CRO Marketing Process and Strategies
What is CRO?
CRO meaning conversion rate optimization and C.R.O. is a systematic process of enhancing a website’s performance by increasing visitors’ percentage who are taking a particular action. That particular action can be a download, purchase or a signup etc. It can be anything which is a potential KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that is taking a part in conversions.
CRO marketing process includes setting specific goals, creating hypotheses, collecting necessary data, idea testing and if the test gets the required results then implementing the changes or whatever change is considered result worthy and measuring outcomes.
How to Calculate CRO in Marketing?
Calculating CRO web is easy as it only requires dividing the converted visitors by the total number of visitors. To calculate the percentage, divide the converted visitors with the total number of visitors and multiply it by 100.
To understand it properly, let’s take an example. If in June month, our website got 30,000 visits from which 8,000 converted, the conversion rate would be 27 percent.
8,000 ÷ 30,000 × 100 = 26.67% ≈ 27%
Why is CRO Important?
Digital CRO in marketing is important for any digital marketing businesses as it assists in generating revenue, gives you value from existing clients, improves the customer experience and enhances brand affinity. Let’s understand it separately:
Generating Revenue:
Indirect conversions such as registering personal information, content downloads, sales, subscription, and sign-ups can help you increase the engagement, which assists you with the bottom line in the long run.
Value from Existing Customers:
Increasing your online presence will improve your current conversions and website layout designs, which is more cost effective than engaging with new visitors.
Improves the Customer Experience:
Increase in conversion rate means customers are more engaged with your brand. Customers getting engaged with your brand means that they are very delighted in spending money or time on your website. It can happen if your website has a readable font, more appealing layout and a big call to action button. Such little changes can help you enhance customer experience.
Enhances Brand Affinity:
Getting customer engagement means getting a part of your customer’s lives. That makes you their first priority whenever they want to purchase something and share their experiences with their friends and family so they can purchase as well.
CRO Digital Marketing Process in Steps:
Now let us understand the process of CRO marketing in steps. We will be giving you detail of each CRO strategy development step to help you understand cro ecommerce properly,
Setting your CRO Marketing Goals:
The first step of the marketing process is defining the conversion event that you want to optimize. Generally, conversion optimization is about converting a website visit into a potential lead. Occasionally, this conversion lead can also become a purchase.
Minimal conversion events like clicking on a link, signing up for a newsletter are considered as micro-conversions. As there is no big event such as purchasing happening. Micro conversions do not lead to more sales immediately yet important because they can lead to the next step of conversion. They help you in identifying the qualified lead that can turn into a buyer.
So, you have to decide what you want to get while considering these processes in your specific conversion funnel and which specific event can get you more qualified leads that you can take advantage of in future. Additionally, also check your current conversions and conversions in the past month, and define your conversion goal.
Determining the Issue:
Before moving further to solving the problem, understand the issue and analyze it thoroughly. This will help you understand why you are not succeeding at the present moment. You should consider some points before creating a plan which is understanding your customer profile, demographics, what your customer needs and user behaviour.
You should understand your customer’s intent, their needs and how you can best help them. After it, take a look at your website as well and analyze it thoroughly. Check if it is credible or if it looks professional, modern and has no grammar mistakes. Also check your website’s functionality by checking its loading time, navigations, content aligned with heading, audience intent, and stability on mobile and desktop. Also check your website’s readability
Form a Statement:
C.R.O. is about testing and implementing different things to analyze which works well. So, just make a statement and test it one by one. You should acknowledge that your statement should be measurable, has cause and effect and it also helps you to learn.
For instance, while analyzing your website you came to know that your website does not have an attractive call to action. So, you changed your CTA and formed a statement that: Changing CTA got more visitors than the previous month by 15% as the process was easy.
Ideas Testing:
Now it’s the time to test your statement for CRO ecommerce. For that, conduct A/B testing on your website so you can get real time data of what works best for you. In A/B testing, you would have two versions of your website which you would compare with each other. Then, write different CTA on both versions, which will help you to analyze which one is performing well.
You can also do the multivariable test in which you compare multiple versions of the website. Always remember, you should only test one version at a time otherwise you will not be able to know which version performs the best than others.
Measuring Results:
Now measure the change in conversion rate by analyzing the data of A/B testing results. Mostly, the small changes do not feel like something is changed yet they help you to carry on in this process. You may not see any change in the first try but checking different statements can help you improve and ultimately complete your goal.
Implementing the Changes:
If you see a clear difference between variables in your test then confidently implement the guess that is best for the optimal website. Also, update your knowledge regarding user behaviour and other new information that you get during the whole testing process. Also, keep doing the tests and find out the ways to improve the conversion funnel more than the previous one.
Best CRO Marketing Strategies:
Now you know about the digital CRO marketing process, let’s understand the cro strategy development and techniques that you should be using to improve the CRO digital marketing process:
Landing Page Optimization:
The main purpose of the landing page is to convert a website visit into a purchase. Hence, it’s important to make your landing page engaging and attractive. Always ensure that the landing page is easy to navigate and visitors can find the correct link easily.
For CRO web, try to update the broken links if any. Use images, videos and call to action in visible places which will get your visitors attention immediately.
Speed Optimization:
Make sure that your website’s speed is optimized for CRO onpage which means your website shouldn’t be taking too long time to load. For instance, if you search for a website and it takes time to load that specific page then you will leave that page and go to another site. Similarly, if your website takes much time to load the visitor, leave it and move to another. So, always check your website’s speed by searching “free website speed test” and then work on it if there’s any issue.
Improve Copy:
For sometime, be a user at someone else’s website and analyze on your own whether a website with more typos feels professional and trustworthy or a website with less to no errors feels professional and trustworthy. Yes! Of course the website having no grammatical or language errors, attractive call to actions feels much professional. Such pages compel users to take action.
In CRO ecommerce, guide your customer towards the funnel by giving them clear yet concise instructions and highlight what benefit could they get if they take that specific action. For example, giving them free shipping or a discount on their first purchase. This will compel customers to make a purchase.
Add Pop Ups:
In CRO digital marketing, smartly placed and on time pop ups can have a huge impact on increasing conversions. For instance, if your customer is about to leave the website, give them a “about to leave?” pop up, which highlights discounts on popular products and promotes content. You can also show them a pop up that highlights user activity, recent reviews, popular products or the things that are on sale which are about to end. This will create an urgency to make the purchase or sign-up.
Customer Testimonials:
Customer testimonials are an effective way to showcase your brand’s superiority. If the visitor has a doubt regarding the purchase or has trust issues, such testimonials will vanish their doubts. Add testimonials on the lead generation forms, while showcasing the pop-ups which will vanish the doubt.
Additionally, test the testimonials as well by placing different reviews on pop-ups which will help you to visualize which testimonials perform well.
Include a Chatbot:
For CRO in marketing, Including a chatbot on your website can help customers to complete conversions. In the live chat, customers can get answers to their query easily and quickly. Although, it can help you connect with your customer for the very first time.
Chatbots help you to determine if the visitor is a potential customer or not. If the visitor is a potential customer then chatbot can lead them to the right direction and if not, then chatbot can send them popular things that others are buying or a newsletter.
Improve Existing Content:
Improving your existing content is also the best technique for CRO onpage to get more visitors but you have to make a strategy to make sure that everything runs smoothly. If your page is ranking and getting traffic then it will be much harder to get the same audience so, you should add up new sections which will help you to optimize it with new keywords. Add attractive elements that keep visitors engaged and also add eye-catching call to action.
Customer’s Feedback:
Sometimes the problem is not with your website it may be some product, service or pricing etc that prevents your customers from making a purchase. The only way to know it is through asking your customers directly. Ask your customers to leave a review so you can understand your customer’s point of view as well.
Helpful User Search Tools for Digital CRO:
There are different tools that are used for C.R.O. user research and it includes SEO tools such as screaming frogs that help you to identify technical issues in your website. You can also use analytics tools like Google Analytics which helps you to identify your users preference, demographics and interests. Mouse tracking tools and heat mapping help you to determine user interaction with your website and track clicks. Additionally, Zuko, a form tracking tool, finds behaviour patterns in online forms.
Practices for User Search:
For conducting user research, you should be following some practices which are given below,
- Make sure about your plan, scope of your research and organize it precisely.
- Determine your competitors’ elements that are performing well
- Look for overlap between sources with a critical eye
- Determine the relevant insights when required, answer the specific queries, analyze your data and track the changing trend.
After you are done with the user research, use the data to determine C.R.O. testing opportunities and prioritizing them. The CRO onpage should resonate with the business goals to make an impact on your business. Always ensure that your website has an appealing design, engaging content and effective navigation to build trust with your customers.