6 Easy Conversion Optimization Tips to Help Get More From Your CRO Activities

In the end, though, it’s all about the return on that investment. No company wants to spend money on tools, people, and marketing that is of no value. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools can be expensive, ads are costly, and website overhaul and maintenance can be expensive, too. So it’s critical to get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to your CRO activities.

In this article, we’ll help you do exactly that. We discuss six easy conversion optimization tips you can use to make sure you get the most significant return on your investment in CRO.

SEE MORE: 10 High-Impact CRO Tasks to Improve Product Page CVR

1. Interpret data that are relevant to growth

All marketing teams and business owners have been in this situation. You’re having a meeting and staring at a mountain of paperwork riddled with graphs and statistics, trying to figure out what it all means.

It could be as simple as figuring out why customers aren’t clicking through the call-to-action or why one article isn’t getting as much traffic as another. Could it be the quality of the keywords, or is it the number of similar articles online?

Now you’re stuck focused on all the statistics, but not sure where to spend the most time.

The market is full of CRO tools to help you improve conversion rates, but the problem lies in interpreting the data correctly. These programs can offer all the information in the world. Still, it’s up to the company’s marketing team and owner to interpret the data and effectively implement things to improve conversion rates.

For example:

Dollar Shave Club looked at the data on visitor demographics for its website. They noticed a large number of female visitors on their website, and knew they had an opportunity to create and market a product for this key demographic.

This resulted in the brand running this ad:

Dollar Shave Club’s conversion rate increased by 150% after running the ad—mainly due to a demographic now being catered for after previously having no product targeted at them.

2. Avoid confirmation bias

Selling products online can be difficult. Analyzing statistics from your CRO tool can be even more daunting.

Confirmation bias is a complex reality, but it often happens in business, especially when you’re the one trying to prove a point.

Confirmation bias happens when someone only looks at certain aspects of information to prove whatever they believe to be true. Sometimes the perpetrator of confirmation bias might skew others’ views about the situation by withholding information or only showing a smaller test amount.

We all indeed want to be successful, and it can be great when certain analytics make it look like things are going great, but it’s essential to focus on the bigger picture.

If you’re using CRO tools, you need to be careful of false results that might test higher than it really is.

Here’s an example of a YouTube poll put up by a YouTube channel:

As you can see from the picture above, the channel has asked whether the users on YouTube prefer watching videos on YouTube or TikTok. Over 90% voted for YouTube.

For the channel, it might seem like a win. They might be tempted to spend less time on TikTok than on YouTube because look at those statistics. Clearly, most viewers are watching the channel on YouTube.

The issue is that the question was posted on YouTube, which means users who frequently use YouTube are voting—not TikTok viewers. If the same poll were posted on TikTok, votes would skew towards TikTok.

It’s not a great poll, and the information shouldn’t be used to boost confidence that what you’re doing is the right way.

The only way to avoid this issue is to run at least two tests to prevent false positives, like the example above. As mentioned before, the only way to get the correct figure would be to have the same poll on YouTube and TikTok or to put this poll up on a neutral application like Twitter.

Confirmation bias isn’t all bad, though.

Only 20% of users finish reading most articles, while the rest only read about 25% of the article. What’s even more interesting is that 59% of articles shared on social media are by users who didn’t even read the article themselves.

This is all due to confirmation bias. A user who agrees with your article’s headline is more likely to read it and/or share it.

An excellent article heading (and possibly meta description, too) might convince readers who agree to share it and maybe even read it themselves.

3. Use social proof to improve ROI

Social proof is a psychological feat that happens when a person complies with a rule or action due to others agreeing and believing that said action is acceptable socially.

So how can we use this to improve our return on investment?

61% of customers read reviews left online by other users before deciding to purchase a product or service. These positive reviews can be used to boost engagement and conversion rates, yielding a better ROI in the long run.

The best way to do this is to promote these reviews and customer feedback on the landing page. There are plenty of other ways of strengthening your social proof apart from customer reviews.

• You can have an expert in the field of your product offer a review or opinion
• A celebrity can endorse your product
• Offer personal user testimonials

We might live in a technologically advanced world, with a lot of work happening online. But nothing beats good old word of mouth.

A glowing review from a customer to a friend is a better lead than any advertisement could get you. 31% of people purchasing electronics are influenced by word of mouth.

4. Explainer videos

Websites with videos on their landing pages have double the conversion rate (4.8% to 2.9%) than those that don’t.

Having a video on your landing page is an excellent tool that you can use to help create your brand image. Videos can also convey helpful information about your product that users might miss when glancing through the website.

There’s a wide range of easy-to-handle free software for this, like Canva, Wideo, or Visme. 

It’s no wonder that 89% of companies that use videos for marketing on their website are happy with the ROI.

Outbrain has an excellent landing page with a large heading and two calls-to-action. No other information is found when clicking on the landing page. Instead, there’s a huge play button on the right of the screen:

This will open a video with an excellent, informative, and engaging video that informs users all about their service.

5. Use tools effectively, or not at all

Marketing tools are an expensive investment. The worst part, only 22% of companies are satisfied with their conversion rates.

This begs the question, are they even worth the price? 

Most B2B companies spend 2-5% of their revenue on marketing tools. B2C companies spend between 5% and 10% of their revenue on marketing tools. These are rules of thumb, of course, but they can amount to a large sum of money a year.

Most companies use marketing tools, but not even a quarter are satisfied with their conversion rates. So, what’s the point of even using them?

Firstly, there’s software like Hotjar that can help companies monitor where users are hovering the most—something Google analytics cannot do.

That doesn’t mean you should run out and spend money on every marketing tool that promises you higher conversion rates and analytics like no other.

Instead, the point is to evaluate whether a marketing tool is truly offering unique analytics that you simply won’t find on Google analytics. It’s a bit more subjective but can be something that eats up your budget unnecessarily.

This is especially true for smaller businesses. If you’re just starting out, finding one tool that offers the most would be the best starting point.

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6. Lead the right customers

It won’t matter how much money you pour into your website’s design, content, or advertising. If the wrong people are ending up on your landing page, you can forget about engagement, let alone conversions.

This might seem like the most obvious proposal, but when you’re looking at analytics and tweaking your website, it can be easy to forget that it’s vital to get the right people to your website.

You see this often when websites have generic call-to-actions like “sign up here” or “click here to get the latest tips.”

These call-to-actions won’t get most people to convert.

The worst part is that if any of these users sign up, the chances of them actually becoming paying customers is low. They stay in your database, getting regular emails and promotions, but you’re just wasting your marketing efforts on a person who isn’t interested.

Targeted marketing, specifically cross-selling and category penetration, can lead to a 20% increase in conversion rate.

Improve your ROI today

Converting users into customers can be tricky, even when using marketing tools. The right people must be behind the marketing department and scrutinize every detail marketing tools offer.

Avoiding confirmation bias and using only the necessary tools will already help you get a better ROI. Add to that a webpage that has a great video, which has an excellent ROI, as well as generates better leads with higher engagement, and you’re already on your way to success!