5 Foundational Conversion Optimization Techniques Every Pro Uses
5 Foundational Conversion Optimization Techniques Every Pro Uses
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In this post, Manuel Rietzsch highlights five essential conversion rate optimization best practices, from creating inclusive digital experiences to implementing consistent A/B testing.
AI might be one of the hottest topics in business today, but if you ask marketing leaders, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is just as buzzworthy.
In HubSpot’s 2023 State of Marketing Report, one in three marketing leaders listed their website’s conversion rate as one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) they prioritized tracking.
With the average conversion rate across all industries hovering around 3%, it’s easy to understand why marketers view CRO as one of the best ways to drive leads and sales. Unfortunately, businesses often take a flawed approach to conversion rate optimization. They either fail to allocate enough resources (for every $92 spent on customer acquisition, just $1 goes toward CRO) or they rely on simple growth hacks (like changing the color of a button) that fail to move the needle long-term.
To be clear: There’s nothing wrong with testing different button colors, headlines, or page layouts. These are all common A/B tests — and should be a regular part of your CRO strategy. But if that’s all you’re doing, you’re unlikely to make the kind of performance gains that will significantly impact your business’s bottom line.
In this guide, I’ll share five strategies to help you implement a framework for conversion rate optimization — from actually listening to your buyers (and not just telling them what you think they want to hear) to designing for accessibility.
1. Harness user insights for better results
The foundation of any effective CRO program should be a deep understanding of your users, their pain points, and how your products and services can help them accomplish whatever brought them to your website in the first place.
If you don’t know what your users want, it’s almost impossible to tailor your content and offer to meet their needs. By conducting qualitative and quantitative research, you can start to fill in those blanks — and deliver more nuanced, effective messaging.
Unfortunately, many marketers skip this crucial first step. Instead of taking the time to actually listen to their users, they start testing messages they think will resonate with them. While this approach can eventually result in compelling messaging, it also means that businesses spend time (and money) testing ineffective messages on an audience that might not return.
Here’s how to get started:
- Capture direct feedback: Use surveys and interviews to understand how users engage with your content — and where they might be falling off.
- Create detailed user personas: Define your users, what they want to accomplish, and any pain points you can help them resolve.
- Monitor user sessions: Use tools like Heap or Google Analytics to track how users move through your site — and make sure they have plenty of opportunities to convert on those paths, instead of forcing them onto paths you want them to take.
- Optimize site design: Adjust your site’s structure and content to eliminate bottlenecks and dead ends.
2. Create web experiences every user can enjoy
Take a second and think about some of the key demographics you target with your marketing. Maybe it’s the 23 million men in the United States between the ages of 25 and 34. Or the 8 million people living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Whatever your key demographics, you’re likely creating specific web pages, email campaigns, and display ads to convert them to customers. But there’s another demographic that every business should be considering: people with disabilities.
In the United States, 1 in 4 adults has a disability that can affect their ability to fully use or enjoy websites. If your website isn’t accessible, that means 25% of your users might be unable (or unwilling) to become customers.
Whether people don’t know about digital accessibility or wrongly assume it’s just a compliance issue, not enough attention is paid to the impact accessibility barriers can have on users — or conversion rates.
Not sure how to get started? Here are three tips to help you integrate accessibility into your team’s design and development process, even if you don’t have a lot of internal accessibility expertise:
- Start with automated testing: If your organization doesn’t have a mature accessibility program, automated accessibility tools are a great place to start. Tools like AudioEye’s automated accessibility platform can help you find and fix many common accessibility issues, eliminating barriers before they can impact your visitors.
- Fill in the gaps with manual testing of key pages: Automation can help scale accessibility across your organization, but some issues still require people to identify or fix. Start by auditing the highest-trafficked pages on your site, as those are most likely to affect your users and conversion rates.
- Build a library of accessible components: Your long-term goal should be to design for accessibility from the beginning instead of fixing issues after the fact. You can start by reviewing common design patterns and page templates with expert human testers, including members of the disability community.
As a bonus, following the best practices of accessible design can help you improve the user experience for all visitors. Many foundational elements of accessible design — like simplified navigation, clear headlines, descriptive links, and closed captions on video content — can improve comprehension for users of all abilities.
3. Personalize user experiences for better results
It’s no secret that users today expect highly personalized digital experiences. In fact, 73% of consumers prefer doing business with brands that use personal information to make their shopping experiences more relevant.
For that reason, generic messaging tends to yield average conversion rates, while personalized experiences and journeys often yield significantly higher conversion rates. According to McKinsey, personalization can generate as much as 40% more revenue for companies.
Once you understand your audience’s pain points and objectives, you can tailor your content to better address their needs.
- Create personalized landing pages: Design pages catering to specific audience segments or user interests. Tailor your site’s content, offers, and suggestions based on what you know about your users, such as their roles, pain points, or objectives.
- Measure and refine: Like all things CRO, personalization is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. Continue refining your audience (through user research and analytics) and use A/B testing to determine which personalized elements perform best — adjusting your strategies based on user feedback and data.
- Account for people with disabilities: Following accessibility best practices (like adding closed captions to videos or ensuring that keyboard-only users can navigate your site) helps ensure that they can fully engage with your content — and demonstrates your commitment to delivering an accessible, inclusive experience to this audience.
4. Make A/B testing a consistent guiding principle
To keep improving your site’s conversion rate, you need to make A/B testing every part of it — from headlines and CTAs to layout — a regular part of your routine.
If you rely on your gut alone, you risk losing out on the chance to fully optimize your conversion rates. I’ve seen the best marketers confidently (and incorrectly) predict test results that would have cost significant revenue.
Even if you’ve done plenty of user research, testing minor copy variations can help you hone in on your most effective messages. Just remember to test one thing at a time, or you risk muddying the data and being unable to tell what worked and what didn’t.
Here are three tips to help you run more effective A/B tests:
- Aim for clarity: Unless you’re writing for a highly technical audience (this is where user research comes in!), you should avoid jargon or overly complex terms that might confuse users.
- Focus on one objective: Each page on your site should have one primary goal. Too many competing links or CTAs on a page can overwhelm users and prevent them from taking the action you want.
- Test and optimize your CTAs: As a best practice, make sure your CTAs are prominently featured on your page and above the fold (i.e., users don’t have to scroll to see it) — although you should test CTA placement to validate this assumption.
As you test different messages and page layouts, remember that the fundamentals of storytelling still apply. Lead with the most important information, make sure that each section builds on top of the previous ones, and give users a compelling reason to take the next step with your business.
For optimal results, embrace ongoing testing and refinement
One of the most challenging aspects of conversion rate optimization is that you’re never truly done. There’s always one more test you can run, or a new product update that requires you to test a whole new suite of messaging.
While the fundamentals of CRO — like understanding your audience or regularly testing your site’s layout and messaging — seem straightforward, mastering them takes time, dedication, and resources. Fortunately, that investment is well worth it. Every time you capture user feedback, run an A/B test, or fix accessibility issues on your site, you help create a more seamless, engaging experience for every user.
By embracing the best practices outlined above and implementing a framework for repeated testing and optimization, you can improve website performance and develop a more nuanced understanding of your users.
Remember: The average conversion rate across all industries might be 3%, but the top quartile for most industries is 2-3X higher than the average. Just think about the impact a 2-3X increase in conversions would have on your business; the longer you wait to start implementing a true CRO strategy, the longer it will take to get there.
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