Should I Use Conversion Rate Optimization Services for My Website?

If you are struggling with conversions on your website, conversion rate optimization services can help drive the results you need. But how do you know if this is right for you, or what it would look like for your business?

First, ask yourself: Is your website gaining lots of new traffic, but your conversions are still low? Are you confused about whether or not to spend more money driving traffic to your site? Do you simply want to increase conversions on your website?

Conversion rate optimization can be a valuable strategy in any of these scenarios. Learn about the ways conversation rate optimization can increase conversion and save money in the process below. You can also read more about how Online Optimism implements conversion rate optimization for our clients.

What Are Conversion Rate Optimization Services?

It may seem intuitive that the more traffic you get on your website, the higher the chance that customers will convert. However, focusing on the process in which that traffic converts is just as important as gaining the traffic itself. This is where conversion rate optimization services can be a great tool for your business.

The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60–70%, whereas selling to a new customer is 5–20%. Hence, there is good reason to focus on improving the experience for returning customers as well. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) focuses on ensuring your website is run optimally to encourage conversion. Conversion doesn’t necessarily just mean revenue, but also can refer to any KPI that relates to your business.

A KPI is a key performance indicator and can vary from business to business. A retailer’s main KPI may be revenue, whereas an e-learning site’s main KPI may be subscriptions or downloads. Other KPIs can include bookings, user logins, contact form submissions, free-to-paid subscriptions, email submissions, new signups, and much more.

How Can You Optimize Your Conversion Rate?

Optimizing your conversion rate can be achieved in a number of ways:

First: Find out what you need to change.

• Use a conversion funnel to determine where customers are falling out.
• Analyze heatmaps to observe what content customers are engaging with the most. Heatmaps provide a visual of the most and least popular areas of a webpage using color.
  • 60% of online shoppers in the U.S. said they needed to see an average of three or four images when shopping online.

Second: Decide on areas for improvement and optimize them.

• Improve your website layout, content, and messaging can make a huge difference to your business.
  • Using videos on landing pages can increase conversion by 86%. Landing pages are the pages your customers first land on. To increase conversions, you’ll want to focus on pages that require users to complete a call to action, such as filling out a contact form or an email submission, like ours.

• Include filters (especially with ecommerce brands) to ensure customers can easily find your products.
  • Only 16% of websites offer a good filtering experience.

• Ensure the conversion page is as simple as possible. Customers are less likely to part with their information and money if it is difficult and confusing to do so. Only ask the questions you really need to know.
  • Every $1 spent on user experience results in a $2–$100 return.
  • 74% of people will return to a site if it is optimized for mobile.

Third: Check that the changes you made are working.

• A/B test to show if the changes you made are actually working by providing information from the original page and from the page with any CRO changes you’ve made. 
  • An A/B test works by showing your audience two different versions of your website. Group A will see the original page and the other half, group B, will see the same page but with the CRO changes you have made. You will then be able to see if group B converts at a higher rate than group A.
• Analyze any changes in conversion rate. Use what tools you have available to find out if revenue has increased since the changes were implemented, if there have been more email submissions since the changes were made, or any other changes to the KPI you’re tracking and seeking to optimize.

There are CRO tools available for businesses you may want to try to put to use yourself. But for those who need a helping hand, want to avoid the hassle, or want to gain results faster, you can use an agency to take care of this for you.

Benefits of Using Conversion Rate Optimization Services

There are benefits other than conversion in improving your CRO:

1. You can spend less money by focusing on existing traffic and customers.

By converting more customers using the traffic that already accesses your site, you’ll be spending less money on acquiring new customers. 

New customers can usually be pretty expensive, depending on the amount of money your business spends on marketing. In some industries, like technology software, the customer acquisition cost can be as high as $395. Acquiring a new customer can be five times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

Furthermore, the customers that have already accessed your site have already expressed interest in the products or services that you provide, making them more valuable to target.

Here’s how to calculate your customer acquisition cost (CAC):

CAC = Total marketing expenses / Total new customers

If your CAC is high, you may want to seek out conversion rate optimization services for your website.

2. You can work to increase average order value.

Another benefit of improving your CRO is that the average order value (AOV) is likely to increase. The average order value is calculated by dividing the total number of orders by the total revenue. This is incredibly important for businesses whose most valued KPI is their revenue. 

When a customer is provided with a seamless website experience, they’re more likely to find what they need and convert. Improving the website layout and messaging is a great way to increase the AOV. For instance, a technology retailer may want to show their customer potential add-ons for the TV they have in their cart, such as HDMI cables, TV stands & brackets, etc. 

By improving your messaging, you can convince customers to convert with higher ticket items. For example, you might add a pop-up message when entering the site with an incentive like free shipping or a 10% discount offer for those who provide their email address. This, in turn, captures conversion in two ways: email submission and revenue.

Contact Us for Conversion Rate Optimization Services

As much as these tips will help to convert existing customers, improving these various parts of your website will appeal to new customers as well. But ensuring that you’re navigating the ins-and-outs of CRO can sometimes be tricky and time consuming. Seeing the positive results from these changes can also require a lot of testing and reporting. For help with conversions in your business, contact us about our conversion rate optimization services.