What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Digital Marketing
What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Article by Szabolcs Szecsei
Last Updated: December 10, 2024

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves strategies focused on key elements of your website, such as content, design, user experience, and call-to-action (CTA) placement. The goal is to create a more enticing environment that encourages SEO-generated visitors to take specific actions.

So, how does CRO work, what are its benefits, and how can it be effectively strategized? We asked our marketing experts to answer these questions and more in this article.

How To Calculate Conversion Rates

You can calculate your conversion rates for your entire website or a particular page. To do this, divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors to your site/page during a defined period. The formula looks like this:

Number of Conversions / Total Number of Visitors = Conversion Rate

To get a percentage, simply multiply the result by 100.

Keep in mind that you need to clearly define what constitutes a conversion on your website. It may be entering a trial period, booking a free consultation, or downloading a resource. Next, set a specific period for gathering data about your visitors.

Example:

If, in the past week, you had 1,000 unique site visits and 75 people downloaded your lead magnet, your conversion rate would be:

75 / 1,000 = 0.075

Then, multiply by 100 to get the percentage:

0.075 x 100 = 7.5%

What Is a Good Conversion Rate?

Now, you have a number, but you aren’t sure if it’s good or bad. The best approach is to compare your rate to industry benchmarks to see how your performance holds up.

Different sources provide varying benchmarks for a “good” conversion rate, but generally, a rate of 5% usually means that your site is effective. For example, Mailchimp considers a conversion rate between 2% and 5% as good, while Leadpages views a range of 5% to 15% as optimal.

Additionally, optimal conversion rates vary by industry and the specific action you’re measuring. For instance, in B2B eCommerce, the average conversion rate is about 1.8%, with legal services seeing the highest conversion rates at 7%. Meanwhile, Klipfolio suggests that a 2% conversion rate or higher is considered healthy for email signups.

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5 Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization

CRO is a numbers game, but it’s more than just boosting figures across the board. The purpose of conversion rate optimization is to create seamless user experiences that drive your desired results. More specifically, a good CRO strategy can help:

  • Lower cost per acquisition (CAP): With optimized conversion rates, you don’t have to cover as many sustainable marketing strategies and channels to drive conversions.
  • Getting more out of your traffic: If your website is optimized for conversions, you can make better use of your existing traffic. While different types of SEO can help drive more visitors to your site, simple CRO tweaks often require less effort, time, and money.
  • Tailored online presence: CRO helps you better understand your visitors and their online preferences. You can use these insights to tweak your website and content to better meet their needs, address concerns, and solve pain points.
  • Increased revenue and competitiveness: Higher conversions can also translate to better sales that improve your brand’s bottom line. Additionally, site content optimized for conversions can give you a tactical advantage over your competitor’s non-optimized pages.
  • Finding new opportunities: Assessing different aspects of your website’s conversion processes may help you identify not-so-obvious bottlenecks and underdeveloped conversion funnels. These can be optimized for better performance.

Conversion Rate Optimization Downsides

As great as the benefits of conversion rate optimization strategies may sound, there are several downsides you need to consider. Here are the three most common ones:

  • Over-optimization: Sometimes, over-optimization can backfire and lead to diminishing returns. Improving small details may not lead to noticeable changes, and you may end up spending more resources for little to no results.
  • Risk of user alienation: While optimizing strategies to target a specific group, you may unintentionally exclude other potential customers. Not all changes you make during optimization will appeal to every buyer. For instance, simplifying content might ostracize more knowledgeable audiences who prefer detailed information.
  • Data dependence: CRO relies heavily on data, and without accurate data, it’s impossible to make informed optimizations. While this data-driven approach is essential, it also constrains your creativity.

Tried and Tested CRO Strategies

There are several strategies you can use to improve your conversion rates and boost your site’s performance and overall digital marketing efforts:

1. Use A/B Testing and Heat Maps

A/B testing lets you compare two versions of a webpage to see which performs better. If you already have a high-performing page, you can make additional adjustments to it by testing different elements.

Try experimenting with different layouts, headlines, content variations, and call-to-action buttons. Test out these changes and track the results to see which version performs better, then optimize the rest of your landing pages similarly.

[Source: Full Story]

Additionally, you can use heat maps to visualize the areas your users click on most on your pages. It gives you a better understanding of how visitors behave within the conversion funnel, helping you identify bottlenecks and other underlying optimization issues.

Some experts believe that heat maps are more effective than A/B testing because they offer a visual representation of user behavior, rather than just data. According to Optimizely, heat maps can improve your optimization efforts by 16%.

2. Improve Site Performance

Website performance directly affects user experience, which is a key factor in conversion optimization. Simply put, if visitors have a negative experience on your pages, their chances of converting become slim.

The first thing you want to check is whether your pages load quickly. Google recommends keeping load times under two seconds, and this isn’t just advice — it’s also a considerable ranking factor. Statistics suggest that 40% of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Use tools like PageSpeed Insights to analyze your pages and improve loading times.

In addition to speed, ensure that your conversion pages are user-friendly, with clean and intuitive navigation. These pages should also be fully optimized for mobile devices and free of bugs that could cause crashes or freezes while visitors are converting, like filling out forms.

3. Understand Your Target Audience

Session recordings and heat maps help you understand how visitors interact with your conversion pages. The data you collect can highlight areas that need adjustments or pinpoint issues that cause users to lose interest.

For example, your users are comfortable sharing their email addresses but hesitate to give out additional information, like their phone numbers or home addresses (which you might use for direct marketing). Remove these two fields and see what happens. If conversions increase after the change, it signals that your visitors are uncomfortable sharing that information.

Surveys and user feedback also offer valuable insights into your audience’s pain points and preferences. Feedback forms can reveal what users liked or disliked about your conversion tactics, such as what convinced them to download a lead magnet or schedule a demo.

[Source: Survalyzer]

Lastly, personalizing user experiences can also help boost your conversion rates. By using personalization techniques and artificial intelligence, you can deliver personalized content, product recommendations, and other personalized benefits that increase engagement and improve conversion rates.

4. Keep Your Forms Simple

Consider reducing the number of fields in your forms. This helps minimize friction, ensure compliance with data privacy laws, and boost the likelihood of form completion. It’s better to ask for essential information and get a response than to ask for too much and get nothing.

You can also experiment with multi-step forms, which break down questions or actions into smaller steps. This approach guides users through the form without overwhelming them with too many required actions.

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5. Use Tried-and-Tested Marketing Techniques

Sometimes, you might not need heat maps, extensive testing, debugging, or experimenting with different content. In such cases, you can effectively leverage proven marketing strategies that continue to resonate with visitors. These include:

  • Using social proof: Experts agree that social proof can be highly beneficial for conversion rate optimization. Reviews, testimonials, and case studies on your site — especially on conversion pages — can reassure visitors that your products or services are legitimate.
  • Optimizing your CTAs: Simple, compelling, and clear calls-to-action (CTAs) can boost your conversions. Experiment with different placements, colors, and wording to see what works best. Ensure your CTAs have a clear design and remain visible and distinct.
  • Creating scarcity and urgency: Limited-time offers, low-stock alerts, and countdown timers can prompt visitors to act quickly. Using FOMO (fear of missing out) marketing can be used together with social proof to increase urgency and drive conversions.

6. Utilize Different Content Types

[Source: Unbounce]

High-quality content helps sway your visitors to convert. Product images, detailed tutorials, product highlights, reviews, and other content elements can serve as social proof, just as effectively as testimonials and customer reviews.

However, text alone often isn’t persuasive enough. Visual communication can help you convey the message better, whether it’s addressing pain points or highlighting the specific benefits of your service or product.

CRO Tools to Succeed

Apart from useful strategies, you also have a variety of CRO tools at your disposal to test different aspects of your site and make adjustments that improve your conversion rate.

1. Plerdy

[Source: Plerdy]

Plerdy is an all-in-one solution that comes with A/B, SEO, and CRO testing to enhance user experience and optimize site performance. Its comprehensive suite offers unlimited A/B testing, scroll deep tracing, and traffic source analysis. It also highlights usability issues and provides dynamic heatmaps that capture real-time user interactions, including features like text selection, scroll depth, and cursor hover.

Plerdy also offers pop-up forms and NPS features with over 25 customization options. You can create conversion funnels, analyze different drop-off points, and even record user navigation patterns, which you can segment by device and traffic channels.

Lastly, Plerdy also offers an automated SEO checker and comprehensive eCommerce tracking to help you analyze product interactions.

Pricing:

  • Free
  • Startup: $21/month
  • Scale: $42/month
  • Thrive: $70/month
  • Enterprise: $97/month to $253/month
Pros Cons
Useful free versionFor some, the platform may have a steeper learning curve.
Comprehensive toolkitPossible setup difficulties
Easy to usePoor tutorials

2. Landing Page Builder

Source: Landing Page Builder

As the name suggests, Landing Page Builder enables you to create landing pages in bulk with the help of a convenient drag-and-drop interface. It also comes with A/B testing features to help you fine-tune your conversions.

The tool offers over 400 templates that can cover almost every use case in the book, and the Smart Sections feature enables you to reuse elements across all pages without starting from scratch.

Pricing:

  • $49/month
Pros Cons
No coding requiredIn-app purchases
Rich template galleryOnly a seven-day free trial
Smart Sections featureNo free version

3. HelloBar

Source: HelloBar

Made by Neil Patel, HelloBar is a trustworthy platform used by a community of over 500,000 users. With nearly a decade of dedicated effort in perfecting pop-up strategies, HelloBar emerges as the industry's stalwart, offering unparalleled reliability and ease of use.

Crafted by marketers for marketers, its intuitive interface allows users to craft customized pop-ups in mere minutes, seamlessly integrating with a multitude of apps without any hassle.

HelloBar also enables you to quickly deploy display pop-ups and static banner full-page takeovers and turn your site traffic into paying customers. The software is straightforward to install on your website, so you should have no problem getting started.

Pricing:

  • Starter: Free
  • Growth: $29/month, billed annually
  • Premium: $49/month, billed annually
  • Elite: 99/month, billed annually
Pros Cons
A great tool that gets better thanks to constant feedbackGreat and simple user interface
Several lead capture optionsSome may consider it pricey
Great and simple user interfaceSlight integration issues with other tools

Conversion Rate Optimization Takeaways

Optimizing your website for conversions allows you to better utilize the traffic you’ve already generated while fine-tuning the existing design and user interface. This approach is often cost-effective and offers a quick way to improve your digital marketing efforts without having to create new assets or launch new campaigns.

However, an effective CRO requires expertise and experience. It can be time-consuming, especially if you’re new to tweaking elements such as page layouts or CTAs that may require design knowledge. As such, your best bet is to partner with a professional CRO team that can quickly make the necessary adjustments, leading to tremendous improvements.

Conversion Rate Optimization FAQs

1. Is optimizing your conversion rates difficult?

Optimizing your conversion rates is not necessarily difficult. A/B testing different emails, subject lines, and content can be fairly easy. However, improving website speed and user experience, and debugging vital site functionality to boost conversions may require a more thorough understanding of design and development basics. It all depends on the elements that need improvement.

2. Is CRO superior to SEO?

CRO helps improve the conversion potential of the traffic generated by your SEO strategies. In this sense, it isn’t superior or inferior to SEO but complements it.

3. Will CRO bring immediate results?

Conversion rate optimization can lead to immediate results if you know which elements to adjust on your pages or site. It also helps if you have a clear understanding of your target audience’s preferences and pain points. For instance, this insight allows you to create better copies that address their concerns, wants, and needs.

That said, the more precise your customer data and insights are, the faster you'll see improvements through CRO.

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