In today’s crowded digital marketplace, a visually stunning website alone isn’t enough to guarantee success. Businesses need to include conversion rate optimization (CRO) in their strategy to set themselves apart from the competition.
Conversion rate optimization is a strategic use of data, design principles, and user psychology to encourage users to take a desirable action—consume content, share it, subscribe to your newsletter, buy your products or services, or take other actions aligned with your business goals.
This post will cover essential techniques to increase your conversion rates through CRO. But, first things first:
What is the Conversion Rate?
It is a percentage of users taking a desirable action (for example, filling out a form, clicking the call to action button, etc.). The conversion rate is calculated through the following formula:
Number of conversions/ Number of visitors * 100
Conversion rate is an essential metric when leading an online business, as it gives insight into how practical your approach is in turning traffic into results aligned with your goals.
If you are experiencing high bounce rates- a high percentage of visitors leaving your website before taking a desirable action, you should consider optimizing your site or investing in professional conversion rate optimization services.
How to Improve Conversion Rates
To optimize your site and maximize conversion, you should pay special attention to performance and how straightforward your website is, monitor user behavior, and track how your design decisions influence it.
Our top approaches to increasing conversion rates include:
Optimize Performance
Slow site loading and navigation are some of the leading causes of high bounce rates (the percentage of users leaving a website without taking a desired action).
As such, you can optimize your website’s performance to increase conversion. To improve performance:
- Optimize Images: Large image files can negatively impact your site performance. To optimize images, use lightweight image formats (WebP, SVG, etc.), compress them, and use lazy loading.
- Use Caching: Caching helps improve site speed by storing data on visitors’ devices, leading to improved loading.
- Pick a Good Hosting Provider: Your hosting provider should have servers near the location of your target audience to reduce server response times.
- Consider CDN: Use a content delivery network if your target audience is spread across different regions.
Monitor User Behavior
Use tools like analytics and heat mapping tools to help you track user behavior.
Analytics tools (Google Analytics and similar) will help you track visitors’ behavior. They will give you an overview of the traffic per page, button click-through rates, and pages with higher bounce rates.
On the other hand, heat mapping and click-mapping tools will visually represent where visitors spend the most time and interact the most on the page. For example, heat-mapping tools like HotJar will color your website according to the time spent on each part, while click-mapping tools will do the same for clicks.
Data gathered through analytics and heat and click mapping will give you an insight into which areas you should prioritize to increase conversion rates.
Test Your Design/Redesign
Once you have gathered data, create a hypothesis and test it. One of the most common ways of testing your design solutions and their effect on conversion is through A/B testing.
A/B testing is conducted by dividing your tested page traffic into two groups (A and B) and displaying different design solutions to each group.
Let’s say that data shows a low click-through rate on your call-to-action (CTA) buttons. You could test different button colors by conducting an A/B test and measuring its effect on the click-through rate. Once you have determined the most effective solution, integrate it for all website users.
Don’t Overwhelm Users
While you want to provide valuable options, giving your visitors too many choices can lead to “decision paralysis.” When faced with an overwhelming number of products, features, or calls to action, users can freeze up and leave your site without taking any action.
To avoid this, streamline your site by offering an experience focused on guiding users toward taking desirable action by:
- Prioritizing goals: Identify the primary goal of each page and order it to guide visitors toward it.
- Minimizing distractions: Remove unnecessary interface elements and popups to avoid distracting visitors from your main goal.
- Ordering choices: If including many options is necessary, divide them into categories to make them easier to navigate and digest.
Optimize Checkout Process
With a global cart abandonment rate of around 70%, optimizing your checkout process is one of the best ways of increasing conversion rates.
Our top picks for reducing cart abandonment include:
- Simplify: A complex checkout process lowers conversion rates. Strive for the checkout process, which takes 3-5 steps.
- Offer multiple payment options to avoid losing potential customers due to the lack of their preferred payment method.
- Exit intent popups: Consider using exit-intent popups showcasing the unique benefits you offer.
- Send automated emails reminding your potential customers of abandoned carts.
- Exclude the back button on the cart and checkout pages. This will minimize distractions and the chances that other options will catch a buyer’s attention on the website.
Track and Refine
Remember that CRO is an ongoing process rather than a one-time project. Maximizing your conversion rates requires careful monitoring, testing, and refining your approach.
To get the most out of your conversion rate strategy:
- Use analytics to estimate the effectiveness of your website’s visitors’ journey.
- Set aside time to review your analytics data. Look for trends, patterns, and areas where your conversion funnel might be lacking.
- Make an assumption based on data, modify your approach, and monitor the change’s effect on the conversion rate.
Key Takeaways
In this post, we covered essential techniques for optimizing your website design for conversion, including:
- Optimizing performance to improve conversion rates.
- Simplifying the website’s design to avoid losing users due to the overwhelming number of choices.
- Streamlining and improving the checkout process to reduce cart abandonment rates.
- Tracking, monitoring, and measuring the success of your designs by using analytic tools and A/B testing.
