Every online seller is concerned about more store traffic and leads.
But all of your efforts will go down the drain if the traffic doesn’t convert. The conversion doesn’t necessarily mean you get sales as it could be anything – a subscription to your email list, an e-book download, or more. In 2021, no ecommerce strategy will be as effective as a CRO strategy. But, creating a result-driven CRO strategy isn’t as easy as it may sound. Boosting the conversion rate without a solid plan may result in severe consequences for your online business.
Today’s customer journey from brand awareness to conversion may involve many essentials. That is why it’s critical than ever to have a holistic view of the conversion rate optimization to get optimum conversion rates. Today, we’re going to explore eight ways to build an effective CRO strategy to improve your store traffic and conversions. But before that, first, have a quick look at what conversion rate optimization means in the world of ecommerce.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization is a process of increasing the percentage of visitors who are genuinely interested in your products and willing to take the desired action. In other words, it’s a systematic process that uses analytics to improve the overall functionality and performance of your website.
Why is CRO important?
There are many reasons why you should create a CRO strategy for your online business. First, the conversion rate is directly proportional to your ROI. It also helps to fight against the limited attention span of your visitors by enabling them to quickly find their required products before they hit a back button and start exploring other options.
What’s a Good Conversion Rate for Your Business?
The answer to this question depends upon your business niche and your target audience. One of the researches conducted by WordStream revealed that a good conversion range hovers anywhere between 2% and 5%.
Conversion Rate Optimization – Process
At its fundamental level, the process of conversion rate optimization revolves around determining why your website visitors are not converting and creating a CRO strategy to fix it.
Here are a few things you should consider before you create a CRO strategy for your online business.
- Make sure the CTA on your home page and landing pages are clear and visible
- Do not use graphics that are distracting and unclear
- Focus on the site’s usability. The idea is to provide the best user experience (UX) to your website visitors
- Implement the best SEO strategies to enhance the visibility of your website in front of search engines
- Display customer testimonials on your website to build trust and boost conversions
Creating a CRO Strategy in 2021 – The Effective Way!
If you haven’t created a CRO strategy for your business yet, it’s high time you should create one because, without an effective CRO strategy, it would be difficult for your business to build trust and drive conversions.
1. Powerful CTAs and Headlines
The headlines you have on your home page and landing pages are the first things customers see when they visit your store.
A headline is a phrase that concludes your entire sales pitch into a single-line sentence. The purpose of creating interesting headlines is to pique the curiosity of potential customers and offer a solution to their problem.
Little changes to your headlines can have a massive impact on your conversion rates. Brainstorm a few ideas and choose headlines that are clear, concise, and above all unique.
In addition to that, you can also take help from online headline analyzing tools to quickly improve and optimize your headlines.
Similar to headlines, compelling CTAs also encourage buyers to take action. The CTAs on your website should be strategic. Also, you should place them appropriately on your pages to ensure they’re visible to your visitors.
According to Google research, the most suitable position to place CTAs is right above the fold. Again, there are different online tools available that you can use to improve buttons, sales pops, pricing tables, and other types of CTAs on your website.
2. Easy Navigation
Considering the competition we have in the online space, you should work on every aspect of your website design to offer the best user experience. In other words, the simpler your website navigation is, the better you’d be able to attract sales.
Avoid navigation links on your website and A/B test different designs to see which specific design is gaining better conversions.
Create a custom menu that includes simple content. You can also use the best internal linking practices to improve traffic to your landing pages.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure about designing your website on your own, you must choose a theme that covers everything for you. There are many feature-rich themes available for ecommerce platforms that come with customized design options for the users.
3. Fast Loading Time
While many people do not consider the website loading time as a key conversion factor, how can you expect conversions if customers leave your store even before it loads?
Research also suggests that more than 53% of customers abandon an ecommerce website just because it fails to load within 3-seconds.
So, it’s pretty clear that fast loading time is essential for the success of your online business.
There are several things you can do to improve your website speed. Make sure you first evaluate your website speed using any of the available online tools, such as GTmetrix.
Once you have successfully identified the issues, the next step is resolving them using the right strategies.
4. Trust Badges, Verified Payments & Free Shipment
Customers prefer buying from brands that are reliable and trustworthy. One of the proven ways of improving your brand reputation is by building rapport and trust.
You can easily do this by showcasing trust seals, quality certifications, and verification tags that you hold.
Especially, display this information at your checkout page so that buyers can trust your brand and complete their transaction.
In addition to verified badges and trust seals, also display any other incentive you’re offering to your customers. For instance, if there’s a 50% sale on your store or you offer free shipping across the country, just ensure you highlight this information with a CTA at different spots so that buyers can feel confident and quickly make a buying decision.
5. Mobile Optimization
That goes without saying that optimizing your ecommerce store for mobile is more important than ever in 2021.
Today, almost everyone owns a smartphone. A mobile-responsive website means you can target those customers as well who are always on the go. Especially, if you offer products that target millennials in the first place, you have to ensure that your store can easily reach out to them through a mobile-friendly website.
6. High-Quality Content
Brands that invest their time and money on high-quality content can witness better results than websites that steal content from other websites.
Whether it’s in the form of blog posts, product descriptions, or long-form how-to’s or tutorials, make sure you offer premium content to your website visitors.
When people read your content on your website or any other forum, they start considering your brand as a reliable resource that they can trust.
The process starts by conducting keyword research. For this, you can use Google Keyword Planner or Moz to find out the best mix of high volume, medium-volume, and low-volume keywords.
While SEO is the key element of a successful content strategy, you mustn’t overstuff your content with keywords. Remember, your goal is to write for humans and not for search engines.
7. Create Optimized Landing Pages
The biggest mistake online sellers make while creating a CRO strategy is that they direct their entire traffic to their homepage.
Since the homepage is a generic page, your visitors have to invest additional time finding the right products they need.
Instead of attracting traffic to your home page, you should redirect customers to optimized and targeted landing pages. Create dedicated landing pages for every product category available on your website so that potential customers can easily find whatever they’re looking for without making any additional effort.
Also, add relevant CTAs to trigger action and increase sales.
8. Display Customer Reviews and Testimonial
Another useful way of building trust and rapport is through testimonials and customer reviews. These reviews are generally displayed right after the product details so that potential customers can see that everything being pitched is correct.
Research by Nielsen indicates that more than 92% of customers will follow a recommendation from a family member or a friend, and over 70% will trust a review coming from someone they don’t even know.
The idea is if others are satisfied with your products and services, they can help make other prospects convert through their genuine feedback and testimonials.
Pro tip: You can ask your customers to create a custom product review video that you can post on your website to increase conversions. You can also request them to post that review as a UGC on YouTube.
Bonus Tips
Create a Sense of Urgency/Scarcity
One of the proven ways to drive conversions is by creating a sense of urgency. For instance, you can excite customers by offering a deal like ‘Get 70% off on selected products during the next 24-hours’.
The ‘Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)’ will encourage buyers to make a timely buying decision and you’ll witness a noticeable rise in your conversion rate.
Similarly, you can also create a sense of scarcity by announcing that your best-sellers are left limited in stock.
Be Transparent
This is one of the most essential yet often overlooked conversion factors that can help you skyrocket your sales overnight.
Be transparent throughout the process. Avoid giving your prospects surprises in the form of hidden charges during checkout. Be very clear about your pricing and do communicate the total upfront cost including delivery to help buyers know what they can expect.
Transparency not only helps increase conversions but also build a loyal customer base that stays faithful to your brand for a long time.
Use Videos and Images
No matter what your business niche is, capture images and use product videos to help your potential customers see what they can expect from your offer.
Since customers can’t touch and see products as they can in a real-time shopping experience, it’s more critical than ever to provide them with the best user experience. Click high-quality images and optimize them for better conversions.
There you have it – Eight Ways to Build an Effective CRO Strategy. CRO is one of the most essential elements of your ecommerce strategy. If done right, your CRO strategy can generate leads and conversions in no time.
Have questions? Drop them in the comments section below. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Author Bio:
Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – free Shopify theme, helping dropshippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.
