The term “conversion” means persuading someone visiting your site to respond to the desired call to action. In online marketing, this could include actions such as:

• Telephone calls
• Quote requests
• Demo requests
• Transactions
• Contact form submission

If the prospect successfully completed the desired action, then they have “converted”.

This is where conversion goals come into it. These could all depend on the type of business you operate. They could be based on leads generated, add-to-carts and product sales if you run an E-commerce site.

However, if you run a media site, you could have conversion goals set for newsletter subscriptions, content engagement or even scroll depth.

Your conversion goals will widely depend on the type of website you run and what you consider to be a useful metric.

CRO – or Conversion rate optimisation – is the ongoing process of improving the quality of your website in order to increase the percentage of website visitors who perform a desired action such as adding an item to their basket or requesting a product demo.

CRO relies on a variety of “test and learn” techniques. Adjustments are made to a website in stages and we closely monitor the results of each change to identify what does and doesn’t help to improve site performance. With the end goal being to increase conversions. These changes can include features such as:

• Improve the visual design of your site: People are much more used to clean, uncluttered sites than they used to be. A poorly designed web page or site can sometimes reduce the trust of potential customers
• Increasing the visibility of call to actions: Helping visitors to complete the desired action by making the process as clear as possible and guide them through your sales funnel
• Creating compelling landing pages and product pages: When web traffic lands on your website or product pages, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to convert
• Creating compelling content: Written and image content can help to create a relationship with visitors and encourage them to convert
• Reducing basket abandonment: When a site visitor adds a product to their basket and then doesn’t complete the checkout process
• Adding social proof: Humans typically follow other humans. Adding or improving customer reviews on your site can help nudge visitors towards completing your desired action
• Test, don’t guess: Our CRO specialists A/B test changes before committing them to your site to help make sure that you always benefit

CRO is really important. By optimising for conversions you can lower the cost of acquiring customers as well as potentially increase the value of existing visitors.

Conversion rate can always be worked on and further improved and by making small changes here and there you can also improve the experience that users have on your site, while also improving return on investment as well.