after. Fine-tune as required.

If your website and marketing is advanced enough, you will be able to implement A/B testing which allows you to compare ideas side-by-side. Essentially, it shows one version of your website to one randomly selected group of visitors, and a different version to others. You can then compare results to see which version is the most effective.

There is no magic number to beat. Conversion rates vary. But so long as your conversion is trending upwards, then you’ll be making more sales / getting more meetings / encouraging more downloads, and your CRO is working. The proof is in the bottom line.

If you’re interested in learning more about CRO and how it can help you get better returns from your marketing spend, contact the seoBusiness team for a friendly, no-commitment chat.