CRO Marketing: A Guide to Increasing Conversions

Business and marketing leaders at small businesses often struggle with converting website visitors to customers or qualified leads. It can be tough to understand how to assess your conversion rate and just as hard to figure out the steps needed to boost it. This is a considerable challenge for businesses, especially those that have invested heavily in their web presence or need their online assets to get a step ahead of the competition.

This article dives into the details of conversion rate optimization (CRO), how to calculate it, steps to improve conversion rates, and how to measure the success of your efforts. Using this as a guide, you can systematically improve conversion rates of a variety of web assets and earn more customers.

What is CRO in marketing? Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of boosting the percentage of site visitors that take the action you want them to. For example, if you sell products or services on your website, you may want to increase the number of visitors who make a purchase. Companies that use their site to bring in more leads use CRO to boost the number of visitors that subscribe to newsletters, fill out contact information forms, or download gated content, like white papers.

By improving your conversion rates, you add value to your site, which is especially important for smaller businesses whose web assets are central to their marketing strategies. A site that converts visitors to paying customers can reduce the need to hire more people to reach out to customers directly.

In the context of this CRO meaning, an effective CRO strategy solves a sticky business challenge: Using your website as a lead- and customer-generating engine as opposed to a mere banner advertising what your company does. CRO can transform your site into an automated "salesperson," enabling you to move customers through the funnel 24/7/365.

CRO is an important gear in your marketing machine because it maximizes the return on investment (ROI) of your website, as well as any search engine optimization (SEO) you've already invested in. It seeks to transform your current visitors into paying customers, promoters, and more qualified leads. It's also important to define the metrics you use to establish what constitutes a "conversion." This can be a challenge because, according to a 2022 Gartner survey of CSOs, 62% said their sales and marketing teams have different definitions of a "qualified lead." [1]

CRO digital marketing also improves your users' experiences while on your site. Many users come to your site with a question or a need. For example, someone may want to better understand the technology that drives your product or service. By improving the percentage of people who download a white paper about your tech, you can also answer nagging questions that need to be addressed.

In addition, you can use CRO to strengthen your relationships with customers, turning them into long-term buyers instead of momentary spenders. A higher conversion rate can make your site a valuable asset for buyers who are "seeking to make sense of vendor offerings," as discussed by Gartner. [2] For example, by streamlining the buying process, you give your target audience an outlet they can rely on to make quick, easy purchases. This saves them time, preventing extensive shopping, browsing, and Google searching, which engenders a sense of reliability. And by being a consistent go-to resource, you set yourself up to enjoy their patronage for years to come.

You can calculate your conversion rate using the following formula:

For instance, let's say your site had 25 people who made purchases during a two-week period. During that time, your site had 1,000 visitors. You could calculate your conversion rate this way:

(25 / 1,000) x 100 = 2.5% conversion rate

Another way of looking at it is for every 100 visitors, 2.5 of them make purchases.

When used in sequence, the following steps make it easier to create a systematic CRO strategy that you can use to steadily improve your conversion rates.

Define your goals

Your goals serve as the primary drivers of your CRO action steps. To clarify your goals, you should answer questions such as:

• What actions should visitors take after visiting a page or interacting with a marketing asset?

• What value will the desired actions bring our company?

• Are there other actions that would add more value to the visitor or our business?

Your answers form the foundation of your strategy, as well as a north star that guides other optimization decisions.

Analyze your data

From the perspective of CRO, your site data consists of stats like the bounce rate and the amount of time spent on certain pages. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people that land on your page and then leave very shortly after. Time spent on a page is the average amount of time each visitor spends on a particular page.

Another data point you can analyze is what customers click on while visiting your page. This can indicate what draws their interest as well as the size, shape, and colors of icons that are the most effective.

Formulate hypotheses

Your hypotheses consist of predictions regarding the effects of changes you make to your site. For example, let's say you have a checkout process where customers must enter their name, address, payment information, email address, and company name.

A hypothesis in this case may be something along the lines of: "If we provide visitors with a guest checkout system that doesn't require them to enter anything other than their payment information, we will get more conversions."

Test your hypothesis

To test your hypothesis, you should use a standard A/B testing approach. With an A/B test, you compare performance from before you implemented your testing (A) and after you've put your adjustments in place (B).

Returning to the e-commerce example, you would compare conversions before adding the guest checkout feature (A) to your conversion rate after implementing your test changes (B). The difference in conversion rates tells you how much of an impact the change made.

Implement your changes

You can implement changes accordingly using the data you gather from the testing phase. In some cases, your changes may seem relatively minor, such as adjusting the size, color, or position of buttons on a page. In other situations, such as the hypothetical e-commerce example above, you may have to introduce a whole new module or add widgets to a page.

The key is to implement changes based on your testing, which makes it easier to compare the actual outcome to those achieved during the testing phase.

Measure and track results

Measuring and tracking your results centers around examining the site or asset's performance in the context of specific metrics such as downloads, sales, or click-through rates.

As you measure and track, you may have to make changes based on the first iteration of your CRO strategy. This could involve some difficult decisions. For example, you may have to assess [2]:

• Which assets to retire

• Which assets you should update with new messaging

• The assets you want to extend to additional personas and activity streams

In many situations, it's best to make any changes to your CRO incrementally, one at a time. In that way, it's easier to link changes with outcomes.

Repeat the process

After establishing an effective CRO process, you can repeat it for continued success. This could involve further improving the CRO of the first page or asset you worked with, or you could apply an effective technique to another one. Regardless of what you decide, it's important to follow all of the steps.

It can be tempting to skip formulating a hypothesis or measuring results, for example, because you already have confidence in your system. But diligence with each of the steps gives you results that are easier to measure and compare.

Measuring the success of your CRO marketing often comes down to how well they helped you reach your initial goal. If you establish numerical benchmarks, such as a percentage increase in sales or qualified leads, measuring success will be relatively straightforward.

It's also important to document any other strategies members of the marketing team make during your CRO implementation. You want to isolate improvements that stem from your CRO from those caused by other improvement initiatives.

The sky's the limit when it comes to the number of adjustments you can make to boost conversions, but here are some high-level strategies that many have found effective:

• Making your checkout processes easier and faster.

• Optimizing a page for viewing on mobile devices.

• Using customer testimonials and reviews to build trust in visitors.

• Personalizing pages according to the buying or browsing habits of individual visitors.

• Sending reminders to customers who added items to shopping carts or downloaded marketing collateral.

• Adding calls-to-action throughout the text of a page, so readers can click through to the next step easier.

• Adding product images or demonstration videos to help customers envision how your solution would add value to their lives or jobs.

By using the steps above, you can create a systematic, successful CRO program that maximizes the ROI on your website. The CRO strategies discussed can transform an underperforming site into a productive sales and marketing tool. You can also use this kind of system to improve conversion rates for other marketing assets, including sales scripts and help desk practices. In this way, you infuse CRO throughout multiple facets of your operation.