Picture it… You have an amazing website. Clean layout. Beautiful pictures. Explains what you do and who you do it for. But just because a website exists, does not mean that website visitors will turn into customers. That’s where Conversion Rate Optimization comes into play. If you don’t have a conversion strategy in place, no matter how many visitors your website gets, you’ll find it difficult to turn those visitors into loyal, paying customers.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

According to Moz.com, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise. In other words, it is the rate at which unknown prospects who are poking around your site become a lead by submitting a form to download a guide, review a case study, register for a webinar, and even contact you directly.

What a person converts on depends upon where the person is in their customer journey. And how qualified (or good) they are is also up in the air until you look further into their background. But if you have the right content for your audience, you have a better chance of attracting the right prospects and converting them into leads and customers.

Amplify your Conversion Marketing

Now that you know what CRO is, how do you go about increasing your chances of converting your audience?

• Write Informative Content

First and foremost, make sure your content is speaking to your potential and current customers. The content should speak to their pain points and how your services or products help to solve them. Also consider adding testimonials or reviews about the offer to prompt them to take action. I know that if I went to download a guide and there was a testimonial saying how great the guide was in helping them do X,Y and Z, I would be more likely to download it myself.

• Design a Compelling Landing Page

A landing page is simply a page that a prospect ‘lands’ on as a gated step in obtaining an offer – be it a guide, infographic, white paper, and so on. The purpose of the landing page is to get a prospect to fill out the form. It should not have a navigation bar or any other links. Just the form. The content on the landing page should continue to entice them to fill out the form and download the conversion offer. It should be focused on again, the prospect’s pain points – not so much how great your company is and what you do. That will come later when you are working to close the sale.

• Create Logical Form Fields

If you have the right content and are still having trouble getting people to fill in the form, look at the form itself. Are you asking them to fill in too many fields? People do not like to give too much of their personal (or business) information. However, that does not mean you only ask for a first name and an email address. The form must also match the value of the conversion offer.

The more valuable the offer is, the more information you can ask for. In addition, the length of the form should correspond to the stage of a visitor. For example, if you are offering an awareness guide about your industry as a whole, this can be a shorter form asking for information that’s pertinent to your immediate needs. But if it is a decision offer, ie a Contact Us form, then you can be more assertive in what you want.

These are just some of the things you can do to increase your conversion rate. There are many others such as:

• Adding chat bots for gathering data on what your visitors are looking for
• Strengthening your calls-to-action (CTAs) using action verbs
• Using smart content to adapt what someone is seeing based on where they are in their lifecycle
• And, of course, don’t forget to A/B test, just 1 item at a time.

Turning CRO into ROI

The equation is quite simple. As your conversion rate increases, so does your number of leads. Keeping in mind that not all of those leads will convert into customers. The higher the percentage, the greater the chance for revenue growth. Internally, a conversion optimization strategy is important because it allows you to lower your customer acquisition costs. So, by optimizing your conversion rate you can increase dollar value per site visitor, get more customers, and ultimately grow your business.

So ask yourself:

• What is your website saying about your business?
• Do you have content that is considered valuable or just words?
• Is your website built to help convert visitors into leads?

If you are having issues answering any of these questions, speak to one of our conversion optimization experts at Creative MMS.

Not ready to talk quite yet? No problem. Get a free CRO analysis of your website and content.