CRO is a short form for conversion rate optimisation, and it is one of the most important things that a business can do to improve its conversion rates.
This process involves everything from analysing user behaviour on your website and using those insights to optimise user journey to the page copy, images, and videos that you use on your website, as well as your website forms and everything else that is involved in getting a prospect to take a very specific action on your website.
Let’s look at some ideas provided by PPC agency Session Media that will help you improve your conversion rates almost immediately.
Ensure your tracking is set up correctly
One of the first things you need to do before you do anything else when it comes to CRO is to ensure that your website tracking is set up correctly. If you’re using a tool such as Google Analytics, you need to make sure that you have the correct traffic exclusions in place.
For example, you might want to exclude robot traffic. You may also want to exclude traffic from employees of your own business so as not to skew results. Make sure this is set up correctly.
Another thing you need to do is to make sure that you are tracking the correct metrics for your business. Not every metric is going to be important or relevant to your business.
You need to understand how metrics such as bounce rates, users, sessions, session duration, conversion rate, etc. impact your specific business objectives and then prioritise them accordingly when it comes to your reporting dashboards.
Make your site secure
The next thing you need to do is to make sure that your website is secure. The best way of doing this is by implementing the SSL or https encryption between your website and your visitors’ browsers.
This is now a globally accepted (and expected) security standard and this is one of the first things that your prospective customers are going to look for when they consider engaging with your website.
Before they share any personal details or indeed financial details they’ll want to make sure that your website is reputable and secure, so make sure that you’re doing this and displaying it correctly.
Make your site fast
Next up, you need to make sure that your website is fast. 40% of people will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load.
So you need to make sure that you’re providing a good user experience by using tools such as Google’s Pagespeed Insights to figure out if there are any particular issues that are causing your website to load slowly, and making them a priority when it comes to dev changes to your website
Bear in mind that paid speed results may vary according to the device, so you need to not only ensure that your website is fast on desktop, but importantly you need to make sure that it’s mobile responsive and also providing a good user experience on mobile especially as that is now the dominant device through which visitors engage with most websites.
Communicate clearly with your copy
It may sound obvious, but you need to be very clear with your communication when it comes to your copy. Get to the point and use the words that your customers use.
You can find this out through doing the voice of customer analysis and keyword research. And make sure that you are providing a very clear call to action at the end of it.
Show customers the better version of themselves that they can be after using your product or solution. Don’t just talk about the product features, talk about the benefits- show them where they can be once they have used your product to solve their problem. In other words, show them the ‘why’ not just the ‘what’.
Use trust signals to build credibility
We talked about the importance of showing your prospective customers that your website is secure enough for them to comfortably share their personal and financial details.
While that is an important, fundamental step, it still doesn’t address the challenge of whether or not your solution or product has worked for similar people or companies before. You can display this by showing case studies or hopefully positive reviews if you have any, and also showcasing reputable brands that have engaged with or featured your brand before.
All of these elements will help provide social proof and increase the authority of your business in the eyes of your prospective customer.
Keep forms brief
It is tempting to try and extract as much information as possible from a prospect when you’re getting them to fill out a form. However, this increases the workload for the prospect, therefore increasing the friction and also the likelihood that they’re probably going to abandon the form if they’re too busy.
Make sure that you’re only asking for the information that is absolutely critical at that stage. Once you get them to fill out the form and they’re in your database, of course, you can follow up with them and get the other information later on
These are just some ways in which you can help improve conversion rates on your eCommerce website.
Holly brings a wealth of experience in both print and digital publishing. As Modern Retail’s Content Editor, Holly is passionate about helping independent retailers to thrive in today’s ever-changing market.
