What is CRO and Why Do You Need it?

Using CRO to maximise conversions and ROI

Want to start winning more conversions online without increasing your advertising budget? That’s precisely what conversion rate optimisation (CRO) aims to achieve.

There’s no point spending more on advertising or marketing until you’re confident that you’re maximising the potential of your existing website visitors. CRO is a cost-effective strategy that helps you turn more of your website visitors into paying customers.

In this article, we’ll explain more about what CRO is and how you can leverage it for business growth.

What is CRO?

Let’s begin with a definition of CRO. CRO stands for conversion rate optimisation. Website CRO is a process that aims to increase the percentage of visitors who take the desired action on your website (i.e. the number of conversions). The desired action could be anything from buying something to submitting an enquiry or signing up for your mailing list. Ultimately, your business’s success depends on how frequently website visitors take these actions, so CRO is not something you can afford to ignore!

If you’re not yet actively incorporating CRO into your business strategy, then this is your sign to start! A good place to begin is by figuring out how your website is currently performing. You can do this by calculating your website’s current conversion rate. To do this, take the number of conversions for any given period, divide this figure by the number of visitors for the same period and then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

For example, if your website has gained 700 conversions over the last year and attracted 25,000 visitors, then the calculation would look like this:

(700 ÷ 25,000) X 100 = 2.8%

Once you know what your website’s current conversion rate is, you can use CRO techniques to improve its performance and help grow your business.

How does conversion rate optimisation (CRO) benefit an online business?

CRO is a cost-effective way of growing your business. It doesn’t involve spending money on expensive advertising campaigns or changing how your business works; it simply concentrates on optimising your website’s efficiency to get more out of your existing traffic and boost your business’s profitability.

So, how does it achieve this?

CRO is all about making changes and tweaks to your website design and functionality to improve the user experience and drive more conversions. By using CRO techniques to enhance your website’s performance, you can drive business growth.

Some benefits of CRO include:

Increase ROI – CRO helps businesses to get more value from their existing marketing spend and website visitors without spending more.

Improve website UX – CRO uses data from website analytics and customer feedback to enhance a website’s UX and better meet visitors’ needs.

Enhance brand reputation – Websites that deliver a superior and satisfying user experience are more likely to earn a professional and credible image. Prioritising user satisfaction helps brands build trust with visitors, boosts their overall reputation, and creates stronger connections with their target audience.

Uses data-driven decisions – CRO uses analytics data and customer feedback to guide decisions. Leveraging data-driven strategies enhances cost efficiency and helps drive tangible results.

Reduces customer acquisition costs – Boosting conversion rates using CRO helps businesses make the most of their existing traffic to lower their customer acquisition costs.

How does CRO differ from SEO (search engine optimisation)?

So, CRO vs SEO – what’s the difference? Conversion rate optimisation and search engine optimisation (SEO) are two important digital marketing strategies used to improve different aspects of a website’s performance.

SEO is the process of optimising a website and its content to improve its visibility in search engine results pages and attract more organic visitors. CRO focuses on converting these visitors into customers or leads.

SEO tends to involve more technical and content-related work, while CRO involves more design, user experience, and behavioural analysis.

Both strategies are equally as important and should be combined for optimum performance. 

What role does user experience (UX) play in CRO?

CRO and UX are inextricably linked. Websites that offer a superior user experience tend to enjoy higher conversion rates than those that don’t. Therefore, enhancing the UX is an important part of CRO.

To improve UX for CRO, it’s important first to thoroughly analyse user behaviour. Identifying pain points and areas of friction within your website will help you to make targeted improvements aimed at enhancing flow and improving the user journey, usability, and accessibility. By addressing these issues, you can increase the chance of visitors taking the desired action and boost conversion rates.

What are the key components of a successful CRO strategy?

Before you can embark on your CRO journey, you need to understand the four key components of CRO strategy.

• Analyse visitor behaviour

Since CRO is a data-driven strategy, the first step is to gain a deep understanding of how users are currently interacting with and experiencing your website. Identify areas of high engagement and potential drop-off points where there is room for improvement. There are plenty of tools, including website analytics tools, heat maps, and user feedback, available to help with this stage. We’ll explore popular CRO tools in more detail later.

• Set CRO goals

Once you’ve gained insight into your website’s performance, you can begin setting actionable and specific CRO goals. Consider what improvements could address the weaknesses you identified and how they could potentially impact conversion rates.

• Make improvements

Now, it’s time to make strategic improvements and implement proven CRO techniques to boost conversion rates. Your CRO strategy could involve a range of tactics, including optimising CTAs, refining navigation, streamlining the checkout process, enhancing mobile responsiveness or accessibility, and more.

• A/B test

All changes should be carefully controlled and rigorously tested. A/B testing allows you to compare the performance of different variations and validate which changes yield the most significant improvements in conversion rates.

• Regular monitoring and reporting

Monitor key performance metrics regularly and report on the impact of your CRO efforts. Use this information to refine your strategy and inform future changes.

10 common CRO techniques

The right CRO techniques for you and your website depend on its current performance and your goals. In this section, we’ll explore a range of common CRO techniques that businesses can implement to maximise conversion rates and improve overall performance.

• Fine-tune your conversion funnels

A conversion funnel is a series of steps that visitors take to move through your website and complete a desired action, such as submitting an enquiry or making a purchase. To boost conversion rates, map out your website’s conversion funnels, identify any bottlenecks or friction, remove obstacles, and fine-tune each step.

• Create optimised landing pages

Landing pages are tailored pages specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. Create optimised landing pages that feature clear and compelling messaging and persuasive calls-to-action (CTAs) to guide users towards taking the desired action.

• Personalise the UX

Tailor the user experience based on individual preferences, behaviour, and demographics to significantly increase conversion rates. Delivering personalised content, offers, and recommendations to users creates a more engaging and relevant experience and helps drive conversions.

• Increase site speed and mobile responsiveness

Ensure that your website loads quickly and adapts to different devices and screen sizes to provide a seamless user experience. Slow-loading pages and poor mobile responsiveness can lead to higher bounce rates and lost opportunities for conversion.

• Simplify the checkout process

Minimise and simplify the number of steps in your checkout process to alleviate friction and encourage more users to complete their purchases.

• Incorporate social proof

Integrating social proof elements like customer reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content can build trust and credibility with visitors, increasing the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase.

• Highlight offers

Showcasing special offers, discounts, promotions, and incentives prominently on your website can attract attention, create a sense of urgency, and encourage visitors to convert.

• Optimise CTAs

Creating clear, compelling, and strategically placed CTAs throughout your website is crucial for driving conversions. Optimised CTAs can effectively guide visitors through the conversion process.

• Leverage customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping involves visualising every touchpoint and interaction a customer has with your brand, from discovery to conversion and beyond. Use data, analytics, and feedback to gain insight into customer behaviour and preferences at each stage of the journey and highlight opportunities for improvement. Align your website’s messaging, content, and UX with customer expectations to foster stronger relationships and drive more conversions.

• Implement exit surveys

An exit survey is a pop-up or widget on a website that asks visitors to complete a short survey before they leave. Exit surveys help businesses collect valuable feedback and insights from customers about barriers to conversion. The information gained from these surveys can then be used to inform your CRO strategy.

What tools are commonly used in CRO to analyse and improve performance?

Effective conversion rate optimisation requires an excellent understanding of the customer journey and careful analysis of website performance. The best way to gain these insights is by using conversion rate optimisation tools. There is a variety of different CRO tools available to help you analyse, measure, and optimise different aspects of the customer journey on your website. These tools can help empower you to make informed decisions, test hypotheses, and continuously refine your CRO strategy. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular CRO tools and software.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for CRO. It provides detailed insights into user behaviour, website performance, and the effectiveness of your CRO efforts. It allows you to track key performance indicators (KPIs), set up goals and funnels, and measure the impact of the CRO changes and techniques you implement on conversion rates. You can monitor user flow, track conversion rates for specific actions, and identify areas for improvement based on data-driven insights. If you manage an eCommerce website, you’ll need eCommerce tracking configured, a developer can help you to do this. 

User survey and feedback forms

User surveys and feedback forms can be used to collect valuable insight from website visitors about their experiences, preferences, and pain points. Platforms like SurveyMonkey can help you create and distribute surveys to gain insights that can then be used to inform your CRO strategy.

Eye tracking

Eye-tracking technology like Tobii is used to analyse how users visually engage with your website. By tracking eye movements, you can identify which elements attract attention, how users navigate the page, and areas of potential distraction or confusion. The insight gained from eye tracking technology can provide valuable insight into user behaviour and help to inform design decisions to improve UX.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps show you where users click, scroll, and hover on your website. This insight can help you optimise your website’s layout, content placement, and CTAs to engage users and win more conversions. Popular heatmapping tools include Hotjar and Crazy Egg.

Session recordings

Tools like Mouseflow can be used to record and replay user sessions to gain insights into how visitors navigate your website. These tools can help you identify usability issues and areas of friction that could be negatively impacting conversion rates.

A/B testing

Optimizely and VWO are two of the most popular A/B testing platforms for conducting CRO tests. These tools can be used to run experiments to test different variations of website elements, like headlines, CTAs, and layouts, to determine which variant achieves the highest conversion rates.

Partner with Create8 to implement a successful CRO strategy

Are you ready to start turning more website visitors into leads or sales? Conversion rate optimisation is a cost-effective way to start making more money without spending more on advertising or marketing.

Partner with Create8 to get your CRO project off the ground. We offer web design and UX wireframing services to help you implement CRO changes and techniques. Contact us today to learn more about our work and discuss your project with our team.