Artificial intelligence and machine learning could revolutionize the way that businesses do CRO.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a technique that increases the percentage of website traffic that converts to buyers. Adopting strong CRO practices will help you scale your business and increase your revenue.
“Conversions” is a term that describes the users who have entered your online sales funnel and completed whatever action you encouraged. In most cases, this action means buying something. However, you might simply want a prospect to sign up for an email newsletter or download an app.
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Regardless of the goal that you have in mind, monitoring your conversion rate is the first step toward increasing it.
There are plenty of effective CRO strategies that will increase your business’s conversion volume. However, CRO strategies are evolving all the time. With the rise of new online trends and mediums, the channels via which people consume content are continually changing. You must stay up-to-date with these trends so that you can keep your business afloat.
In this guide, we’ll cover some of the most effective CRO strategies and our predictions of how new technologies may impact those strategies.
Why Is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
Online traffic is irregular, and it can be challenging to persuade someone to enter your sales funnel. CRO can help you minimize losses of time and money from less successful marketing efforts
Besides helping you scale your business, CRO also provides insights into customer behavior. Having this knowledge is critical because it should inform how you design and manage your site.
While you should design a website to reflect the values and personality of your business, you also want to remember the values of your target audience. After all, it’s your customers whom you’re trying to engage and convert.
You can determine your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors within a limited period and multiplying that number by 100.
The numbers can be telling, but you want to note that conversions and revenue don’t always correlate. You can have a low conversion rate but have high revenue. For that reason, a lot of businesses conduct A/B testing to understand the relationship, but more on that later.
Here are some of the factors that determine your conversion rate:
- Traffic and offer lineup: If you want to obtain a high conversion rate, your website traffic has to come from people to whom the offer is relevant. For example, you aren’t likely to convert a middle-aged man if your company sells homecoming dresses. Your traffic needs to come from homecoming dress buyers for your CRO to genuinely reflect the impact of your business.
- Customer base: Everyone knows customer service matters because building a loyal base of customers is lucrative. Customer retention is one of the best ways to increase profitability.
- Cost vs. value: For optimal conversion rates, your website will have to convince a prospect that the value of what you’re offering them is equal to or greater than the effort they must put in to receive that item or service.
- Clear messages: Being direct and approachable is essential. People will trust your brand if you pose a solution to their problems and highlight the unique benefits of your product or service.
CRO matters because paid searches are becoming increasingly more expensive and competitive. CRO is a great way to stand out among other brands and dramatically increase your revenue.
How Learning About User Behavior Is Critical
Many business owners who rely on online activity fail to monitor user behavior as closely as they should. Fortunately, there are many tried-and-true methods for doing so.
A/B testing is a great way to do this. This method involves presenting two variants of the same page to different groups of visitors. With the A and B models displayed, you can determine which option is most successful.
Whichever variant produces higher conversions is the winning variant. This simple method is one of the most effective means of quantitative research to understand your website visitors and determine what they find most interesting.
Based on those observations, you can model other parts of your site after your more successful webpages.
Other tools like click maps, heatmaps, and form analyses can show you what areas of your site attract visitors. From here, you can decide what information is vital to your business’s website and what information is detracting from the user experience.
New Technologies That Could Impact How We Optimize and Create Content
Even though several baseline CRO strategies exist, the reality is that CRO is specific to your business. What works for another company may not work for you. Moreover, the CRO strategies that you use should change as society adopts new technologies.
New technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) could revolutionize the way that businesses do CRO.
AI cannot create content that elicits an emotional response, but it can track what content is the most effective at producing the most desirable outcome.
Take data, for example. Data can uncover what variant of an experiment or test is the best. It can help you discover the optimal cost-per-click, strategies to obtain the lowest cost-per-acquisition, and tactics to produce the highest return on ad spending.
Computers can process large amounts of data very quickly. You can get real-time feedback almost instantly. New technologies impact CRO by making the process faster.
Another benefit is that you can use technology to appeal to everyone. By splitting website traffic between different variants of your website, you can segment consumers based on their needs. Consumers who exhibit one type of demand will find themselves directed to a variant of your website that best suits them.
For example, you can segment your consumers by their income, loyalty to the brand, and commitment to finding a good deal. Based on their values and priorities, you can create content aimed at them.
This scenario is where AI comes into play. The technology can automatically determine which consumers belong to a particular group and deliver content to them.
Other CRO Tips
Now that you have a basic understanding of the future of CRO, let’s talk about some CRO strategies that work now.
- Comparison tables: If your business offers a wide selection of products, you’ll want to make it easy for prospects to decide what product is the best for them. If not, they may get frustrated and end up leaving your site. Comparison tables allow you to quickly highlight the best products for a specific type of shopper. This formatting improves the overall user experience.
- Strong calls to action: Calls to action are essential because they are the final pieces of content standing between your consumer and the action you want them to complete. Make sure your calls to action are clear and appropriately sized. Design them using bold colors.
- Use images: An easy CRO trick is to populate your site with lots of images. Prospects are more likely to look at an image than they are to read a paragraph of copy. They also make your brand appear more trustworthy.
- Motivate prospects using urgency: A lot of prospective customers will hold off on purchasing something as long as they can. Make the purchase feel urgent by offering a limited time discount or suggesting that a particular product has a high demand.
- Don’t make your customers think: Consumers stay away from websites and brands that aren’t transparent and direct. You should make everything as easy as possible for a prospect. For example, keep reviews on the same page as a payment gateway. This layout removes an extra step and could increase your sales.
Final Thoughts
CRO is an essential tool for business growth, and it will remain that way regardless of the technological advances that gain traction in the coming years. What will change is the methods we use to increase conversion rates.
The most notable difference will be the speed at which this process takes place. Advances in AI and machine learning will make it possible to record and analyze data at a faster pace.
Technology continues to shape digital marketing. CRO will continue to be an asset to companies who want to see measurable growth for their online presence.
Understanding user behavior is the first step to changing it. If you can step into the shoes of your target audience, you can let that information inform your marketing activities.
Doing so will also help you build the trust of your customers. Customer retention is another factor that strongly influences your conversion rate. Don’t guess when it comes to setting up your website and marketing activities. Be informed and intentional.
