What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation (or CRO) is the practice of converting more leads into customers. Optimising your conversion rate can include tweaking your copy, making changes to your page design, or changing any number of other factors such as your offer or times you post on social media, with one goal in mind – getting more conversions.

By optimising your conversion rate, you’re maximising the amount of revenue you get for every visitor to your page. But let’s start at the beginning – what do we mean when we talk about conversion rates?

What is a conversion rate?

Conversion rate simply means the number of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal (i.e. a conversion) out of the total number of visitors.

For instance, let’s say you have a 25% percent conversion rate. That means only 25% of the people who visit your website convert.

Imagine your website as a bricks and mortar store. If you get 100 people through the door, many of them might browse and look around, but only 25 will leave with a purchase. That’s your conversion rate.

Everybody wants as high a conversion rate as possible. A high conversion rate means your web design and marketing efforts are successful: you’ve made people want your offer, and made it easy for them to get it!

As for what conversion rate should you be aiming for, or what’s a “good” conversion rate – you might as well ask “how long is a piece of string”. The answer will vary by industry, product, niche, and a host of other factors. Also, if your conversion rate was particularly low to begin with, an improvement by 0.1% could be considered “good” by comparison.

Generally speaking, you should always aim to increase your conversion rate. And you can do that with conversion rate optimisation techniques.

How to optimise your conversion rate

When it comes to increasing conversions, it’s kind of like navigating stormy seas. No path is going to be the same: some people will have bigger boats or more satellite navigation equipment and still fail, others will just get lucky. Sometimes your goal is out of reach no matter what, and other times the conditions are more favourable.

But like sailing, there are some general principles you should keep at hand, and know when to use them for maximum effect.

For example, one study found that using long-form landing pages increased conversions by 220 percent. Neat, huh? Not when you consider that some companies find that short-form landing pages work better for their offer and their audiences.

There’s one way to improve your sales without impacting your conversion rate: increasing traffic. By playing the numbers game, you’re getting more people through your proverbial doors, without affecting your conversion rate.

Using the bricks and mortar example above, it would be like attracting 200 customers into your store, doubling your potential customers. Even if your conversion rate stays at 25%, it’s now 25% of 200, not 100. Fifty sales is better than twenty five – but as far as effort goes, it’s much more efficient to coax purchases out of the traffic you already have, instead of getting more visitors.

Common CRO methods

In the world of digital marketing, CRO best practice has a few tried-and-tested methods that are generally considered to help raise conversion rates across the board.

Many of these methods are ones we talk about in this blog. They are:

• Use a strong CTA (call-to-action)
• Bold colours attract attention to the CTA
• Place CTAs above the fold
• Use urgency (e.g., time-limited offers) to drive sales
• Display testimonials and social proof
• Use fewer form fields on your forms

If you’re just starting out with conversion rate optimisation? Try these first. They’re kind of like the “golden rules”, which, when they’re missing, are the most common weak spots in any landing page.

Just like whenever you make changes to your page, test, test, and test again. Split testing will hopefully lead to a little bump in conversions when you hit upon something that benefited from optimisation, and you can follow that thread to make similar improvements elsewhere.

But what about when the above methods don’t work for you?

Intelligent CRO: know your audience

Just because it worked for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you.

That’s true, even with the golden rules above. Maybe your audience loves filling out long, complex forms. Perhaps they don’t trust social proof, even from good sources, or aren’t moved by urgent limited-time offers.

Those examples are a bit silly. In truth, while those golden rules take care of what the broad populace wants on a landing page, they won’t speak to your core visitors on a deep enough level. The very best CRO methods will be found when you deep dive into what your audience really wants and needs.

Take form fields, for example. The fewer the better, right?

In most cases – but not all.

When Unbounce analysed their own landing page, they got a bit of a surprise. For years, they had been advocating the “less is more” approach to form fields, which was originally touted by Imaginary Landscape back in 2008 (yes, the theory is that old). But look what was happening on their landing page:

Conversion rates were highest with only one form field, and decreased with each additional form field. But… things start to climb again after seven form fields. What the heck is going on?

In their aggressive pursuit of fewer form fields, Unbounce were forgetting that sometimes, visitors want to fill out longer forms. They want to volunteer more information.

To understand why, let’s look at another example.

Back in 2018, we dived into a case study of Brandwatch, who used a circular funnel to get conversions. Take a look at their opt-in page:

That’s not a tiny form. To grab a copy of a free lead magnet, you usually just need to put in your email – but this form has five fields, plus a checkbox. But Brandwatch has tailored this form to their audience: business people. Email is clearly defined as a “work” address – and when I initially entered my personal Outlook, it popped up with a message that said “Please enter your work email.”

Yes, it’s been designed to reject anything that looks like a personal email.

Also, the fields Company and Job Title might seem unnecessary, but by putting them there Brandwatch are communicating that they want enquiries from real businesses that they can chase up later. This form is a substantial commitment to fill out. All of this communicates one message: serious folks only, please.

All of this is carefully designed to not only increase Brandwatch’s conversion rate, but also attract a more desirable kind of customer for their offer, who are more likely to give more value to the company over time.

How to optimise your own conversion rate

So, what does this mean for your sales page? If the best kind of CRO is highly individual, where do you start?

If you’re only testing CRO techniques like the ones above – form fields, CTA’s, page design – then go ahead and follow your heart.

But when you’re out of ideas, it’s time to do some research.

1. Quantitative research helps you understand “what”

Firstly, track as much data on your website as possible about what’s already happening. Try:

• Analytics tools that track website traffic (e.g., Google Analytics)
• Heat map tools that aggregate the number of clicks, scrolls, and movement on a page
• Tracking form submissions

2. Qualitative research helps you understand “why”

Next, look at collecting non-numerical data to learn why your website visitors behave in a certain way. Try:

• Website feedback tools (on-page and external link surveys)
• Website session recording/replay tools that show how individual users navigate through your website
• Feedback from potential or current customers can voice their thoughts and opinions on your website
• Online reviews where you can read more about people’s experience of your brand and product

3. A/B testing helps you understand “how”

Next, you just need to test changes and measure improvements – and you do this by split testing. This allows you to make changes and see if your conversion optimisation efforts are going in the right direction.

Any reputable funnel builder will include split testing capability – we do here at Convertri. It’s the best way to see what’s working, and what’s not.

Got any CRO stories you’d like to share? How have you found success optimising conversions on your landing or sales pages? Leave them in the comments below!