It is safe to say that businesses have websites and, in some cases, apps. Visitors frequent these platforms because they are interested in or exploring your platform. More popular the app/website, the higher the number of visitors and vice versa.
Some of these visitors trigger an event on the app/website, like making a purchase, filling up surveys, downloading an ebook, etc. When such visitors trigger an event intended by the business, the visitors become users.
This is conversion. Now when a business takes steps to increase the percentage of such conversions, they call it Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Optimizing conversions means knowing your users inside out – why they visit your app/website, what they do when they visit, how long they stay, and what they click on. Analyzing their behavior will enable you to predict their next action or aspiration.
There are various types of conversions. When users accomplish a primary goal like buying a product or subscribing to a service, it is said to be a macro conversion. It is said to be a micro conversion when they accomplish a secondary goal like signing up for future updates or newsletters.
Why is calculating CRO important?
By skillfully implementing CRO, you can:
- Acquire more customers : By boosting the number of footfalls on your websites or daily/monthly active users for your app, you heighten the chances of converting those visitors to paying customers.
- Lower CAC (customer acquisition cost) : You can lower your money on getting new customers by retaining existing customers and deriving added value from them.
- Learn more about your customers : You stand to gain more insights into your customers’ minds by gauging their behavior. This behavioral analysis helps with audience segmentation and targeting.
- Build trust : Empathizing with your customers’ aspirations and fulfilling their expectations builds trust between the two of you, and in branding, confidence goes a long, long way.
- Design better user experiences : Richer user interfaces make or break your brand. Learning what your users are looking for can show you how to design your product, so they act how you want them to. It is as simple as that. A design that tells compelling stories is non-negotiable in today’s world.
- Increase revenue per customer : If you tactfully manage to achieve all of the above, you are bound to earn more from each customer and lengthen your customer’s lifetime value (CLTV).
Long story short – Better CRO equals more money.
How do you calculate Conversion Rate?
Here’s how you calculate Conversion Rate.
Number of conversions in a given time frame / Total number of visitors in that time frame
For example, if your website witnesses 5000 visitors per month and there are 500 conversions, then your conversion rate is 10%.
Now that you have learned how to calculate CR let’s figure out how to optimize the conversion rate.
Steps to improve conversion rate
Step 1
Identify customer metrics. If you are an e-commerce company, your metrics may be purchases completed, products added to cart, newsletter subscriptions, etc. Page views and ad impressions can be your conversion metrics if you are a media firm.
Step 2
The next step is to figure out where to start. It is recommended that you start with the page/screen that receives the utmost attention. Optimizing high-performing sections can generate high conversions.
Once you have optimized this section, move on to the sections that aren’t performing well but have huge potential.
Sounds interesting? This ebook on homepage optimization is all about optimizing your website to gain more conversions.
Word of warning
There are both good and bad methods to solve your CRO troubles. Using people and data to up your CRO game can guarantee results based on solid foundational research.
However, doing so using intuition and guessing games is frowned upon. Bringing personal biases and emotions into this decision-making process can have counterproductive impacts on your conversions, ergo, your business.
To see how brands use CRO in the real world, check out this case study on Snapp!, the largest and fastest-growing internet company in the middle east.
CRO has been catalyzing growth for digital brands by pinpointing areas of interest that are valuable touchpoints in the customer journey.
Conclusion
Simply put, CRO is the process of improving the percentage of users who visit your app/website and converting them to customers through desired actions like making a purchase, watching a video, downloading an ebook, or signing up for a newsletter.
