What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a process that boosts the percentage of website users and visitors through built-in actions customers can take, such as filling out form popups, becoming an email subscriber, or making a purchase.

By building workflows and other marketing strategies focused on conversion rate optimization, there can be an increase in customer retention and increased sales and revenue.

Why Is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?

Conversions are vital to any online business strategy. Successful conversions stem from clear and decisive marketing and strategy goals. Clear goals follow a distinct pattern that will follow the end-user and align with built-in customer journeys.

The goals associated with completed journeys are often:

• Website purchases.
• Subscribing to newsletters or other services.
• Creating an account.
• Using push notifications.
• Adding to the cart.

Through metrics and reporting, businesses can ascertain which conversions are gaining traction and which goals are being met. This is the conversion rate.

The Conversion Rate

The average conversion rate is between 2%-5%. Each industry has a set industry-specific conversion rate target number. It’s important to find the correct percentage for your specific business to better model how goals and conversions are determined.

Lower conversion rates represent an error in workflows, website design, or other functionalities. In contrast, high or equivalent conversion rates represent that goals are on par and in step with industry standards.

Many analytic reporting sites will calculate conversion rates. However, it’s essential to understand where the numbers come from and what they signify.

How to Calculate Conversion Rates

Conversion rates are found by finding the number of completed conversions and dividing that by the total traffic on the site. Multiply the number by 100 to find the conversion rate percentage.

Optimizing Conversions

After understanding what conversions are and how to calculate the conversion rate, the next step is to optimize conversions.

To optimize conversions, visit the places where key conversions are taking place. This usually comes down to a specific landing page on the website. Here are a few key examples:

• Product page
• Homepage
• Add to cart page

Optimizing the Product Page

The product page should display the product and/or service offerings of the business. To optimize this page, attention should be placed on using clear images and price points, reviewing rankings, determining how users visit the page – via mobile or desktop – and using other methods to catch the consumer’s attention.

Best practices for optimizing the product page include:

• Mobile capability and functionality.
• Upfront pricing and sales.
• Dynamic images with hover capability.
• Features and product information.
• Request a quote.
• Customer reviews.

Optimizing the Homepage

The homepage is your first impression to the customer. A negative impression can have an immediate impact, ending any chance of another site visit. On the other hand, a positive impression can engage a customer, encouraging them to pursue a customer journey and complete a conversion.

Tactics like popups can provide two sets of conversions. One conversion is the contact email to add to the customer relationship management system (CRM). Once the customer is a contact, other dedicated marketing strategies like email blasts can later convert the contact into a purchaser.

Other methods, like a homepage slider, help cultivate the customer journey. A customer interested in the blog and not the product page may signify that the customer is more interested in the information you provide and views the business as an industry expert.

Understanding your customers’ unique journeys can build conversions through newsletter signups, push notifications, and even social media.

Best practices for optimizing the homepage include:

• Adding a popup to create an account or subscribe to an email list.
• Buttons or images that lead to the product page and/or blog.
• Featured products and/or services.
• Request a quote.
• Customer reviews.

Optimizing the Add to Cart Page

The add-to-cart page isn’t a landing page that garners a lot of thought. However, when done correctly, the add-to-cart page can account for more than a single conversion.

Abandoned carts can be recovered. How? By building an abandoned cart workflow. Instituting this type of workflow can be crucial to completing a shopping cart conversion. The average recovered abandoned carts is between 3%-5%. If no optimization is implemented, that’s 3%-5% of sales lost with no conversions.

Another optimization feature for the add-to-cart page is displaying applicable discounts or coupons. Choosing this type of optimization allows customers to gauge how much they can save and entices them to spend more.

Best practices for optimizing the add-to-cart page include:

• Adding an abandoned cart workflow.
• Suggesting a “You May Also Like” product/service feature.
• Applicable discounts or coupons.
• Customer reviews.

How Do You Determine Which Conversion Optimization Is Best?

There are countless marketing strategies and tactics that can achieve conversion optimization. But, not all methods work for every business. It’s best to customize based on the needs of the business.

Building a strategy, customer journeys, workflows, and all other marketing initiatives can be a handful. TenStrat is here to tackle the strategy and help build custom conversion optimization goals.

Are you ready to join us? Get started with a custom quote today!