4 CRO marketing top tips to enhance your conversion rate
Unlike more well-known optimisation techniques like SEO, CRO marketing is relatively new to the scene. That means there’s less awareness of the drastic ways it can boost conversions (and revenue) for ecommerce stores, and also less knowledge on exactly how to make it happen. We’re here to help.
We’ve compiled a list of 4 expert CRO marketing tips to help you get started with your conversion rate optimisation journey, with insights from our Setup for Lifetime Value podcast episode ‘4 CRO marketing top tips you need to know’.
1. Map out your customer journey to identify where your customers are dropping off
Conversion rate optimisation encompasses a lot of different elements, so it can sometimes be challenging to know exactly where you should start. Our first top tip to guide your CRO journey is to identify the areas of your site that most need improvement - the areas where you can see that your customers are dropping off. To do this, you’ll first need to map out the customer journey of your site.
There are 3 main stages of a successful customer journey: Discovery, Consideration and Conversion. Pinpoint when and where each step takes place on your site by considering:
- How are your site’s visitors discovering you?
- Which pages do they navigate to as they consider making a purchase?
- At what point do your visitors make the decision to convert?
To help you answer these questions, you can utilise some of the many helpful CRO tools on offer.
Next, take a look at the numbers to see exactly where your customers are stopping on that journey. These are the areas you should be seeking to enhance with CRO marketing.
If you discover that plenty of users are discovering your site organically, but they’re failing to move to the consideration phase, you might want to focus on developing more compelling content and CTAs to drive those visitors to consideration.
Or, if you discover that users are failing to reach the conversion phase, you know that it’s your checkout process that needs more urgent optimisation. Do your research to uncover the areas of your site where your customers are dropping off - then work on improving them.
2. Make sure your data channels are set up correctly
This is another CRO marketing tip that focuses on the planning phase of your CRO journey - the stuff you need to get sorted before jumping straight into the testing phase.
If you’re starting out with CRO, you need to ensure that your data channels are set up correctly. This includes CRO tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and Hotjar. Anything you use to inform your CRO decisions or analyse the results of tests needs to be working correctly, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
Some common mistakes we see are goals and events being set up incorrectly in Google Analytics. This leads to skewed data, which can be extremely damaging for CRO marketing.
To avoid this, make sure you’re setting up any new implementations in Google Analytics on a test view before implementing them on the main view. You should also cross reference the data you collect with another source to check that the data you’re pulling through is correct. This will prevent the data in your Main View from being corrupted in case an error does occur.
3. Start with the low-hanging fruit
This next tip is a great one to focus on when you’ve successfully set up your data channels and identified the areas of your site that are most in need of enhancement. The tip is simple: when you’re getting started with CRO, focus on the low-hanging fruit first.
What do we mean by that? In CRO marketing, the low-hanging fruit are the simple things you can change that will likely have a positive impact on your conversion rate: the quick wins.
This might be something like reducing the number of fields on a form to boost sign ups. Or reducing the size of images and videos to speed up your site. Or displaying all the different payment options you accept before getting to checkout, to reduce cart abandonment. Your low-hanging fruit will depend entirely on your site, your product and your goals. You can find a range of suggestions that could work for you in our expert CRO techniques blog.
Focussing on these quick wins is a great idea when you’re starting out with CRO marketing because (done correctly) it allows you to see results without having to make significant changes to your site. It will also help you to develop an effective process for testing hypotheses and analysing their results.
4. Replicate the in-person buying experience
Our final top tip for CRO marketing is to replicate the in-person buying experience as best you can on your online store. This is essential for any online business.
Why? Because it’s a lot easier to sell stock in a bricks and mortar store. There, customers can go in, see with their own eyes and physically interact with products, allowing them to make an informed decision about whether to make a purchase. With ecommerce stores it’s a lot more difficult.
To replicate the in-store experience, your landing page needs to give your users enough information to make an informed decision about your product, but not so much that they feel overwhelmed. Balance is key.
To achieve this, utilise clear product imagery and video content to show users exactly what it is that they’re buying. This will also help them to imagine owning and using the products.
Another great way to replicate the in-person buying experience, and boost your CRO marketing efforts, is to add a live chat feature to your site. People are naturally curious, so visitors to your site will likely have questions that your web page can’t answer. Utilising a live chat on your site will help you to push aside your visitors’ objections and conversion blockers in real time, helping to increase your conversion rate.
Need help with CRO marketing? Our expert team has got you covered. Learn more about our CRO services and talk to us about how we can help you boost your conversions.
This blog post features insights from “4 CRO marketing top tips you need to know”, an episode from our Setup for Lifetime Value podcast series featuring Pancho Mendiola from Convert.com and CRO specialist at Underwaterpistol, Lilliana Miller. You can watch the full episode here.
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