With online competition becoming more intense as businesses realize the importance a web presence can have on their success, a great amount of money and energy are being spent on search engine optimization (SEO) and online marketing strategies. This involves keeping a close eye on what your competitors are doing, the latest rules that Google has implemented, as well as finding out other ways to attract more visitors to your site. After all, the more targeted traffic that comes your way, the higher your conversion rates, right?
Unfortunately, this is where most business owners falter. Yes, SEO and Internet marketing play a crucial role in the success of a business, but your online success is not based on simply attracting visitors to your site, regardless of how targeted they are. The next question you have to ask yourself is what happens once they arrive. What’s the use of spending all of that time and money if you have no idea what to do with your visitors once they finally enter your store? Most people feel that simply throwing in a few product pages, providing a bit of high-quality content, and adding a few call-to-action-messages will do the trick. While this might yield some rewards, you are very far from helping a site achieve its full potential in terms of conversion rates. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) plays its part.
Qualaroo.com states the following on what conversion rate optimization is,
A structured and systematic approach to improving the performance of your website…Informed by insights, specifically, analytics and user… defined by your website’s unique objectives and needs (KPIs)…Taking the traffic you already have and making the most of it
In essence, you are finding the most effective way to direct your readers so that they click on all the right links, read all the right pages, and ultimately make a purchase. In order to do this, you have to study your site’s analytics very carefully, and you have to combine this research with other aspects such as human nature, which are largely dependent on factors such as the type of buyer persona and products or services you are trying to sell. More importantly, you have to continuously work on your website’s CRO, because like most things online, human nature and every other aspect that dictate the success of your site, are constantly changing and adapting.
Tiffany daSilva said it well on Searchenginejournal.com,
I love learning about psychology and the way people think, and I love watching movies and tv….Deconstructing shows to try to understand why did that make me laugh, why am I so glued to this character, what made me start hating another are amazing persuasive and psychological techniques that I use on landing pages everyday.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Performing Conversion Rate Optimization:
1. Making Changes Based on Random Guesses
A common mistake that some website owners make when trying to perform CRO on their website is not being systematic enough. Instead, they try to make a few changes based on the initial research that they’ve carried out, and once those improvements have been made, they leave it at that. To make things worse, when they realize that things are not working too well, they begin to use the reactive approach by changing specific aspects on the fly, but in a random fashion. This makes it very difficult to measure these changes, and so they are not sure as to where to go from that point on.
For CRO to be effective, every action that you take has to be systematic. In other words, you have to make small changes, measure those changes, and then make a decision based on whether that small change actually made a difference. Everything has to be recorded as this will make it easier for you to measure and to consult later when needed. While having a hunch can be rewarding at times, you should never base your actions on complete guesses and nothing else. Everything you do has to have a reason behind it, because this again will allow you to measure whether that particular reason was actually called for.
2. Not Making Full Use of Website Analytic Data
It is almost impossible to improve your conversion rates if you have no idea what your visitors are doing once they land on your site. You can’t always go by the advice of other people by simply changing the color of a button or using a particular font to improve the conversion rate on your call to action message just because it worked for them. While there are a few basic rules that can work across the board for everybody, or at least for most people, keep in mind that the way one person’s site has been set up is most likely completely different from the way your site is set up.
You also have to realize that they might be attracting a different type of audience, which means that their audience most likely has a different type of mindset compared to your own audience. So the only way to truly get a good idea of what is happening on your online business is by carefully studying your website’s analytical data. This will give you a good idea of which pages are the most popular, which pages tend to have the highest bounce rates, and which pages have the highest exit rates. You will also be able to get a good idea of the route that your prospects take as they move along the different pages within your site, and whether or not they finally make that purchase or sign up for your newsletter, or perform any other type of action that you have been hoping for.
Split Testing Is Key
According to Optimizely.com,
Split testing (also referred to as A/B testing or multivariate testing) is a method of conducting controlled, randomized experiments with the goal of improving a website metric, such as clicks, form completions, or purchases. Incoming traffic to the website is distributed between the original (control) and the different variations without any of the visitors knowing that they are part of an experiment.
During the testing phase, you need to wait long enough until you see some type of statistical difference between the two experiments. Once you have these differences noted, you should have enough information on which of the variations show the best improvement. This form of testing is extremely effective because it allows you to make small changes in a controlled environment, and to easily spot the changes that showed the best results. Once this happens, you take a look at the experiment that showed the worst results and then replace it with a new experiment so that you can once again begin performing A/B testing on the improved and new experiment.
So by giving CRO the same importance as Internet marketing and SEO, you are providing the perfect environment for your online business to reach its full potential.