How to get started with CRO
2. Establish which areas on your website to focus on
4. Run tests on your key landing pages
5. Don’t neglect your blog content
Once you discover what conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is, along with the benefits of combining SEO and CRO, you’re probably keen to get started. But where do you begin? It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of information out there, especially if you’re juggling other tasks on top of embarking on your CRO journey. In this article, we cover our top tips for getting started with CRO.
1. Decide your goals
Before you do anything, figure out what you want to get out of CRO. Obviously you want to improve conversions, but being more specific will allow you to create a more focused CRO strategy. Some things to consider:
- Have you identified the weak points in your conversion funnel? For example, is your goal to get more people to complete their order, or are you having trouble getting them to add items to their basket in the first place?
- If your conversions relate to lead generation as opposed to orders, is there a particular type of lead which you want to improve on?
- What does “good” look like? Is there a conversion rate you want to aim for in the next 12 months?
- What wider business goals will your CRO work support?
- Have you considered that you’re not driving the right kind of traffic to your website, which is therefore leading to poor conversion rates? If so, it’s worth complimenting your CRO work with SEO to ensure you’re attracting traffic with the right intent.
2. Establish which areas on your website to focus on
Once you’ve established your goals, you can start to pinpoint which parts of the site to focus on.
For example, if you want to improve the numbers of users who complete their purchase, you may want to focus on the checkout journey.
If your goals are still quite broad, and/or you’re unsure of the weak points on your website, it’s time to start gathering data. Tools like Google Analytics can tell you which pages have below average engagement, while CRO-focused software like VWO, Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity can help you to dive even deeper. Using things like form tracking, user session recordings and heatmap analysis, you can quickly build a picture of the points on your site where users are dropping out of the funnel or encountering difficulties.
If you don’t have access to the above tools, or you’re keen to drive straight in, there are obvious places to start:
- Product pages and product listing pages (for e-commerce websites specifically)
- Homepage
- Landing pages which are designed with conversions in mind
- Popular blog posts
3. Create hypotheses
Before you begin testing or launch any changes, it’s important to establish a hypothesis. This will enable you to design tests which are tightly focused with a clear goal in mind.
The best way to generate hypotheses is by using the user data gathered in the previous step. You can also collect ideas from your wider team to figure out where they believe the pain points to be – however, be cautious of leaning too heavily on anecdotal feedback! If you go down this route, try to figure out common themes as opposed to relying on the experience of individuals, as you’re likely to encounter some bias here.
Your hypothesis should include:
- A description of the problem/pain point
- A possible solution (which can be tested)
- The predicted outcome or change
A good example might be:
A significant proportion of users are abandoning the site on the basket page rather than proceeding with their order. Including details of the payment options available above the fold, next to the “Checkout” button, may inform users of the breadth of payment options available, thereby increasing the number of visitors through to the next stage of the funnel.
4. Run tests on your key landing pages
Now you’ve got your hypotheses, it’s time to start testing them!
Using dedicated CRO software is the best way to accurately and reliably track the progress and outcomes of your tests. Some popular options include:
- VWO
- Optimizely
- AB Tasty
- Crazy Egg
- Dynamic Yield
- Kameleoon
Running A/B tests allows you to test multiple versions of a page or element to understand which one performs best. For your first test, keep things simple, and ensure you tie it back to your original hypothesis. Using the hypothesis above as an example, your A/B test could involve two versions of the basket page: one in which the payment options are displayed above the fold, next to the “Checkout” button, and your existing page (which can be referred to as the “control” version).
If you don’t have access to any of the aforementioned tools, an alternative option is to push a change live for a pre-agreed period of time (depending on the volume of traffic to your site, this could range between a week to a month) and monitor the impact on conversions. However, this isn’t quite as reliable or efficient as testing the two versions of a page concurrently.
Keep in mind that your hypothesis and subsequent test shouldn’t be a “one and done” thing. If your first test indicates that you should make a permanent change to positively impact conversions, then great! But it doesn’t stop there. You should continuously iterate on your original hypothesis and carry out further tests over time, to incrementally improve conversion rates.
5. Don’t neglect your blog content
It’s easy to focus all your CRO efforts on your “money maker” or bottom-of-funnel pages. This can be sensible to start with, especially with regards to generating hypotheses and carrying out tests, as this is the content where you’re likely to see the quickest and most significant improvements.
However, there are some best practices you can look at immediately implementing across your blog content:
- Ensure all of your blogs contain a clear call to action (CTA)
- Implement internal links within the body copy of your blog content, or as in-line elements throughout, to point users towards transactional content (this is also great for SEO!)
- Content should be well-structured, with clear subheadings and sections, to improve readability and engagement
- Consider adding navigation elements (such as a contents with jump links) for longer articles
Ultimately, you’ll still want to perform tests on your blog content so that they reach their full potential. But the above points offer some short-term, low-effort tactics to implement.
6. Long-term: think strategically, not tactically
Just like SEO, CRO is a long game.
Consistent time and effort is required to maximise the returns from your CRO work. If you see a 0.1% improvement in conversion rate off the back of a single experiment, it may be difficult to see the immediate benefit of this work. But that 0.1% can eventually become 1%, equating to hundreds more conversions and a significant uplift in revenue, with persistent testing, iteration and refinement.
To support a healthy CRO strategy, consider the following:
- Create a CRO roadmap: Rather than carrying out ad-hoc tests based on random ideas, develop a roadmap which allows for regular occurrences of activities like reviewing user data, hypothesis generation, test creation, reviewing results of tests and implementing changes. Plan out the phases of your experiments in advance and ensure you tie these back to the goals you established at the start.
- Report on KPIs for your CRO efforts: Establish specific metrics which you can measure your performance against. Report monthly against these metrics (as well as your “bigger picture” goal(s)) to demonstrate the value of your work and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.
- Improve your tech stack: Investing in the right tools is crucial to supporting your CRO efforts. Getting buy-in for this might be difficult, but you can do it much more quickly if you can demonstrate the ROI of any initial tests through the reporting detailed in the previous point.
Conclusion
Getting started with CRO doesn’t need to be daunting. As you can see, there are lots of quick and easy ways to get hands-on experience and start driving useful insights about your customers’ behaviour.
If you’re looking for a helping hand, we offer CRO services that can help you reach your goals. Contact us to find out more.