Best Practices for Improving Conversion Rate

[katie_cort]

Best Practices for Improving Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of conversions. CRO usually involves coming up with hypotheses on how to improve conversion rate, and then testing these out through tools such as A/B testing. 

Improving your conversion rate helps you get more from existing traffic and leads. This helps propel your company towards long term growth. The process of improving your conversion rate involves enhancing your website to increase the number of quality leads you generate. This post will share best practices on how to analyze your conversion rate and improve it over time. Working as an Onboarding Specialist and helping customers set up and optimize their HubSpot usage often leads to conversations around this very topic. Here are tips I often provide to customers that can lead to amazing results.

Industry/Niche Considerations...

A "good" conversion rate depends on industry and even niche. Let's say we are looking at common conversion rates within Ecommerce. Food and beverage has a much higher conversion rate than haircare does, but it is still in one industry. 

How to Calculate Conversion Rate?

Now that you have that number, how do you then audit conversion rate?

How to Audit Conversion Rate

1. Investigate website current performance (Traffic analytics)

Reading results: Reading results can look like this. Let's say you see a lot of direct traffic. This may be customers logging in, daily active users. You may see dips in activity-> more sessions on the weekdays, less on weekend.

2. Scrub every page of your website for possible conversion friction or misalignment to the buyer journey. Is it clear what the next steps are? Does the call to action lead to a landing page? Is the landing page well designed and matched to the content offer?

3. Use A/B testing to verify your hypothesis. A is the control. B is the test. See if conversion rates improve or get worst. One example could be getting rid of the header/footer on the test page to see if that helps with conversion. 

Keep in mind the Conversion Funnel:

At the very top, it starts simple with "What do you do?" If you are able to answer this question, it then becomes "Why should I care?" If you get them to continue reading from there, it becomes "How do I believe you?" and finally... "Where do we begin?" At the very end, that is when you get the conversion. You will notice that there are several questions that must be addressed before you get the conversion. A page that is simply offering something without any context or relevancy before that, will not convert.

Example of conversion funnel:

Here are the funnel stages and the customer mindset at each stage:

This graphic helps you understand the type of content you should be producing at each stage of the funnel.

Let's move on to tips and takeaways!

Tip 1) The power of a Beautiful website

It is important to note that conversion rate is often tied to the quality of your website. Websites that load slowly, have broken images and copy that does not convey the value, or why the person should care, will not convert well. On the contrary, websites that look nice and appeal to your audience drive conversion.

Tip 2) Build Conversion Paths

A conversion path looks like this: CTA-> Landing Page-> Thank you Page. This can help improve conversion rate because you first catch the attention with an action orientated button, then bring them to a landing page that is focused and clear with what you are offering. The offer is that if they submit some information, they get the guide/Ebook/PDF/webinar/discount etc. Make sure that this is a fair exchange of information. If you are offering a free Ebook/White Paper (more top of the funnel content), don't ask for the persons personal phone number. That alone can turn people away. First name, last name, email, Company name is plenty. If you are offering a demo with the sales team at a later stage, asking for phone number is more appropriate since the relationship likely has been established further at that point and makes sense contextually. Once the person fills out the form, we lead them to a thank you page that provides the content. You can also offer "related content" or something similar with the goal of keeping them on your website for longer. This can help with bounce rate. If you do build a conversion path, build it backwards. You can't build a bridge to nowhere, so first build the thank you page, then landing page, then button.

Tip 3) Make sure the offer is relevant!!!

One of the most important tips is to ensure the offer is relevant to the buyer. Make it about them and not yourself/your company. The worst is when you click on an Ad, and you are brought to a page that has nothing to do with why you clicked initially. You instantly leave the page and are disappointed since you wasted time. Make sure that the copy/image/offer/EVERYTHING is relevant to what the person initially clicked on!!! This is the best way to establish trust and get a better conversion rate. It should be a seamless experience that feels natural and makes sense.

Resources:

• Pdf CRO 8 Week Planner guide
• Increase CRO Blog Post 
• Academy course

[deepikaverma]

Hi @katie_cort
This is awesome and very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[katie_cort]

Of course! Glad you found the post helpful 🙂

[danmoyle]

Thank you for a helpful resource to inspire us to think about our CRO @katie_cort! I really liked the table with the customer mindset at each stage of their journey. 

[katie_cort]

Happy to help @danmoyle  🙂 Yes, the table is awesome! One of my favorite visual resources.

[Jnix284]

Hi @katie_cort  tons of helpful info packed in this post, especially like the benchmark chart by industry and also the visual of the funnel that shows the questions buyers ask as they move down the funnel.  Thank you for sharing this!

[katie_cort]

Thank you so much ! @Jnix284 I'm happy you found the images valuable 🙂