By Brooke Oliveri, Published November 1, 2014
Welcome back! A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of discussing about the ins and outs of conversion rate in CR101. Class is now back in session to talk about the next step: conversion rate optimization.
What It Is
Before we jump right into optimization, let’s review. In summary, conversion rate is one of the most important KPIs. It tells you how many people complete the action that your call-to-action encourages.
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, aims to increase the number of people that complete your company’s desired action and turn into customers. This is something that all companies want, but the big question is “How?”
As eZanga’s amphibious mascot might say, let’s jump right in.
5 Ways to Optimize Your Conversion Rate
Here are some tips to get your CRO gameplan up and running in no time!
1. Create Awesome Calls-To-Action
It all begins with your calls-to-action. Effective calls-to-action should be
- Colorful and visually pleasing
- Relevant to the potential customer
- Direct and to the point about what is being asked
- Targeted toward a specific audience
When presented with a beautiful, relevant, and direct call-to-action, people are likely to click and convert.
2. Choose Your Keywords Carefully
You could have the most appealing PPC ad, but if you’re not targeting the right keywords, people might not get the chance to see it. A lot of traffic is generated through searches and the clicks that follow, so it’s important for your ads to be toward the top of the search results list. When bidding on keywords:
- Think simply. Most people don’t search with complicated words, so your keywords shouldn’t be complicated either.
- Be broad, but not too broad. Make sure your keywords are relevant to your products and brand, but think about all of the word’s possible meanings. If your keywords are too similar to those of other companies and their products, your ad could get lost in the shuffle. Use long-tail keywords to get specific and capture search intent.
- Avoid competitive terms. If you’re bidding on the same keyword that a whole bunch of other companies are bidding on, your ad might not rank as highly in the results as you’d like it to.
3. Know Your Customers
In order to create those super effective calls-to-action that make people want to click, you need to know who you’re advertising to. What are you selling? Who is it that generally buys your products? These are questions that you should answer to make your ads and calls-to-action more segmented, targeted, and successful. Learn more about how to gain insight into your audience here.
4. Know Your Goals
You need to know what you’re working toward in order to achieve it. Now, you might be thinking “I thought conversion rate optimization was the goal,” but a high CR isn’t everything. What else do you want to accomplish through boosting your CR? Some common goals are:
- Brand or product awareness
- Educating customers about topics relevant to your business
- Increasing sales
These are all good goals to set, but think of ones that your specific company would like to achieve. When setting your goals, make them S.M.A.R.T. ones.
They should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Setting goals before delving into your CRO gameplan will give you a way to measure your success over time.
5. Know Your Problems
Picture this: you’ve been working on increasing your CR, but you’re not really making much progress. What’s up with that? This would be prime time to figure out why you’re not getting as many email signups as you’d like or why your sales haven’t been as high as you’d like them to be.
You need to know what your problems are before you can go about fixing them. After identifying what problems you’re having, an analytics program like Google Analytics can help you get to the bottom of them.
Now that you’ve got the know-how, let’s get those conversion rates on the up and up!
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