Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): The Ultimate Guide

Conversion rates (CR) are key to a successful and thriving business. Every word you write, format you choose, and color you use plays a role in how well your web pages convert. Even small investments, over time, in (CRO) conversion rate optimization can offer impressive ROI. Lower acquisition costs, lifetime customer value, and better user experiences (UX). Which all result in increased revenue generation.

The following article answers the question “what is CRO?”, delves into its many benefits, implementation strategies, and best practices.

Additionally, if you’re interested in learning how to bolster your conversion rate optimization efforts, we’ve included intuitive lead management tools to help with that, too.

Read on for insights, tips, and strategies to increase conversion rates and watch your revenue grow.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

CRO (Conversion rate optimization) is the process of cultivating your online presence to maximize conversion rate potential. Implementing (and optimizing) a documented CRO marketing strategy gives web pages a higher chance of compelling website visitors to take the desired action (whether that’s subscribing to a newsletter, scheduling a test drive, or making a purchase).

Many factors influence conversion rates, and different areas of your website can convert for different things. No matter the desired action, CRO helps you design an effective and engaging customer experience (CX) that attracts prospects and inspires loyalty.

4 Benefits of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

CRO benefits both businesses, and the consumer. From generating more sales to improving the relationship between you and your customers, CRO is an investment that yields high ROI for everyone.

1. Increased Revenue

Above all, when executed correctly and consistently, conversion rate optimization helps increase revenue generation because higher conversion correlates with more sales.

2. Improved ROI (Return on Investment)

According to Market.us Scoop, utilizing CRO technology resulted in an average of 223% ROI (return on investment), illustrating why conversion rate optimization is a major advantage in the modern online business world.

3. Enhanced User Experience

Conversion rates are directly tied to the user experience (UX). When a website is clunky or confusing, it frustrates users and increases site abandonment. CRO helps optimize UX and UI into a fluid and engaging experience that draws prospects deeper into the funnel with every step.

4. Better Understanding of Customer Behavior

Conversion rate optimization ensures each step of the customer journey is intentionally designed to cater to your target consumer. A deeper understanding of your target consumers’ buying habits, pain points, goals, and identities helps you create content with the best chance of attracting, appealing, and converting them.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

Before you can improve conversion rates on your website, you need to know how well your current pages are performing. Calculate conversion rates with an easy conversion rate formula like the one below:

Step 1: Choose a published asset in your sales funnel (like a landing page, sales page, or website page—any page asking the visitor to take action)

Step 2: Divide the number of confirmed conversions (anything from a subscription form to a completed purchase) by the total number of visitors to that webpage.

Step 3: Multiply the number you get from step 2 by 100 to get a final conversion rate percentage.

Here’s a real-world example of what the above conversion rate formula looks like:

If your landing page was visited 1,000 times and collected 125 email subscribers out of those 1,000 visitors:

• Divide: 125 ÷ 1,000 = 0.125
• Multiply: 0.125 x 100 = 12.5
• The final conversion rate percentage is 12.5%

4 Website Areas to Implement A CRO Strategy

You can implement conversion rate optimization on practically every touchpoint between your brand and your customers. However, the following four areas are the best places to start.

Landing Pages

One of the first places to focus a CRO strategy is a landing page. It’s a key point in your lead generation funnel, and can often yield easier conversion opportunities because you’re offering something (a free lead magnet) in exchange for low-commitment reciprocation (an email address).

You can also split test more of your CRO hypotheses to identify the efficacy of your strategy—without making massive changes to your website.

Call-to-Action (CTA) Buttons

While short and seemingly simple, CTA buttons drastically impact conversion rates. Everything from the color and placement to the words and tone influence CTR (click-through rates). According to a 2023 study by Hubspot, personalized CTAs converted over 200% better than non-personalized (generic) CTAs.

Checkout Process

As the final stage of your sales funnel, the checkout process must be seamless, convenient, and engaging. Without proper CRO, even finalizing a purchase can churn prospects if the CX (customer experience) is lacking.

Website Forms

From sign-ups on a landing page to entering payment information during the checkout process, website forms are entwined with practically every step of your lead and sales gen funnels, so they should be high on your CRO list.

6 Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies

Your CRO strategy will vary based on your industry, your customers, your goals, and your budget. Conversion rate optimization can range from just tweaking headlines on webpages to completely redesigning your website or implementing conversion technology such as personalization, AI, or lead generation.

The following six strategies encompass a wide range of options that work both harmoniously and independently.

1. Conduct A/B Testing

Conversion rate optimization is like a science. You develop a CRO strategy (hypothesis), and then you test how effective it is. Don’t pigeonhole your marking and optimization strategies into one idea, CTA, or piece of content. Split test different variations of copy, headlines, layouts, and more to see what works best.

A/B test multiple headlines, page layout, and CTA button wording, color, placement, etc., because even changing a single word can impact your CTR (click-through rates).

2. Implement Personalization

Personalization is directly tied to CRO because of its influence on the customer experience (CX). Online consumers want to see products and content only relevant to them. In fact, 62% of consumers are turned off by brands that lack personalization; whereas, 80% of shoppers are more willing to make a purchase if the brand offers a well-executed, personalized experience.

Integrating personalization technology into your CRO strategy boosts conversions, and improves CX, by automatically generating customized experiences based on the consumer’s existing shopping habits.

For example, addressing the customer by name, sending promotional deals based on their previous purchases, or displaying “recommended products” section with products that align with the shopper’s tastes.

One unique way The Great Daffodil Appeal used personalization technology, was creating a personalized map that showed supporters exactly where they could find the nearest drop off locations for donations.

3. Include Exit-Intent Pop-Ups

Adding exit-intent pop-ups to your website can help keep people on your website, or at least compel them to join your email list or other action. These outcomes can boost website conversions, so they’re a win-win.

4. Develop an Effective Social Proof and Testimonial Strategy

A major factor in conversion is the trust built with a social proof strategy. Customer reviews and UGC (user-generated content) are key to building trust with prospective customers because they offer a more unbiased perspective.

Research demonstrates the impact customer reviews can have on conversion, with 38% of US online shoppers saying online reviews were a very important consideration before buying a product. Additionally, a staggering 50% of car shoppers read customer reviews before buying a car.

When you use a lead conversion platform like Podium, you can generate more reviews and improve star ratings (helping you rank higher on Google), all of which convert more leads.

5. Simplify Your Checkout Process

A major hindrance to conversion is a bad customer experience (CX), and forcing prospects to navigate an overly complicated or drawn-out checkout process is one of the best ways to frustrate your customers and abandon their cart. Analyze your current checkout process for opportunities to streamline the experience as much as possible.

6. Create an Abandoned Cart Strategy

An abandoned cart sequence lets you follow up with customers who don’t complete the checkout process. Abandonment email sequences are powerful, with an average open rate of over 50%.

Send a follow-up email reminding customers about their abandoned shopping cart, and you can even offer a discount to further compel them to complete a purchase.

6 CRO Tips & Best Practices

There are numerous elements influencing the success of a conversion rate optimization strategy, and the following tips and best practices will help you chart a course toward higher conversion rates.

1. Define Clear Goals

After you have a clear picture of current website conversion rates, analyze your competitors and consult experts to help you define realistic and achievable goals for your online presence or business. Determine your KPIs (key performance indicators) and the channels you’re going to focus on (for example, reworking your website copy or improving your Google Ranking by increasing your rate of customer reviews and star rankings).

2. Analyze User Behavior

By studying your target consumer, you can identify what content appeals to them, how to solve their specific pain points, jargon that resonates with them, shopping habits, and much more. Understanding how your target audience spends time online is crucial to creating a successful CRO strategy.

3. Optimize Page Load Speed

Improving web page load speeds on both desktop and mobile can increase conversion rates because most people are impatient and may not see your web page if it takes too long to load. According to a 2022 study, ecommerce sites with a load speed of one second or less are shown to convert 2.5x more users than pages loading in 5 seconds or less.

4. Implement Responsive Design

Responsive Web Design (RWD) ensures that no matter what device your customers use (a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone), the page remains user-friendly (load speeds optimize automatically based on the device, page layout format relevant to the device, etc.). To illustrate the impact, Hostinger Tutorials shared that 62% of the high-ranking sites prioritized mobile optimization.

5. Use Compelling CTAs

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are crucial to conversion rate optimization. Even just changing the color or the wording on a button can improve CTR (Click-through rate).

Here are some CTA tips:

• Make sure it’s very clear what will happen when someone clicks. For example, if you’re trying to get someone to schedule a test drive, “Schedule a test drive” is clearer than “Take a spin” and may perform better due to its clarity.

• Keep them short and concise. This practice is especially true if the CTA is in a button format.

• Make them easy to see and interact with. Test out different colors, shapes, and placements, and intersperse them throughout the page.

• Ensure there is always a CTA at the end of the page. People may not read an entire web page, so place a CTA at the end of every page for easy access.

6. Optimize Content Regularly

One effective way to improve your CRO is by updating existing content. Study current trends in your industry to see if any of your articles can be polished for renewed relevance. Look to similar articles for inspiration on what to include so existing content has the best chance of consistently appearing high in search engine results—while saving time and money by repurposing.

Grow Even More With Podium

One of the first and most effective ways to implement your CRO strategy is with a powerful platform like Podium. Here’s how our all-in-one lead generation tool increases the effectiveness of your conversion rate optimization efforts:

Increase Your Library of Social Proof and Testimonials

Podium aims to help small businesses take advantage of the power of customer reviews. Our automation and SMS technology help you collect customer reviews and star ratings so you can rank higher in Google searches and provide prospects with extensive customer feedback to help them make informed buying decisions.

Streamline Workflows with AI Employee

Using Podium means you adopt a powerful, 24/7 AI Employee that does the work of entire teams and never gets tired while providing impeccable customer service—from selling and scheduling appointments to instant customer support and communication. How does the AI Employee directly contribute to higher conversion rates? It’s helped Podium users generate 30% more sales while they sleep.

Hear more about the incredible power of Podium from success stories from real business owners like you.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about how Podium helps you convert more leads and keeps them coming back for more.

FAQs

What is the difference between CRO (conversion rate optimization) and SEO (search engine optimization)?

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s a content optimization strategy that helps a web page elevate their search engine ranking. Keywords used, word count, and website formatting can all impact a web page’s SEO score.

CRO is an acronym for “Conversion Rate Optimization”. It’s a strategy meant to compel prospective customers to take a desired action on a website (convert). This action could be anything from subscribing to a newsletter to making a purchase. CRO ensures that every touchpoint a prospect interacts with is specifically designed to increase the likelihood that they will execute the desired action.

In summary: 

• SEO is the process of helping prospects find your business/website/content.

• CRO creates a user experience with the best possible chances of converting them to customers.

What is a good conversion rate improvement?

The average conversion rate ranges from 2% to 5%, but a desirable conversion rate equals no less than 10%. Any conversion rate improvement means more customers and more sales, thus any increase in conversion is good.

Even just changing the number of characters in a Title tag can increase CTR by almost 10%

Conversion rate optimization is an ongoing marketing strategy, so you always have an opportunity to increase the percentage of your conversion rate on a regular basis.

For example, consider optimizing your site for voice search, as nearly half of the US population uses voice search daily.

What elements impact CRO?

Conversion Rate Optimization is impacted by:

• The quality of your user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX).

• Page and image load speeds.

• Data analysis (how your pages are currently performing and how your target consumer behaves).

• The clarity, visibility, and relevance of your calls-to-action.

• A/B testing and iteration to enhance what works and tweak for improvements.

• Your reputation (that’s where a consistent customer review strategy comes in).

Schedule a demo today to learn how Podium helps you convert more leads and keeps them coming back for more.