CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION (CRO)

Want to know how our Melbourne digital marketing agency goes about optimising your website for conversions? Here’s how:

First, we assess the data-
We analyse your initial market standing to get an understanding of what your competitors are doing, and what your customers might be looking for.

Then, we hypothesise-
We put our data insights and industry experience to work to brainstorm the most effective ways to increase your conversion rate.

[Eg.] Let’s say you have an established e-commerce website and are looking to increase your conversions; we’ve gathered the data, and notice that your users are having issues filling out an enquiry form, we’ll get to work figuring out why as well as postulate a few potential solutions.

Test, Test, Test!
Then we split traffic amongst the original web page, vs a variation of that web page. After a suitable amount of time, compare with the initial hypothesis to to see if it looks likely to be true or not.

Finally, we Implement results
We gather all relevant information gathered from the testing process, then implement on your site and watch the conversion rate go up!

Rinse, and repeat.

Where the river meets the sea

By combining the doctrines of user experience and customer-centric design, our Melbourne team aims to cover every aspect of the customer’s digital experience.

User Experience (or UX) is a vital part of conversion rate optimisation.

Take your homepage, for example. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, your homepage is also a big opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website.

CRO aims to meet the user’s needs by emphasising links to specific products, or product information, by offering a free signup or ‘subscribe now’ button , or even by incorporating an interactive chatbot that can answer basic FAQs.

CRO also makes it easier for the potential and existing customers to browse through your pages and take actions. By taking an approach that puts the customer at the centre, you’ll be able to design features that customers will appreciate.

Customers are not only more informed than ever, but they are also more connected and receptive to establishing lasting relationships- Part of the doctrine of customer-centricity is, in every aspect of optimising your website for conversions…keep the customer in mind.

By being adaptive to changes in consumer behaviour trends, you’re far more likely to stay relevant and increase your conversion rate.

You’ll have seen them everywhere.

A Call To Action or CTA broadly speaking is either an image or a line of text which prompts your website visitors to take a specific action. A simple call to action can be ‘Click here for more information’, but effective CTAs are a little more complicated than that.

Often times, their effectiveness is thoroughly tested through a variety or processes (called A/B testing), and as you probably would guess, wording or presenting it differently can have a sizeable impact on the effectiveness of a given CTA, in converting ‘visitors’ to ‘customers’.

CTA’s are most often found in the form of an invitation; an invitation to act, to delve further or to ‘Find out more!’. Sound familiar? It should. They are most effective when they are designed and written with a specific goal in mind. Goals like; Are you after more purchases? Keep the user on your website? Or perhaps you want to increase subscriptions?

A term coined by Robert Cialdini, Social Proof, sometimes referred to as ‘informational social influence’, describes the psycho-social phenomenon by which people imitate others.

With respect to CRO, social proof is the way in which you can reinforce your trustworthiness to the user, by enlisting a variety of visual techniques to really hammer home why the user, who may be on the fence about choosing you, will end up converting to your services.

Social Proof can come in a variety of forms, and depending on your product, brand and industry, can all have varying degrees of effectiveness. Below are just a few of the ways you can amplify your brand and boost conversions:

Certifications.

Trust association logos and certification icons are a great way of proving your worth to your visitors. Adding a button that details your skill certifications or even industry accreditations send a strong message of trustworthiness to potential customers and can have a positive effect on your conversion rate.

Testimonials.

Another popular social proof technique is the floating testimonial, and are very effective strategy if your industry relies heavily on a trust-relationship between business and the consumer. Testimonials show that your business is established enough to have a slew of happy, satisfied customers. This will lead to greater confidence in new customers considering a purchase.

Reviews.

Ask yourself; Do you look for good reviews of a product before you decide to purchase it? We do too. Reviews are an incredibly effective way of letting customers know that what they’re thinking about purchasing isn’t just what they are looking for, but that it is of a sound quality. And what better way of illustrating that, than displaying good reviews for potential customers to see!

The proof is in the ….proving?

You might be wondering how we know that social proof works? It’s pretty simple: testing.

Through a rigorous testing process, we can determine the just how effective certain proof points will be for you, including the type (ie. banner, button, invitation, symbol or accreditation), the content (ie. text or visual components) and even down to where to most effectively place the proof, to maximise your conversion rate.

Take a scientific approach to conversions.

Sometimes referred to as ‘split testing’, the basic principle behind A/B testing is to expose a website, experience (or even!) an ad, to two alternative sets of users (or demographics) to see if one responds with more conversions than the other.

This can be done with nearly every subset or type of audience imaginable, the end result being that you have a greater idea of not just who responds better to your ads or CTAs, but also where to place them!

Some of the main benefits of running A/B testing on your site include;

• Decrease your bounce rate
• Gain insight into web-page inefficiencies
• Re-design website around the user’s experience
• Dramatically reduce guess-work and room for error

There are a number of factors to test that have some of the most sizeable effects on increasing your conversion rate:

Headline testing has proven itself a necessary aspect of the CRO process, and when you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense. Hyperbolic or ‘Clickbait’ headlines are sure to grab attention, but it’s likely to not be the kind of traffic you want, as the user who engages a vapid headline is more likely to be dissatisfied when then land on the site and realise it is not what it was promised. This approach can hurt your brand and erode trust.

Whereas dull, un-engaging headlines can simply do the opposite; fail to attract! A/B testing is a great way to figure out what kind of  headlines your customers are most responsive to.

Colour palette is paramount. Not sure which ones to go with? Let the data decide! Many businesses overlook the important and powerful impact that colours can have on the unconscious mind of the consumer- Obviously however, what colour set you choose will depend on your industry.

Say for example, if you were in the finance industry- a prevalent logo colour is blue, as it instills a feeling of calm and trustworthiness. Whereas, for the hospitality industry, blue is far less effective at evoking the same response. (cite. HubSpot). What do you think is a more effective button colour to entice an online purchase, red or green? We could go on forever, but you get the drift…

A/B testing allows you to see what colour-set your target consumers respond to most.

CTA’s, Images and button text are other absolutely vital aspects or A/B testing for CRO.

Gone are the days when you could put all your important decisions down to ‘gut-feeling’.

Not sure what kind of imagery to use on your site? Test it! See what works. What about button text, invitations to click further, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘subscribe here’ buttons? A/B testing allows you to fully control the process of optimisation down to the letter.

Call to Action buttons (or CTAs) are perhaps the most common way of convincing prospective users to take an action, and nearly every aspect of their presentation can be tested; from button colours, to text, even to specific placement on the webpage.

Here’s a few tools our Melbourne digital agency uses to test our hypothesis’, based on a set percentage of your visitors, as well as where the most clicks and scrolls are happening across mobile and desktop users.

Google Optimise

Google Optimise allows you to test changes to your site and to display version A against version B, without the need to re-code the website itself , the aim being to increase website visitor satisfaction and in turn, the overall conversion rate.

Heat Mapping

This one’s handy. Heat mapping tools like Crazy Egg enable us to look at a visual representation of where the users are most interested in on your web page, by highlighting the busiest (or most clicked-on) areas, buttons and aspects of the page. By studying these heat maps, we gain an invaluable insight in to what is working and what isn’t, and perhaps even how to fix issues!

Visitor Recording

Ssssllllllightly creepy, but great for CRO. Visitor recording programs like Mouseflow enable us to record videos of users browsing your web pages, so that you can see what is working and what isn’t in real time.

A plague o’er both your landing pages!

Increased visitor value

With a successful digital marketing strategy, your website or landing page will be pulling in great amounts of traffic. Don’t you think your visitors deserve a decent experience? CRO techniques will help deliver a far more memorable visit for your most valuable commodity; your customers.

Increased profits

CRO aims for converted customers. When your conversion rate increases you are more profitable. Yes, implementing a CRO plan does have a cost but your advertising cost can remain the same, while delivering you more profit. Analysing and making small cost-effective changes will also increase the value of your site, instead of rethinking other costly aspects of your marketing strategy.

Higher quality of traffic

More profit also translates to more customers. Once conversions happen and profits increase, you can divert some of your budgets to increasing your advertising bid prices, which can help you reach a bigger audience and eventually more customers.

Increase in traffic

A website optimised for conversions will get the visitors hooked. These visitors, if they enjoy what you present to them, will spread the word and bring in more traffic. And if it is relevant traffic, the probability of conversions increases too.