Conversion Rate Optimization: Why It’s So Important

Following on from our previous post, today we’re going to be talking about Conversion Rate Optimization. As we did the last time, we’re going to start by breaking down some of the key terms we will be using repeatedly.

• Conversion: the desired action you want website visitors to take (for example; make a purchase, download an ebook, sign up for your newsletter)
• Total Conversions: total number of people that take the desired action on your website
• Conversion rate: the ratio of total conversions to website visitors, expressed as a percentage. If we were to put this in a formula, it would look something like this:

Total Conversions x 100
__________________________
No. Of Website Visitors

So what is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the number of website visitors that are converted to customers. In digital marketing terms, it is a systematic approach to improving the performance of your website, using analytics and user feedback.

Conversion Rate Optimization is a systematic approach to improving the performance of your website, using analytics and user feedback.

For the purpose of our discussion today, we’ll focus on the digital marketing definition. Going by that, three things stand out:

• Systematic – which means that CRO is not haphazard, neither is it guess-work. It is planned and carefully curated.
• Analytics – which means there is some information-gathering and analysis. That is to say that your results are measured using a set of indicators
• User feedback – which means the focus is on your users – not you.

Why is CRO so important?

Improves your ROI

Remember that you’re paying for your website (and your web traffic) one way or another, so improving your conversion rate ensures that you get the most out of your spend. Imagine your frustration after you’ve paid for a quality website with a premium domain and top-notch web hosting services. Then, you promote your website on search engines and social media. Yet, you get no calls. CRO is what makes your money worth it.
 

Turns traffic to engagement

The fact is that there is no guarantee that if you get 10000 visitors to your website each day and none of them will take any action. As a matter of fact, it is quite likely that a lot of them will leave as soon as they arrive (depending on your industry). Conversion Rate Optimization is a means by which you can stop this from happening.
 

Improves the quality of engagement

There is a difference between engagement and quality engagement, and it is in the action taken. You can have engaging content that keeps your visitor’s attention, but if they don’t take your desired action, there is no conversion. CRO is about encouraging them to take that desired action. It’s great that your visitors are interested in your blog and in your portfolio, but if they’re not contacting you for work based on both, what then is the point?
 

For the most part, it’s free

CRO is about getting the most out of the website traffic you already have. Instead of spending more money on getting more website visitors, what you’re essentially doing with CRO is turning more of your current visitors into (potential) customers.
 

There’s always room for improvement

The essence of optimization is continuous improvement. No matter how good you think you’re doing now, you could always do better. And this is why you ought to continue to find ways by which you can improve. This means: creating you new experiments, testing different indicators, using different rules, and more.
 
Having laid out these five reasons, I think it’s clear that if you weren’t paying attention to conversion rate optimization before, you need to do so now. “How”, you ask. Simple. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes: go through your website, identify areas (such as CTAs, headers, graphics) where you could use some improvement and test potential improvement measures.

Next time, we’ll be looking at some of the areas where you could look to make some improvements, and the sort of improvements you could make.