Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who convert into customers. Conversion Rate Optimisation (AKA CRO) is how you can increase this percentage and turn clicks into customers.

CRO is a great way to increase sales, but it also has many other benefits improving the results of other marketing activities, such as social media, PPC, paid ads and SEO.

Read our full guide to why CRO is essential for your business.

There are many techniques to improve your website’s conversion rate, but the goal is to reduce obstacles and make it easier for users to become customers.

Below, we outline how to get started with CRO.

How can I get started with CRO (conversion rate optimisation)?

Decide on a clear goal.

Ask yourself: What is your goal?

Are you looking for customers to buy your product? Sign up for your newsletter? Send an enquiry for a quote? This is important as this is what you will be focusing on when looking at your conversion rate. It’s important to get this clear in your mind before you start any CRO activity.

Common examples include making a purchase, submitting information, signing up for a mailing list, creating an account, downloading a freebie or it could be simply engaging with a page on your site.

There’s no right or wrong answer – it all depends on your priorities as a business.

Find out your current conversion rate.

Take a look at your analytics and see how your users are interacting with your website. Are there users leaving your website before purchasing? Where does this happen? Are there any obstacles? Can this be avoided?

You should be able to find out this information in your website analytics, or via another tool like Google Analytics.

Depending on your end goal, there are different conversion rate formulas you can use:

• (Total number of conversions / Total number of leads) x 100 = your conversion rate.
• (Total number of conversions / Total number of unique visitors) x 100 = your conversion rate.
• (Total number of conversions / Total number of sign-ups) x 100 = your conversion rate.

Identify areas of improvement.

Once you have a clear goal set in mind and know your current conversion rate, you can begin the identify the areas of your website that need optimising.

For example, it could be a complicated payment process, a disjointed landing page or website copy that is lacking a compelling message.

Take a look at your website design.

The design of your website and how easy it is to navigate have a huge impact on your conversion rate. If your website is harder to use or information about your services is difficult to access, then your potential customers may look somewhere else.

It’s also important to ensure all the buttons on your website work correctly, as this might make it harder for your customers to buy your products/services.

Optimise key landing pages.

Landing pages are one of the most important pages on your website in terms of converting clicks into customers. An effective landing page should be compelling, provide clear information about your product/service and have a persuasive call to action.

Remember to focus.

It’s easy to be tempted by improving lots of different areas of your website at the same time, but if you start changing too many things, it can be hard to measure what has been effective in increasing conversions.

Focus on one area or goal at a time to ensure your time and energy is not wasted.

A/B testing can help you to track results and prioritise areas for improvement.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you increase the conversion rate of your website, talk to a member of our team today.