What is Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing a site or landing page experience. It is based on website visitor behavior to improve the probability of the visitor taking desired actions (conversions) on the said page. CRO is a comprehensive process that spreads across a multitude of stages. A successful CRO campaign is the one that uses in-depth data to analyze results, runs multiple tests, and tweaks content to make it more relevant to the visitors, and draws necessary conclusions.
Marketers generally encounter six primary elements for optimization throughout the journey of a CRO process. So, let's understand those six primary elements and effective UX strategies for their optimization:
Landing Page Design
Landing page design is the first and foremost element that defines the usability and success of a website. The more appealing a site is, the more traction it gets. With web design services, you can avail appealing and conversion generating landing pages and web page designs.
For instance, on a product page of an ecommerce platform, customers can instantly add the product to their cart by conveniently clicking on the “Add to Cart” button (in a color that's prominently visible – Orange) placed right next to the product information column. Now, orange is an intense color that complements the website's white background. It makes it easy for visitors to identify and take the necessary action instantly. Furthermore, the effective use of the white space to highlight the product's features and smart use of large images on the left side of the page instills trust and quickly captures the attention of the visitors.
Also, Read | How Is Boring Design Killing Your Website Conversion Rate?
Website Copy
A well-designed and aesthetically pleasing website can get more website traffic flowing on your site. But words can verbally hook your visitors and convert them into potential leads. Writing relevant and engaging content that emphasizes the product's persuasiveness can make a difference. It can create a difference between visitors staying on your website and taking the necessary actions and visitors leaving your site without taking any action. Website copy can be further divided into two subsections:
Headline
Headlines are the first and foremost thing a visitor looks on your landing page. It typically defines their first impression of your business. If they do not like it, they'll not scroll down and check the rest of your page. To ensure you're on the right track, always focus on:
- Formatting: Focus on the font type, font size, and color to ensure it captures your visitors' attention and is easily readable.
- Writing Style: Keep the headline short and to the point ensuring it talks exactly about what the product or service is about in a clear, concise manner.
Related How To Choose A Website Image?
Body Content
Well-written body content is essential for a website. It must answer the basic question – “what's in store for me?” It must also be clear, concise, to-the-point, and portray your brand's persona in the most efficient manner.
To draft good body content, again focus on the proper formatting and writing style of your content:
- Formatting: Use essential subheadings to break the content into glance-able chunks. Use proper font and its size with bullet points wherever necessary to match the overall design guidelines of the brand.
- Writing style: Use the right tone as per the target audience, add stylish elements such as metaphor, adjectives, etc. to highlight certain points, address directly to your end-users and add some key phrases to improve the overall usability and easy takeaways.
A catchy headline accompanied by content that's concise and answers all the essential questions makes any page look appealing. It also assists in achieving the desired results – to get customers on board.
Related Creating A Balance Between UX And Content Strategy
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Call-To-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is exactly what it sounds – a request or call for customers to take the desired action. This action could be anything – from subscribing to a newsletter to booking a slot in a webinar, making a purchase, availing a service, and so on. The stronger and crispier the CTA, the more leads it can generate.
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Site Structure and Navigation
Your site's structure must focus on building an experience that's easy to navigate. Site structure is typically a graph of how various pages of your site interact with each other. Ensure that users are easily and quickly able to move between important sections of the website. Also, ensure they are able to find whatever they need to accomplish their goals in the fewest clicks possible. In other words, creating a fluid, easy-to-navigate website is the key to increasing conversions as well as your brand's reputation.
Related Improve Your Website's Navigation Through Simple Tweaks
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Forms
Forms are crucial to most companies, especially if they're a part of their sales funnel. Optimizing important customer touchpoints can extensively support in improving conversions. In many cases, having a comprehensive form has worked wonders for some organizations, while the shorter forms have worked for many others. It is always a balancing act between lead quality and volume of leads that gets the best ROI. But there are some optimization tips that can take your form from nice to incredible. Those tips are:
- The fewer the fields, the better it is.
- Good looking forms often equate to nice user experience.
- Easy password creation makes the entire form-filling process an easy breeze.
- Having one-click form submits using Facebook or Google SSO can also work wonders for your conversion process.
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Page Speed
Page speed or page load time has a huge impact on the overall performance of a site. In fact, it directly affects the experience of a user, the conversion rate of a site, and its ranking on search engines.
Even one second load time delay can reduce your conversions by 7%. The same one second delay also means chances of losing about 11% of your potential customers. They'll simply close your page or back out without even thinking twice.
Conclusion
In order to optimize for conversion rates, you have to know where, what to optimize, and who to optimize for. The information we discussed is the cornerstone of successful CRO strategies. You can avail Oodles Studio's UX Consulting services for assistance.
