It all started with the birth of the Internet. Since its creation, we’ve seen the World Wide Web expand and accelerate like nothing before, and some doubt we’ll ever witness growth like it again.
The Web’s beginnings were quite humble as beginnings go, for something that would become so extraordinary. But, through the years it has become more and more encompassing – a greater representative of the world we live in or want to live in.
The Internet has brought us knowledge and joy through websites that curate information in the modern age and help us integrate information usefully in our daily lives. But, like everything else in our world, these websites are not here solely for our benefit – as much as we would think they are. Enter Conversion Rate Optimization!
Each website that marks a point of information intersection on the Web is owned by someone who has self-serving goals in mind. These owners, whether business owners or non-profit owners or owners of a different kind, think about meeting their client and customer needs when creating their website.
But, at their core, their intention for their site is to “convert” in some way. Aside from entertaining stories, flashy graphics, valuable resources, and beautiful design, websites exist to bring their owners “conversions.”
Conversions can be anything the website delivers to its business based on the business’ goals for site construction. So, if conversions are key, it makes sense that conversion rate optimization (CRO) should be a necessary and primary function for businesses and organizations operating a website.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO, is the process that business owners and organization heads can use to improve various functions and design elements of their website – including user experience, content, and performance – so that conversion rate gets a boost.
Given that conversion is the end goal for a website owner, conversion rate validates – or refutes – the website’s ability to convert site traffic to leads, sales, customers, or whatever the goal.
Conversions are the meaning behind a website. They are things like getting subscribers, having completed purchases, a built email list, and even click-throughs that generate income. Every website has a conversion rate, which essentially is the rate at which the total amount of site visitors take a business’ or organization’s desired action and convert.
Focusing on Conversion Rate Optimization as a part of marketing strategy, and overall business goal, takes a completely different outlook than traditional marketing because it requires working with existing web traffic to improve conversion – rather than trying to turn eyes to a website and gain leads.
Why Use CRO as a Strategy?
Optimizing your website for conversions can significantly boost your sales, subscriber list, click-throughs, or whatever it is your company is trying to increase. It helps you compete and stay relevant, and it’s an excellent way to help your website achieve maximum potential and desired success based on unique positioning and strengths.
A business or organization can increase conversions by increasing traffic through SEO or increasing conversion rate. Increasing traffic may seem like the logical course of action to get more conversions, but consider the optimization effort necessary to bring more eyes to your website.
If focus is placed on conversion rate through optimizing existing traffic function, you can potentially close more sales or convert more in other ways without spending much money at all.
There are several ways to optimize a website to increase conversion rate, including optimizing content, website design, and performance as we mentioned earlier.
The 2 Main Ways to Increase Conversions
A business can increase conversions by:
- Working to increase website traffic, or
- Working to increase website conversion rate
Typically, a business might choose to increase inbound web traffic by amping up ad spend. This is kind of like forcing conversions and it’s not the optimal way to go about getting more sales, subscribers, or whatever conversion goal you have.
Alternatively, if a company chose to optimize for increased conversion rate, there would be tests and tweaks made to a website that would boost conversions without spending a dime on AdWords campaigns.
Conversion rate optimization is a sound strategy that increases sales, sign-ups, and other conversions a website is built for.
A Basic CRO Guide
Many businesses know that they should be optimizing content with keywords that will bring in more traffic, but optimizing existing content or creating new optimized content is not alone a good enough strategy for conversion.
While you may get some pretty decent organic traffic with optimized content, you aren’t playing the game at the level necessary to convert that traffic to sales, subscribers, or the like.
Good optimized content is a must, but as a website and business owner, you must excel at other strategies that point traffic to your conversion gateway and your end goal. Starting conversion rate optimization at the basics, which includes creating content but also doing much more, means building a complete process for optimization from the ground up – and building one that’s fool proof.
The thing about the conversion rate optimization process is that it’s going to be a never-ending process. Conversion rate optimization is cyclical in nature, meaning you’re in a sense working toward an end goal, but that goal will be in constant flux as your business grows and evolves.
So, your optimization process will need to have a beginning and then an end, and then another beginning with an end, and so forth as you constantly evaluate your conversion rate and business success.
To start optimizing for increased conversion rate, you’ll need to do the following:
- Analyze your company’s website for current performance
- Construct a hypothesis to see what you can improve
- Test your hypothesis
- Review your results
- Go back to the beginning and start again
As you can see, conversion rate optimization involves many steps that will consistently keep you aware of how your website is performing and how it can do better.
If you need help figuring out where to start with conversion rate optimization, and how to take your optimization strategy through the necessary steps so that you begin seeing the conversions you want, Contact Galileo Tech Media.
We’re SEO and marketing experts that work with companies to put strategies into place, so that they start to convert more sales, convert more subscriber sign-ups, convert by building email lists, and convert in other ways that grows their business the way they want.