Conversion rate optimization (CRO), or conversion optimization is an Internet Marketing process that increases the amount of visitors that convert into a customer.
A conversion is an action that a visitor to your website takes.
A conversion can really be any goal that adds value to the business. This is usually a business value as in a sale or lead but can also be average order value, revenue per visitor, etc.
Common actions to optimize or improve through Conversion rate optimization (CRO), could be opting in for a special report or lead magnet, buying a product, downloading an app, or really just about any task that is measurable.
However you define a conversion is up to your specific business goals.
Fundamentally a conversion is the action you want your visitors to take.
It is this action or actions that you are trying to improve, or optimize, by getting more visitors to take that you are optimizing with conversion optimization.
By improving your website conversion rate you can get more people to take more action without spending money on attracting more visits to your landing page or website, i.e traffic.
CRO is fundamental to learning what works for your audience and is the key to growing revenue in all aspects of your business.
When you increase sales, you make more money and as a result your advertising spend becomes more profitable therefore, you can then afford to spend more than your competition and increase sales market share and ad share even further.
Quite simply the more you can increase your conversion rate the more self liquidating traffic you can buy.
How Do You Calculate Website Conversion Rate
A conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action.
Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of visits or people that completed the desired action by the total number of visits or people that landed on your web page multiplied by 100 to be expressed as a percentage.
Number of desired actions / Number of total visitors to that page x 100 = Conversion Rate
Conversion lift is the amount of improvement you’ve had from CRO, which is expressed as a percentage of the change in conversion rate.
CRO Is Not SEO
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.
Or pay per click (PPC) advertising to buy more visits to your website in the hopes of more sales. 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 not spent any where near the time and devotion on conversion rate optimization (CRO) as they have on SEO or other paid traffic methods, 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.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization, CRO, 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 elements that may be hurting your page goal. The real power of conversion rate optimization comes from the ability to increase your website conversion rate without increasing the number of visitors to your site.
By increasing total conversions you should increase overall revenue, decrease your cost per acquisition and increase the overall ROI of all your Internet marketing efforts.
The specific definition of what your business considers a conversion is vital to setting up a goal from the beginning. 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.
Standard Conversion Rate Optimization Is Optimizing For The Wrong Metric
Every conversion optimization firm out there attacks the problem the same way.
But, not every buyer buys the same way, this is especially true in the health market. And, because people don’t buy health products the same way they buy other products, standard marketing and conversion rate optimization (CRO) practices won’t work to amplify supplement and health product business.
We see it from a different perspective that accounts for the underling factors that are unique to buying health products. Split-testing tactics are just how we optimize businesses, the reason why we do what we do is because we have to attack those fundamental issues that are within the psychology of the buyer’s mind. Without knowing what’s underneath you can’t improve profits.
Ironically Conversion Optimization Is About Revenue Not Conversion
Conversion optimization that stops at conversion rate is not fully leveraging growth.
It’s more than conversion rate, it’s about revenue, average order value, life time value and making a bigger impact on society but providing quality health solutions to those who need it.
Conversions won’t grow your business.
More money in the bank will.
Conversion rate optimization is just a way to get more growth.
Smart marketers know that their customers think and act differently than they do. Just because someone thinks something is great or likes a webpage design or a bit of sales copy does not mean it will sell the most that it possibly can.
There is always a better version that can maximize sales to get more quality products to the people who need them. That is why we split-test.
Conversion Rate Optimization In Practice
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.
Every optimization test should set out to answer a research question and have a hypothesis before any test pages are created.
Each test page is called a treatment and consists of both variables and values.
A variable is a general element that you intend to test.
For example: A headline, an image, page layout, copy (the words on the page), a button, etc.
A value is the specific version of the variable that you intend to test. If the variable is the headline then your values would be the different versions of that headline.
Your treatments support your research question and set out to answer your hypothesis. The test results either proves or disproves your hypothesis. If it does not then you’ve exceeded the number of variables that the test will allow and you should scale back.Remember it’s as much about gaining insight as it is about gaining improvement.
So that regardless of the test outcome, your research question and hypothesis should help you gain an understanding of your visitors and what motivates them to buy.
Two of the most common online testing methods for conversion rate optimization are A/B testing or split testing and Multivariate testing. In an A/B or split test there are two versions of a web page, version A and version B.
Version A is the control page, or the existing page and version B is the alternative treatment or the challenger.
The traffic is randomly split (50/50 although you can vary the split percentage) half of the traffic sees version A and the other half sees version B until each version has enough traffic and enough conversions for the test to be statistically valid and a wining version to be declared. Usually a statistical confidence level of 95% is the goal to declare a wining treatment.
In a Multivariate test there are a combination of variables being tested.
Traffic is also split between the different versions in this type of test as well. For example let’s say you have 3 different headlines your testing and 2 different images and 4 different call to action buttons on a single page.
Using a Multivariate test, this would generate 24 different combinations or treatments. 3 x 2 x 4 = 24 (3 headlines x 2 images x 4 buttons) With each treatment a visitor would see only one combination of elements and every possible combination (24) would be included in the test.
This is what’s known as a full factorial experiment.
The process of conversion rate optimization includes: 1. Research
- Quantitative Research
- Qualitative Research
2. Formulating a Hypothesis
Your split-test is only as strong as your hypothesis.
Not everything on your website is worth split-testing. The key to getting the most impact to your Fashion Ecommerce revenue is to only test the biggest opportunities through a systematized scientific process that starts with formulating a testable hypothesis. The actual split-test itself is simply a way of observing what happened, which will either prove or disprove your hypothesis. There are two ways to arrive at a testable CRO hypothesis. By using deductive thinking or inductive thinking. With deductive thinking you start with observing your visitors, seeing a pattern that’s common among them, this usually comes out of the research stage as mentioned in chapter 2, and then writing down some questions based on what you observe that you can form into a testable hypothesis. With inductive thinking you’re starting with a theory up front, usually from intuition or an already solid understanding of the customer, then using observation to confirm that your theory is worth testing. Which you’ll finally form into a hypothesis to test. In either case, the question comes first. Before you make a hypothesis, you have to clearly identify the question you are interested in answering. To formulate your “testable” hypothesis first think about the one single question you are trying to answer. Not something like how do we get more sales or even how do we sell more red shirts but questions about your prospect’s psychology of buying. Something more like this: What could be causing some anxiety in the mind of the visitor around this area of the page? Or something like this: Is this traffic source more motivated by social proof or scarcity? Avoids using words like I, think, believe, all, never, and sometimes. We set out to prove or disprove the hypothesis with the test. Your A/B or Mvt. test is simply the way of observing what happens, to answer questions from your research. To create a “testable” hypothesis make sure you have done all of these things:
- Thought about what experiments you will need to carry out to do the test.
- Identified the variables in the project.
- Included the independent and dependent variables in the hypothesis statement. This helps ensure that your statement is specific enough.
Two ways to arrive at a testable CRO hypothesis
- Deductive
- Inductive
Deductive
- Observation
- Pattern
- Tentative hypothesis
- Theory
Inductive
- Theory
- Hypothesis
- Observation
- Confirmation
In both cases, the question comes first. Before you make a hypothesis, you have to clearly identify the question you are interested in answering. Always write down your hypothesis Make it clear. A good hypothesis is written in clear and simple language. Reading your hypothesis should tell the reader exactly what you thought was going to happen when you started your project. Avoids using words like I, think, believe, all, never, and sometimes.
How to develop a testable hypothesis the framework
A measurable hypothesis finalizes the direction in more specific terms and uses the correct If…then…because format.
If _____ [visitors do this] _____ then _____ [this] _____ will happen and this ____ is why.
Here’s an example a hypothesis statement in action:
If there is anxiety being created around the buy box on the product detail page as observed by visitors pausing around this area before exiting / clicking on the style drop down, then improving the UX of this choice will cause more people to complete this step and move forward as measured by the micro conversion of getting to the next step because we’re taking away that anxiety in their mind.
As a good rule of thumb to ensure you’re testing something that has impact always write down all of your hypothesis first. And strive to make them crystal clear. A good hypothesis is written in clear and simple language. Try reading your hypothesis out loud should to a peer. You can tell if your hypothesis is a testable one if the listener can tell exactly what you expect will happen if the test wins. Finally make sure your hypothesis follows this checklist to validate that it’s a testable one and that you’ll also get a learning from your test even if your test loses or is inconclusive.
Hypothesis Checklist
___ Does your hypothesis focus on something that you can actually test? ___ What impact will this recommendation have on the business? (if the answer is you can’t tell then it’s probably not a good idea to test)
___ How many things will change if we tested this idea? (if the answer is a lot then you have a lot of hypothesis to work through)
___ Is there enough traffic to test? (you can test low traffic pages but the approach is different)
___ How will we measure the results? (if the answer is I don’t know, do some more research)
___ Is there evidence to support this idea? (If not choose another thing to test)
___ Will you learn something even if your hypothesis is incorrect?
What Should You Be A/B Testing?
If this is the first test within your organization stay clear of all sacred cow pages.
These are the pages that someone in your company, usually in a higher position than you, has a personal stake in. Perhaps they had a considerable stake in the final look of the page, or it’s just on their list of pet peeves. If your CEO is in love with the home page, let him be happy, for not anyway.
There is no better way than to kill a conversion rate optimization campaign than to prove the CEO wrong with a better performing sacred cow page. You’re going to need to get a quick win with your first test so that you will be allowed to continue with follow-up tests and expand to other pages on your site, and maybe eventually come back around to that sacred cow page.
Don’t let your curiosity get out of control. Every effort towards conversion rate optimization needs to be driven by a business goal. Time and resources are just too precious to test anything that is outside the circle of the business needs.
Every test should start with a “which” question. Which page is bringing in the highest revenue? No other question is going to get your CMO and CEO excited at the same time. The answer to this question will be different for each website and each business model, let’s look at a few.
For an Ecommerce site your business model is driven by selling stuff. There’s a ton of things to test on an Ecommerce site and your first reaction might be to think the shopping cart would be the page that brings in the highest revenue, and there is usually a lot of opportunity for conversion rate optimization at the shopping cart level.
But since you’re just getting started and this is your first test the shopping cart is a big nut to crack and I wouldn’t want to have your first test killed by the IT or web development department because of the complexity of the shopping cart page.
Remember it’s all about gaining internal trust for your first test so you can do more tests and move the bottom line to get that corner office someday. So what other page besides the shopping cart is bringing in the most revenue? The answer is the detail page of your best selling product. Here’s my thought process, in order to get the product into your shopping cart the step before it gets added is most likely the detail page. It’s the step above the cart in the conversion funnel.
For a subscription site, revenue is driven by people signing up. The page to test on this type of site is your registration page or your squeeze page where your visitor chooses which subscription level is right for him.
For a content site revenue may be tied to advertising. In which you’ll need to take a look into your web analytics to see which pages have the highest views, or average time on page. A quick talk with the ad sales department can also help you to find out which type of ads on your site have the highest CPM ad revenue.
You may also want to take a look at the top pages with the highest exit rates for a content site. This is an indication of which pages may need some help with visitor engagement. Or pages with high bounce rates to find which are performing poorly.
Using bounce rate and exit rates to start your marketing optimization with can be tricky since there are more factors involved like motivation and what channels visitors were driven to your site from.
30 Things You Can A/B Test Today To Start Doing CRO
The problem most marketers struggle with is not the tools but knowing what to test, how to properly test and how to get the biggest impact. Ask yourself these 4 key questions to keep your tests on track to more profits.
- Who are you trying to effect? (Really define your target audience and what makes them tick. The best way to do this is to listen.)
- What action do you want them to take?
- How do you define a conversion and how will it be tracked?
- What action do THEY want to take? This is not always the same as #2
Now that you’re starting to think holistically let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work. Here are just a few ideas for you to test to get started with AB Testing. Test #1 – A/B Test Your Opt-In
- Test having your opt in offer as part of your page vs. delivered in a light box overlay. (I’ve found in tests I’ve done that light boxes perform better.)
- Test showing an image of your lead magnet, like the cover to a report vs. no image. Or test different images. (I’ve found that images that appear to be more tangible like a 3D image of a digital asset vs. a flat image perform better.)
- For the more advanced optimizers, test the actual lead magnet itself. First by testing the title then by changing the magenta to a completely different offer.
Test #2 – A/B Test Your Testimonials
- Test adding a picture vs. no picture next to the testimonial
- Test adding the location (city and state or country) of the person who submitted the testimonial vs. not having it at all. (sometimes this add more believability as does the picture)
- Test adding a headline quote to the testimonial that sums up the testimonial in one line and makes it easier to read by simply skimming the headlines vs. reading each and every testimonial. You can pull a line from the testimonial it self as the headline and simply put it in quotes above the full text. (You can also test different testimonial headlines, which brings us to test number 3.)
Test #3 – A/B Test Different Headlines
- Test a headline that amplifies the problem your target segment is struggling with. (If your product solves multiple problems, then each one of them is an opportunity to test.)
- Test a long headline vs. a short one.
- Test the size of your headline, Big vs. REALLY REALLY BIG (Bigger than your actually comfortable with, when you think it’s big enough make it bigger.)
Test#4 – A/B Test Adding Credibility To Increase Trust
- Test adding trust seal images, (like a secure lock image, Better Business Bureau, VeriSign, Trust Guard, Geo Trust.)
- Test different trust seals vs others and test the amount of trust seals. Sometimes more is not better.
- Test the position of your trust seals on your page.
- Test having your page secure https:// vs. not http://
Test #5 – A/B Test Adding Urgency To Nudge More Visitors Who Are On The Fence
- Test a limited-time price discount where visitors must buy before a certain date in order to qualify for the discount.
- Test adding free bonuses if visitors buy within a certain time period.
- Test limiting the availability of your products or services. (McDonalds did this with the McRib, and Disney does this with every DVD movie release, after a certain time they put it back in the vault and you can’t buy it anymore, or at least until the next special release.)
Test #6 – A/B Test Your Page Layout To Appeal To Attention
- Test a single column layout vs. a two-column layout with the supportive information in the second column.
- Test moving your buying option lower, below the fold. Sometimes having the sales pitch too early in the process can kill conversions. (This is really very dependent on the type of product, the offer and the audience)
Test #7 – A/B Test Your Follow-up Sequence To Maximize Sales Of Repeat Buyers
- Test the frequency of your follow up emails.
- Test the copy in each follow up email.
- Test the number of calls to action in each email. (Not different calls to action but more of the same call to action, just more of the same link, throughout the email.)
Test #8 – A/B Test Your Social Proof
- Test not having social proof vs. having it.
- Test the type of social proof. (For example, test having testimonials that look like Facebook style posts.)
Test #9 – A/B Test Removing Elements There is beauty in simplicity, minimalism and conversion rates… Sometimes there are too many elements on a page, this is often the case with a landing page but can also be equally true for any page. Removing elements is one of only three things you can do to any page when it comes to testing.
- Remove
- Add
- Start Over
- Test removing on element at a time
Test #10 – A/BTest Your Copy If you study any of the grate copywriters like Gary Halbert, you’ll see that direct response copywriting is a powerful tool in and of itself. Here are some copy tests you can easily implement without a copywriter:
- Test using bold, italics and highlighting (sparingly) to emphasize you most important benefits.
- Test the length of your paragraphs so they look more inviting and easy to read.
- Test adding sub-headlines to emphasize your key messages and compel your visitors to read more. This can also break up your copy. (Your sub-headlines should tell the story on their own. Once added try reading them without the supportive text underneath.)
- Test centering short chunks of text. In a long page copy format this adds importance to those sections because they are different that the other copy on the page and gets visitors to pause.
What Tools Do You A/B Test With?
There are a ton on the market, here are just a few to get you started:
Conversion Rate Optimization Tools
Conversion rate optimization requires a broad skill set and a long list of tools to gather insight. Here are just a few we use often.
CRO Tools For Usability Testing
CRO Tools For Heat Maps / Scroll Reach
CRO Tools For Session Recording
- http://www.sessioncam.com
- http://www.clicktale.com
- http://mouseflow.com
- http://heatmaptracker.com
- www.hotjar.com
- https://www.inspectlet.com
CRO Tools For Page Load Speed Testing
CRO Tools For Page load Speed Comparison
CRO Tools For Calculating Statistical Confidence
- Sample Size Calculator http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
- Sample Size Calculator used off of baseline cone rate http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html
- http://abtestguide.com/calc/
- http://www.thumbtack.com/labs/abba/
- http://destack.home.xs4all.nl/projects/significance/
- http://abtestguide.com/calc/
- http://conversionxl.com/stopping-ab-tests-how-many-conversions-do-i-need/
- http://drpete.co/split-test-calculator
- http://abtestguide.com/calc/
- http://abtestguide.com/calc/?calc=ab-test-size
- Simple A vs B conv rate difference between 2 versions http://getdatadriven.com/ab-significance-test
Conversion Optimization For The Health And Supplement Market Is Different…
The typical conversion rate optimization (CRO) process looks at usability and psychological factors holding back sales like friction, anxiety, continuity in the offer, risk reversal, etc. And all of those things is important to increasing conversion rate, but the health market requires more. It does not matter if you’re selling natural health supplements, information health products or physical health products. optimizing for revenue and conversion in the health market requires a focus on trust and belief in addition to the standard conversion rate optimization techniques. The reason for this is simple, the health industry is over saturated and thus marketing pushes the boundaries in order to break through the clutter. This exacerbates the noise and adds an opportunity for doubt and mistrust to enter into the mind of the prospect. It’s just the nature of the industry, health solutions are constantly under scrutiny from media and outside forces like big pharmaceutical companies continue to attack the credibility of the smaller health businesses. Consumers are constantly hearing news about recalls, bans, class-action lawsuits and negative research studies. Each of which erode trust, adding a hurdle the traditional conversion rate optimizer does not have to deal with. For a product like a pair of shoes the hurdle of buying is more or less based on price, and personal taste. For a shoe to work it just has to fit. But for a health product a buyer must extend his or her trust further to trust that it will actually work. Health buyers are uniquely different from other markets, because in addition to solving for trust, you also have to account for what the prospect believes before they can buy. People that buy health products are not so much buying a solution as much as they are reassuring their inner belief of health. This is a key distinctive piece of the health buying decision that does not exist when buying any other product. When buying a product that you ingest like organic, non-GMO food or a natural health supplement or a diet or exercise product or health device where a customer must take action on in order to get the benefit, both trust and belief is vital. The average conversion rate optimizer does not build split-testing strategy around trust and belief when approaching growth, because no other CRO expert specializes in the health industry.
Optimizing Revenue For A Health Business
Optimization in general is not just improving conversion rate, it’s really all about increasing revenue. Because conversions won’t grow your business, more money in the bank will. Optimization is just a way to get more growth by increasing revenue, average order value and life time value so you can make a bigger impact on society delivering quality health solutions to those who are in need of it. And to truly optimize the business you have to approach optimization from the business model level. Which for many online health companies is different than the traditional model. An online health company has many different factors to account for, including recurring continuity on supplement bottles, dealing with retention and compliance of programs and supplements by consumers, the separation of marketing and selling to stay compliant with FDA and other regulations and non-regulations like Google an Facebook limitations and rules. Not to mention the differences between a digital product and a physical product as well as perhaps the most important piece and that is optimizing for both the front end and the back end of the business. A health business is just a completely different animal when you break it down.
The Uniqueness Of Selling Health Online
Weather you’re selling natural health supplements, health information products or even health devices, growing and optimizing a health business online is different than any other e-commerce business. A normal online e-commerce business does not have to address trust and consumers self- beliefs the same way a health business does in order for them to buy. The core fundamentals of selling a health solution is totally different and therefor the way to grow an e-commerce health business is also different. Growing a health business online requires optimizing and split-testing for things such as trust and belief but also demands an understanding of the marketplace sophistication and where your solution or health product fits in the competitive landscape. Only then can you truly position your natural health supplements or health product in the mind of your prospects and split-test your way to growing revenue.
Want to learn more?
Conversion rate optimization for health is our specialty, that is the ONLY thing we do. We focus on increasing revenue and average order value for companies selling health products and natural health supplements direct to consumers. To see if we might be a good fit, let’s talk. For more information on how to optimize your website for higher conversion rates, please contact bobby (@) creative thirst (dot) com or learn more about our conversion rate optimization services
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