What is The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The main objective of any website is to generate enough traffic and get potential customers to make a transaction (a purchase, request information …). However, less than 3% of users who visit a website become end customers. If we want this figure to increase, we need to analyze our website to plan actions that help us optimize our conversion rate.

What is the conversion rate?

The conversion rate is the percentage of users who perform the action we want on a website. While it usually refers to those who make a purchase, this is not always the case. A conversion can also be to register on a website, subscribe to a blog or a newsletter, download a document or fill out a contact form.

The conversion rate is, therefore, the result of dividing the number of users who perform an action we want, among the total number of users who visit the web.

In an ecommerce portal, we know that we need to attract more traffic and get those customers who have already bought, repeat. In addition to this, we must not forget that one of the best actions to increase sales is to develop a strategy that allows us to increase the conversion rate since a small increase in this, implies a very considerable increase in sales. If, for example, our conversion rate is 1%, achieving 0.5% more implies selling 50% more.

Why do I need to improve the conversion rate?

Let’s see some advantages that we need to know the conversion rate in our online sales platform:

• We understand our customers better: Thanks to this analysis process we can know which customers we have, what product they are looking for and thus offer them a more precise product or service.

• We increase the number of clients: If we know our clients, we can offer them an experience that fits their needs, and this will make us have a greater number of clients, and in addition, they will be more satisfied.

• More satisfied customers = more sales. By offering a product or service suited to the needs of our customers and that is also easily accessible through the web, we will have more chances that your browsing will be translated into a sales process.

• We improve the design of our website without risks. We can make incremental improvements in the design of our website without big costs, checking how customers react with each initiative, gradually.

• Google improves the positioning of your page. If Google perceives that the number of customers of your website is increasing, it will offer us a better position.

Steps to follow to optimize the conversion rate

The process of increasing the conversion of our digital business, in order to increase the percentage of visitors that our website receives and make a purchase, a registration or a subscription, is called optimization of the conversion rate, a process known also by its acronym in English as CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).

We’ve already seen what the conversion rate is and how important it is to our website. But now what do we have to do if we want to optimize the conversion rate?

1. Analysis of the performance of our website

For a web page to work optimally, many factors must be taken into account. There are a large number of tools that analyze websites and their results provide us with “how-to” techniques and documentation on how to proceed to optimize the site. Some of these tools are Woorank, PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom …

In a well optimized website with good content, it will be more complicated for the end user to leave immediately, and by improving our bounce rate we will also be improving the positioning of our website.

2. Implement changes gradually

All changes that we need to incorporate into our website must be made gradually to avoid risks and to locate what aspects of our website we must modify, analyzing the results of each change that we implement individually.

CRO practices for an ecommerce

Usability test

It is one of the first steps we must take before using any other optimization task. We will perform a usability test aimed at the target of the website in order to analyze its behavior and improve navigation to be clear and concise. If the client is not able to find the product easily, it does not end up being acquired and the conversion ratio does not increase. The objective of this practice is to improve the website in order to achieve an optimal user experience that offers us a high level of usability.

Tests A / B

It is one of the most used techniques. To do this, we design two pages with different layouts or elements and show each of these pages to 50% of our users, in order to know which design, texts, or images result in a better conversion rate.

Optimized landing page

We have to apply techniques that allow us to have a design of our website suitable, that prevents our potential customers who find our site through a search engine, find the relevant content and do not return to the results page.

Some practices that we can apply to the design of our website are:

• Clear and concise content

• Striking headlines and use of keywords that attract customers.

• CTA buttons that stand out visually and speed up the purchase process.

• Concise forms, including only those fields for the information that we consider strictly necessary.

• Images and videos of the products: use images that represent the product faithfully as well as videos that allow the user to know how the products are used and their functionalities.

• Eliminate advertising to the extent possible, as they cause a traffic leak from our site in favor of third parties, as well as a deviation of the user’s attention on our product.

Technical performance of our website

An improvement in technical performance means reducing the loading time of the pages of our website as much as we can. This improvement technique affects both the navigation of the site, its pages, and the purchase process. Although we improve other aspects of the web, these improvements will not imply an improvement in the conversion rate if we have to wait a long time to load it. In fact, the long waits in the loading of websites, is directly related to a wide reduction in the conversion rate, since in addition to leaving the page, we damage the confidence of our users by providing a slow service. For Google, loading speed is one of the main SEO factors that influence the positioning of websites.

Segmentation

We must adapt the message we want to convey to our users at the product or semantic level and also, at the appropriate time. We must also verify that abundant but understandable information is provided to the right audience.

Special attention to registration and check out processes

It is one of the key points that can make your ecommerce have a satisfactory user experience, or on the contrary, is completely detrimental to the conversion rate, since the purchase process can not be managed well. It is recommended that registration be an optional requirement, not being strictly necessary for the user to register as a customer to complete a purchase. Although, we can introduce advantages that are only for subscribed members, such as discounts.

With regard to the payment gateway, it is very important to ensure that the user’s personal data is protected and safe from third parties, generating confidence in our client. We can also add some tools that improve the user experience, such as various forms of payment or fractionation facilities.

If you want to optimize the conversion rate and thus obtain an increase in the profitability of your website, I have an expert team to help you. Do I help you with the optimization of the conversion rate of your project?