A Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

After the successful introduction of the internet in the late 1990s, business class people took it as one of the important means of creating brand identity. So since then a countdown has been started among the marketing professionals and advance businessmen: how effectively it could be used in purpose of strategic marketing mix and sustainable sales promotion. So a new genre namely internet marketing or e-marketing or web marketing emerged depending on the internet and marketing products or services. But increasing website traffic and raising awareness of products and services online is not all of web marketing. It is much more than that. To be more precise, when the owner of a website painstakingly starts his online marketing campaign or gets it done by a reputed internet marketing company, he looks for maximum ROI. Here I mean the owner would always calculate how much he had spent on internet marketing and how much it has earned on it. So apart from making people cognizant of his product and services, he would try to keep a record: how many of online viewers, who came to his site, have turn into his prospective customers. Depending on this concept another new genre called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has come to the internet marketing scenario.  Now let me discuss the term to make it more understandable for you.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

In web marketing conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a method that involves the science of converting online visitors into prospective customers. It is done with an objective of increasing the percentage of visitors who land on a webpage and convert into real customers. Now suppose you are a businessman and if anyone asks you: how does online marketing help you making money?

You would say that I showcase my brand, products and services on my webpage and approach them in a way so that after getting information about these online viewers feel desire to have them. Thus, simple online viewers turn into real customers of your products and services.     
Today almost all conscious businessmen keep full watch on their website like a hawk and then seek for a hawk roosting in their specialized domains and finally try their best to make their specialized domains unipolar for them. They start with an active interactive and attractive website that never looks a little jazzy than their competitors. Then they involve themselves into internet marketing following various methods such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), PPC (Pay per Click), SMO (Social Media Optimization), SMM (Social Media Marketing) etc. They start practicing various virtual marketing and viral advertising methods and try to keep a track record of purchasing products (by viewers) from their sites or coming to their sites being redirected by other sites. This track record is measurable statistically. This is measured against the total number of visitors and the number of visitors has turned into customers. This number of customers is divided by the number of visitors and multiplied by hundred. It is called the conversion rate.

                                Number of customers

Conversion rate=--------------------------x 100

                                Number of visitors

Eventually, it is the measurement of the success of a website.

Now let me tell you how is it done?

Here are some important tips for you.

Build conversion path

Your website should be like a good book having begging, middle and ending distinctly. It should include distinct home page, service page, product page, about us page with proper navigation link and integration of site map to make people aware of the whole content of your website at a glance.  From start to finish everything needs to go step by step to bring a visitor toward the ultimate goal of truing him into a customer. You can bring him to your website through an article, press release, blog writing or other piece of writing on other websites.

Create alternative pathways to the conversion point

Make link wheel or other pathways that can help visitors landing on your website. Here you can insert your website link on other websites by various methods like posting articles, press releases, blogs and classifieds. Sometimes the adding links to your sites by various methods like link exchanges. Email and many like this play effective role to the conversion point.  Besides, you should create a path to the conversion to direct your readers following steps with different options to meet different needs, desires and temperaments of many visitors.

Add button and different colours:

Add button and use different colours in links and hyperlinks to direct your readers towards different navigation pages.  Try to get a larger button or a streamlined page layout to make their action prompt on your webpage.

Lessen the clutter:

Don’t try to move your readers in different directions, rather remove extraneous, unnecessary text, images, and links. Your each webpage should have a clear focus on the content at a glance and must guide to next action. 

Write compelling copy 
Your content on the webpage should be the lifeline of the page. Don’t write a verbose copy; try to get a concise and crisp copy. Write more on customer perspective than search engine’s perspective. Try to keep them attracted to the end-user benefits than telling more on your business and its features.

Try to earn credibility

Always try to earn the credibility of the readers. Don’t use too much promotion words like excellent, outstanding, top notch quality etc.    Get a clean, professional design for your website. Include there prominent testimonials and press mentions to feel your customers comfortable of getting products and services from you.

Meet expectations

Try to include everything that customer can expect from you. Think everything from his point of view. 

Some technical parts that you need to do:

Set up funnels in Google Analytic to know your traffic status.

Use other analytics packages

• You may include other analytics tools and packages to know what’s happening on your website.

• You can take service form usability tests providers.

• Make a market survey to know your customer status, their liking and disliking

• Make a SWOT analysis on it

• Make more money

• Increase advertising spend

• Increase market share

Now take a look how CRO helps in business: 

So internet marketing without CRO means walking long distance in a dark without light. And in this ever-changing digital world where the dynamics of business change day by day there internet marketing without flowing Conversion Rate Optimization guidance is verisimilitude to shooting in the dark where chances of missing target is more. So get the best it and make money and profit as you best as you can.