Conversion rate optimization: 5 steps to boost website conversion

When developing a website or a project, after you formalized the goal, you should ask yourself: now that I have brought my users to my website, how can I improve the conversion rate? Spoiler: CRO is always the right answer.

As you may already know, every website has different conversion goals; that's why an effective Conversion Rate Optimization needs an ad hoc approach based on listening and analyzing the user's behaviour and ensuring constant improvement. 

The aim of CRO is not only to optimize conversions. In fact, for e-commerce, reducing prices would be enough. The goal is also to increase turnover by leveraging different disciplines such as data analysis, UX design, SEO, copywriting, content design and neuromarketing.

The advantages of Conversion Rate Optimization

The main competitive advantage of Conversion Rate Optimization is the reduction in cost per acquisition (or CPA), which means you get more for the same money. Therefore you multiply the worth of your budget.

The reduction in CPA can be an advantage in two ways: you could increase your budget on already used and most efficient channels or you could decide to test other sources to diversify your business and, as a consequence, your target.

Another way that CRO can be beneficial to your website is by increasing the value of the average cart (or lead). All this by fostering the purchase of more products or the same number of higher-value products (increase of CRR, Customer Retention Rate).

The last element that makes your website stand out from competitors: CRO allows you to reduce the churn rate, therefore the cart abandonment, and to increase the CLTV, that is the Customer Life Time Value.

Why there are no best practices in CRO. 5 steps to start improving your website

The heart of Conversion Rate Optimization is a clear assumption: there are no one-for-all solutions or best practices. The key is to make constant checks and tests on any change and only later, when you have the statistical certainty that it generates an improvement, to put into practice the modification.

Here are five operational steps that help you outline a hypothesis of optimization of your website.

The first step relates to the diagnosis and analysis of the sales funnel. A picture of the brand in its entirety, its users and how the conversion process works. First, it is necessary to draw a map of the whole purchase flow, then analyze the individual sections (with drops!) and eventually a document with the specifications to turn users into buyers;

The second step is a heuristic analysis taking into account the elements that may negatively impact the user experience carried out with monitoring tools but also eye-tracking, visitor surveys and a detailed report. This analysis has the following key parameters:

1. relevance (does the page meet the user's expectations?), 

2. clarity (are the contents and the offer represented effectively?), 

3. value (can we increase the reported value?), 

4. friction (are there any elements that create doubts?) or distraction (is browsing a linear path towards the objective?).

The third step is technical analysis. This phase is necessary to focus on the most critical KPIs and analyze the pain points that are causing a hitch in the funnel. This phase can be carried out through analytics tools, user tests or also surveys that target the website under consideration.

Fourth step, doing an A/B Test verifying two message variations to see which is the most effective in terms of conversion. At this point, there are several phases. You may begin with the hypothesis of optimization, then move on to the design of the variations. After that, you should select the personas in your reference target, and set the test tool. Only after these steps, you can go on with the analysis of results to understand how the variations performed.

Fifth step: rely on a crowdtesting platform and a community of highly selected and profiled testers.  You can submit different tests such as competitor analysis, heat map, video recording of the users' actions, identification and finding of problems and bugs that may prevent the clients of a website from reaching a central goal such as conversion.

CRO is a winning approach in the web marketing strategy with a straightforward mantra: test, test, test. Testing is the only way your website can bring qualified conversions and a substantial increase in your turnover.