Conversion Rate Optimization

Designing, crafting, developing the best and a perfect website is just one part of the job. The rest is completely in the hands of the users and customers. The users are the real fate changers as they are the ones who are experiencing the product, you have created.

After designing the product that we thought, the major work revolves around making changes and optimizing it based on the users preferences. Even a slightest change in their behavior can make them leave the website.

Owning a digital product, it is hard to know what the users think and feel about it. You can't just guess about the experience they are having while using the website, and there are many more hindrances. CRO is one such way to help us understand about the activities in your website.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

Every website or digital product has a series of desired actions and elements. These actions include, sign up, purchase, add to card, add to favorites and much more. Conversion rate is something that records and collects the percentage of users who perform the desired actions.

It is this conversion rate that determines how users are interacting with the website. Conversion rate optimization is nothing but the process or various ways to increase the conversion rate percentage of the digital product.

Using CRO one can get a detailed report of the statistics related to the website and the users. You can also find the reason leaving or using a desired action. This is one best way to know every aspect of the product, and work towards giving the best UX to the customers.

Why do you need to know about conversion rates?

What's the need to calculate and know about the conversion rate? The answer is simple, it is just to know who, why and what your users do with the product that you have created. Conversion rates gives you the answer for all the questions that is related to the statistics of the product.

Holding any product in the digital world, be it website or app it will be intended to a certain audience. Some may be aware of it, and some won't. In that case, customers using the product or getting frustrated by it will revolve around a common reason.

Conversion rate analyses complete action related to the website. Number of users visiting, number of users leaving the website, number of downloads for the app, the reason behind leaving and much more is calculated and presented to us in the form of data.

What are the elements of Conversion Rate Optimization?

The process of CRO can be aided with the help of few elements, so that a detailed aspect of the website can be analyzed.

1. Landing page:

To explain what landing page is, it is the first page or element in which the user lands on clicking from an email or through the link. It is the page in which users get a basic idea about what the product is about, as they normally skim through this page first.

It is basically the website's home page. The basic information related to the product, major elements of the website, like sign up, purchase has to be present in the landing page. The design of the page should be captivating for the users to start using the product.

2. Website content:

An engaging content present in the website is one of the key factor to gain more and more visitors and customers. Right from the headline to the sub contents, it has to be short and clear for the users to understand it immediately.

Normally users visiting the website, will be skimming through the content. So the content provided in the website has to explain the purpose of the product. In case of confusing content, users would lose interest and leave the website.

3. Call to action:

Just visiting the website and leaving is not what we expect from the users. As a part of interaction, the creators also expect the users to engage with the desired actions like taking subscription, purchasing products, sign up etc.

Call to action means the strategy that is taken by the developers to make the users perform the actions in the website. When all the users, just visit and leave the product then there is no productivity in running the website.

The websites should have a clear content, exciting design and should benefit the users for them to take up the action. CTA's of the page explains about each action in the page and directs them to perform it in the right way.

4. Navigation:

Another important aspect of the website is navigation through the pages. When we talk about any website or digital product, it does have various elements, pages and links for every desired action.

The users who are visiting the website, should be guided in the right way through each page for them to explore the product. In case the navigation is not clear, they might find it difficult to search for what they are looking for, which automatically results in them leaving the site.

5. Speed:

With the busy world, your website should have super speed for the visitors to constantly use the website. The loading time with each element in the website has to very low, because if it takes a lot of time, then the users tend to exit the site.

Moreover factors like rage clicking, dead links and pages will create a frustration in the users mind who end up leaving the website. These actions will obviously affect the UX of the website and give you low conversion rates at the end.

How to get started with Conversion Rate Optimization?

After knowing about the ways of determining conversion rates, now it is to get started with the optimization process.

a) Research about the website:

Before concluding with any decision it is extremely important to do a complete research about the website and the page. With a digital product, it is not advisable to just make mere guess related to the functioning of the product.

Your analysis can be done with the help of various tools,

• Session recordings: The work of session recordings is to record every movement and actions performed by the users while they are using the website. The recordings will be saved, so you can view it any time to check how they are using the site.

• Heatmaps: Heatmaps is one way of representing the data that is collected by observing the users in the website. The data will be represented in the form of graph. There are various heatmaps based on the needs and requirements of the website.

• Usability testing: This is the process of knowing the flexibility and usability of the website. It determines how the users can use the website with ease without facing any issues.

• Behavior analysis: To analyze the behavior pattern of the users, the one way is to use the behavior analysis. This feature gives a detailed description about the behavior, thoughts and opinions of the users while using the product.

Not just this, there are lot more features and tools to analyze and get data about the website. The data can be collected both in quantitative and qualitative. But it is extremely important to look at every aspect possible.

For instance, try to collect data that can answer all questions like why, when, what, how and so on. Coz to optimize the conversion rates it is important to know the flaws, issues and the plus points of the product that you own.

b) Strategize few ideas:

After completely analyzing all the actions happening in the website, the next step is to look and think for ideas to optimize. Low conversion rates for the site, basically indicates that the users are not interested with the product.

Find out the reasons for like,

• Why users are leaving the site?
• Why is there rage clicking being recorded?
• Why aren't the users interested with the elements of the website?
• What doesn't fascinate the users to subscribe or do a purchase?
• How are the users expecting the site to provide them?

Not just these questions, just think from a user perspective to get answers for all the questions. It is the users who are at last going to use and experience the product that you have designed.

The optimizations or ideas that you are thinking for making changes and increase conversion rates should be in such a way that, it has to benefit the users ultimately. Try out all ideas that can help you with the conversion rate optimization.

c) Prioritize the changes:

The website will have various pages and elements, but certain factors will be the key elements for the product. So first you have to prioritize the problem in the website and start working towards it.

For example, if you find the conversion rate values at the product page to be very low, then it clearly indicates that they are facing issues with the page. Product page is clearly one of the important element in any website.

Prioritizing this issue first, the developers have to work towards rectifying the reason behind the users not making any purchases in the website. Likewise, every digital product has its own key elements. Before making some random decisions, look for the right reasons.

d) Test your ideas:

You can't conclude the ideas and strategies based on just your intuition. The users have to accept the change and it should be easy for them to use the website. So before finalizing the change, you have to give it a test period for the users to experience the change.

Before running a test you have to set certain factors to check the conversion rates like,

• Number of test visitors, for example you can run the test for the first 100 users visiting the website and collect the conversion rate data with it.

• The next is test rate, that is how long you should run the test. Only if you fix a certain time you can exactly collect the data at that particular time.

During this testing period you can conclude if the idea is a success or not by looking at the conversion rate. If the conversion rates are higher than before, then the users are liking the change. In case it is less, then you have to drop the idea.

Conclusion:

Whatever the strategies or ideas that we implement, ultimately the destiny makers are the users of the website and this is determined by the conversion rates. As you now know how to use conversion rate optimization, the next step is to get started with it.

ReplayBird is one such platform which helps you with the conversion rate optimization. All the features that are previously mentioned are present in ReplayBird to help you give the best possible results.

No more delaying, just search for ReplayBird and get started immediately.