Conversion Rate Optimisation & Its Place in Web Development

Conversion rate optimisation or CRO for short is the process of converting the content and code of webpage in such a way that the overall visitor to customer ratio or percentage is increased or improved. This is something that the majority of small business owners do not look into. This is partly due to lack of knowledge but also generally because the web design agency they worked with does not actually implement correct CRO practices onto the website.

CRO is something that you should only have to do once for each webpage. Similar to SEO in that way, on-page optimisation should only be completed once for each webpage, if your website changes dramatically then you might need to change inner pages that target keywords you no longer want to rank for and replace them for more relevant profitable keywords. But unless you take the business in another direction you should only be looking to do both on-page optimisation and CRO once per webpage. If you do this correctly the knock on effect will be dramatic. Today I?m going to talk about how to implement CRO and web design correctly. This article is targeted at people getting websites created currently and design agencies building sites.

Web development is no longer just how a site looks when it is complete. You have to look at it from the point of potential client or customer. If you have 1,000 visitors to your site a month and convert 1% of those for ?1,000 then you generate exactly ?10,000 per month (1% of 1000 = 10 x ?1000).

So the ONLY question becomes how can we increase this ?10,000 per month figure. That?s the ONLY question. Don?t over-complicate this. So what are our options (there are 3 of them):

1.) We can charge more than ?1,000 per customer. If this is an option then you should seriously look into it. Can we provide more value and charge more or can we increase our lifetime value of a client? If so then go for this too, upsell in the future and increase this value if possible.

2.) We can increase the amount of traffic or potential leads we get into the site. This is the most common way people try to earn more money. If we generate ?10,000 per 1000 visitors then lets get to 2,000 and we get to ?20k. Of course this assumes that the quality of the traffic is the same. Remember there is no point in promoting to people that potentially aren?t going to convert.

3.) The final method is to convert more visitors into customers. For example if we can increase our conversion rate from 1% to 2% then we double our entire revenue. This is the easiest way to double income, yet it is one many people do not implement or even look into (myself included). Below I?m going to run through a few of the basics but if you want to get indepth in this you can check out a couple of really good CRO blogs, I like ConversionXL, Kissmetrics and Unbounce but feel free to go wherever you see the most value.

Start by identifying who your target audience are. Remember designing a site is not how the client or how you personally think it should look. You want to design it to how your potential customers want to see it. For example, if you have a blog about football and you are an Arsenal fan you might want to put a lot of Arsenal information on this. But remember anyone who supports any other team will instantly be turned off if they see this being the case. Remember to stay generic but SPECIFIC. For example do not brand for one team, but be specific to football (don?t branch into other sports)

Headings and titles ? These are the first things people see whether they find your site through social or search (or even if they go direct) as a result you want to build these headings to convert visitors to read the next 2 sentences. If these titles are dry and boring people won?t want to carry on reading. Again if you want to know how to craft titles and headings well, then follow what the CRO experts say.

The first 2 sentences ? This is another huge one, if someone starts reading your post but then gets bored after 2 sentences or thinks this isn?t what they were looking for, they will bounce to another website, this is what we want to avoid of course.

Multimedia ? Add a ton of images and video into your post. These can be simple images, the ones that are best. You can also use images to help describe difficult processes. This is a technique that once you are conscious of you will see all experts using.

Style of post ? People hate reading blocks of text, especially if it is not split up into sections. For example, if we made this a wall of text the retention rate for the post would probably go down to zero. Make sure your posts are easy to read. I personally like articles that are written how people talk. For example lots of short sharp sentences. Don?t overuse the same terms either, use LSI keywords and generally make the post easy to understand.

There?s a good infographic below which gives you a nice checklist of things to remember when doing an CRO campaign: