What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Published On - March 16, 2019 Brian LettieriLocal SEO

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of conversions from a website or mobile app. Conversion Rate Optimization is the generation of ideas for elements on your site or app that need improvement. Therefore, then validating those hypotheses through A/B testing and multivariate testing. Quantm Media can help you understand the importance of Conversion Rate Optimization.

Why Is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?

Conversion rate optimization is important because it allows you to lower your customer acquisition costs by getting more value from the visitors and users you already have. By optimizing your conversion rate you can increase revenue per visitor, acquire more customers, and grow your business.

For example, if a landing page has a conversion rate of 15% and receives 1500 visitors a month, then the page will generate 225 conversions per month. With optimizing different elements on the page, conversion rates can be improved to 25%. In this example, the number of conversions generated jumps to 375 per month.

There is always room for improvement when it comes to increasing conversions. Hence why the best companies are constantly altering and improving their sites to create a better experience for their users growing conversions.

Establishing Conversion Metrics

Conversion rate optimization begins with important steps. Being able to identify what the conversion goals are for any given web page or advertorial is first. The success metrics of your website or mobile app will depend on the type of business you’re in. And more importantly, what your goals are.

For example, If you sell products online, a conversion for you may be purchases. Or perhaps the number of website visitors that add a product to their shopping cart. If you sell products or services to businesses, you might be measuring the number of leads your website collects or number of white paper downloads.

Some common conversion goals organized by industry type:

Media – pageviews, ad views, newsletter subscriptions, recommended content engagement.
E-commerce – product sales, add-to-carts, shopping cart completion rate, e-mail newsletter sign-ups.
Travel – booking conversions, ancillary purchases, social shares.
B2B – leads generated, deals closed.

Once you have established the conversion metrics for your digital interactions with your audience, you’re on track. Hence you can begin to try to improve your digital customer experiences through conversion rate optimization.

Identifying Areas To Optimize

Once your conversion metrics have been identified, the next step in the conversion rate optimization process is simple. To identify which part of your conversion funnel you want to optimize.

Typically, you will want to begin optimizing the portion of your conversion funnel that receives the greatest amount of traffic. Or in other words, generates the greatest numbers of conversions. By focusing on these pages you will be able to see the results of your changes faster. Which in turn will have a larger impact on your business.

Other potential places to start include your highest value pages. Or in simplest terms, pages that are under performing compared to the rest of your site. Again, improving these areas can have the greatest immediate impact on your conversion goals.

For example; a clothing retailer may find that their page for hats receives a lot of traffic. But, has a conversion rate that is much lower than the rest of the site. By improving the conversion rate of that page, the retailer will be able to see a big improvement in sales for their CRO efforts.

You can read real life examples of how companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Smarter Travel have improved their websites and mobile apps on our case studies page.