Conversion Rate Optimization is the practice of increasing the amount of online sales and leads on a website, without increasing the amount of web visitors.
By optimizing or improving your web conversion rate you can get more people to take more action without spending money on attracting more visits to your landing page or website.
For years Internet marketers have spent time on search engine optimization (SEO) which focuses on driving more free traffic to your website by improving the likelihood of people finding your website through an unpaid search result. In the early days of the web and even to some degree today, the mentality has been once you have web traffic the rest would take care of itself. Unfortunately this is not even close to being true. Very few marketers have spent any where near the time and devotion on conversion rate optimization (CRO) as they have on SEO, although the number of smart marketers concentrating on conversion is growing more and more.
Traffic is only one component of success, getting people to your site is necessary but if 98% (based on an average ecommerce conversion rate of 2%) of those people are just getting there and not buying or signing up or completing whatever your conversion goal you have for your website, you’re leaving money on the table. Money that could be yours, by improving your website conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of scientifically changing elements of your website in an attempt to make your website more effective. These elements can include but are not limited to web pages, landing pages, images, words and processes used on your site, or simply taking away what does not work. Conversion rate optimization is powerful because it increases your website conversion rate without increasing the number of visitors to your site. By increasing total conversions you should increase overall revenue, depending on the specific definition of what your business considers a conversion. For example an ecommerce website would consider a conversion a sale, a lead generation website might consider a conversion as some one who has filled out a request for information form or downloaded a white paper, etc.
The practice of conversion rate optimization has evolved out of two main schools of thought. One school is focused on jumping straight into testing various elements and pages of your website to discover the best version that will increase conversion rates. The second school of thought is focused on first understanding your visitors thought process and then moving onto the testing phase.
Neither school of thought is better or worse than the other. Each has a place depending on the needs of the business. However, they both come down to scientifically testing and letting your customers choose what works best. There is no room for ego driven decisions when it comes to conversion optimization, it always comes down to your customers and consistently rigorously testing, over and over again. Any test is better than not testing at all.
For more information on how to optimize your website for higher conversion rates, please contact bobby @ creativethirst dot com.
