12 Game-Changing Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategies

Attracting leads to your website or landing pages is challenging, but so is converting highly qualified leads into buyers.

‘Conversion rate’ is an important metric for all businesses, whether you are a B2B or B2C company. It is the percentage of website visitors that complete a specific goal. The goal could be anything from signing up for the newsletter, taking a free trial, requesting a demo to create an account, completing the purchase, etc. depending on the type of website.

To boost your conversion rate, you will require the best Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) practices such as split testing, content enrichment, site speed optimization, SEO efforts, high-quality videos/images on product pages, and much more.

Below we have covered 12 Best conversion rate optimization strategies to effectively convert your site visitors into potential customers.

What is CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of implementing best practices to push website visitors to complete a desired conversion goal. Conversion goals could be signing up for the newsletter, subscribing, taking a survey, filling up an online form, buying a product, clicking ‘add to cart,’ give a rating or review and so on.

CRO is an ongoing process that analyzes customer behavior, preferences, interests, and activities on your website and identifies areas that need improvement. Robust CRO strategies must aim to deliver engaging UX (user experience) to boost conversions.

How to Calculate your Conversion Rate?

Before we get into the CRO plan, let us first understand how you can measure the Conversion Rate:

Conversion Rate in % = (Number of Conversions ÷ Number of Visitors) 100

An ideal conversion rate depends upon various factors such as your industry type, conversion goals, traffic sources, audience demographics, etc.

Statista tells us that in 2023, the online conversion rate of e-commerce sites was the highest at 3.7% for the food and beverage industry, followed by beauty and skincare websites standing at 3.3%.

The average conversion rate of eCommerce websites for the selected sectors was over 2%.

If the conversion rate of your website is lower than your competitors, below average in your business niche, or has a lower score than your predetermined goal, it is high time to implement a CRO plan.

A CRO process is iterative and must have the following steps:

• In-depth business and customer data for analysis
• Create landing pages and conduct A/B testing on them
• Run CRO tests on pages with high-traffic
• Experiment with different CTAs
• Leverage CRO tools to gather user behavioral data
• Make adjustments based on KPIs and insights
• Carry out data-driven content optimization
• Review and iterate

12 Best Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategies to Boost Conversion

1. Create Conversion Funnels

The smoother your conversion funnel is, the higher will be your website’s conversion rate. Likewise, Funnel analysis is the key to understand buyers’ journey, identify bottlenecks, unlock insights to optimize marketing strategies and increase your sales.

A conversion funnel consists of a set of web pages including a checkout page, product page, etc. that directs visitors toward your conversion goal (subscribe, sign up, final purchase, etc.).

Conduct funnel analysis on every single step of your conversion funnel to identify factors that cause visitors to leave the site without converting. For this, leverage web and behavior analytics tools such as Google Analytics, heat maps, session recordings, etc. to visualize where visitors engage the most, and the least, and how they navigate through your website.

Funnel analysis helps you deeply analyze all steps of your conversion funnel, and detect high-exit pages, so you can scrutinize what’s causing low conversion rates and explore optimization opportunities. You can further apply filters to this conversion data by demographics to segment visitors and customize the funnels to cater to the target audience.

Here’s how you can simplify the conversion funnels:

• Aid quick user onboarding by only collecting essential information
• Do not overdo upselling efforts
• Provide detailed information on product pages
• Remove all unnecessary links, popups, and distractions from web pages in the conversion funnel
• Quick onboarding by only collecting information that is necessary for conversions
• Ensure shopping carts have information related to return policy, shipping charges, taxes, packaging fees, delivery period, etc.
• Provide multiple payment options

2. Gather and Analyze Website Data

The more you analyze your website traffic data, the better you will be able to map buyer journeys, convert visitors into customers and maximize conversion rate. This is the most important strategy in CRO, as predictions must always be backed by quality data to make informed decisions. You must constantly track and analyze visitor data to understand their preferences, shopping patterns, and behavior and point your CRO efforts in that direction.

Conduct audits of your data collection processes regularly to remove any duplicate, inaccurate, or incomplete data from the funnel. This retains the high quality of datasets, improves the reliability of analytics tools, and ultimately improves the accuracy of CRO tests and results.

Below are some of the critical data sets businesses must track:

• Average order values and information of repeat customers
• Data of traffic and traffic channels
• Behavior data of visitors on your landing pages
• Bounce rates for forms and web pages
• Cart abandonment rates
• CTRs (click-through rates) of marketing campaigns and Ads
• Data on customer feedback or NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• Chat transcripts
• Purchase history

Stats Source: smallbizgenius

The next step is to tie all these insights together to determine the areas of the funnel to adjust, add, or remove. Businesses can use this quantifiable data to create buyer personas for targeted marketing. This process is trial and error, where you must test the changes, measure results, and iterate as needed.

Track how the changes you have made to the funnel impact your conversion rate. The more you iterate, the more your conversion rates will improve.

3. Leverage Advanced Behavior Analytics Tools

Behavior Analytics tools provide deeper insights into customer behavior on your website so you can understand them better, cater to their needs, and eventually increase the Conversion Rate.

Google Analytics will help you create a conversion funnel and track your visitors at every stage of their sales journey. This will help you segment your audience and run targeted marketing campaigns to push them to convert into sales.

Execute funnel analysis to detect factors that make your visitors abandon carts or leave the website. There are myriads of heat mapping tools that help you monitor audience activity on your website such as click maps, attention maps, scroll maps, etc. Use these tools to know how visitors navigate through your site, where they click, where they spend most of their time, what they ignore, how far they scroll, where they struggle to take action, at what point exactly they leave the site, etc.

Some of the popular tools are HotJar, Google Analytics, Lucky Orange, Microsoft Clarity, Fullstory, Mouseflow, and more.

Once you gather critical data, analyze the heatmaps to identify user behavior, patterns, and preferences. You will get to know what captures audiences’ attention the most and where they lose interest. Use these insights to optimize the design, layout, and content of your website to cater to your customers’ expectations and eventually increase sales.

4. Faster page loading times

According to Google, LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is a key website performance metric that drastically affects your Conversion Rate. A good LCP score is when the site’s main content loads within 2.5 seconds or less. An increase in load times (more than 3 seconds) was found to decrease the conversion rates by 50%. This alone emphasizes the significance of faster page load times. In today’s digital era, visitors expect a seamless, uninterrupted browsing experience throughout.

Here’s how you can improve your website’s page loading time:

• Use Google PageSpeed Insights, or other tools like GTmetrix or Pingdom to analyze your site’s UX on mobile and desktops, and get recommendations on how you can improve
• Remove unused plugins
• Reduce the size of images/videos
• Use a lightweight template
• Use cache plugin
• Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to reduce user-server distance and aid faster load times
• Compress CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files, since large files can slow down the speed
• Optimize Code by keeping it efficient and clean

5. Use Creative CTA (Call-to-Action) Buttons

Crisp and compelling CTA buttons are the primary drivers of your Conversion Rate. As per a test conducted by HubSpot, text-based CTAs were seen to convert more traffic into leads than banner-like CTAs placed at the bottom of the page. Often, visitors are accustomed to overlook banners on websites and most don’t even scroll to the bottom of the page.

So, instead of using banner-like CTAs or common CTAs like “SignUp,” “Download” or “Click Here,” use interactive text in CTA buttons with attractive font and contrasting colors to attract the leads and drive conversions. Text-based CTAs are flexible and highly effective in motivating the visitors to take action; besides they blend seamlessly into your site’s content.

Here are some of the examples of various text-based CTAs you could use:

• Let’s Get a Free Trial!
• Interested? Let’s Get Started!
• Book Your Seat Now!
• Where Can We Send You a Free Copy?
• Get a Free Quote!
• Show Me More!
• Stay Connected!
• Get Your eBook Now!

Use A/B Testing on CTAs to identify which ones work the best in driving sales.

6. Position of CTAs

Placing the CTAs where your audience engages the most is the key to driving conversions. CTA buttons with a catchy shape and color are designed to prompt your visitors to take action and they are often present on all your landing pages.

Examples of such prominent places are at the end of the blog, above the fold, beside compelling content, and so on.

Above-the-fold content is the top segment that catches the attention of your audience when they first visit your page. It is important to use a concise, engaging, and clear-cut message in this area that indicates the main purpose of the page, and even add some high-quality visuals here.

Make sure to keep ample white space and avoid cluttering the page with content.

Moreover, you may even customize CTAs based on the customer journey and their behavior on your site to push them to convert.

7. Simplify Checkout Funnel

A seamless and easy checkout process will encourage customers to complete transactions and lead to a higher conversion rate. Ensure customers can check out quickly with as few steps as possible. They may abandon the cart if your checkout funnel is too long, you require them to create an account first or they must go through a complex payment method.

Below are a few tactics you can implement to simplify the checkout process and increase the conversion rate:

• Allow users to checkout as Guests for a frictionless experience
• Use progress indicators so customers can see where how many steps are there in the checkout process (a 3-step Progress Bar is ideal).
• Use Auto-fill to make it easier for users to provide information
• Gather only mandatory information during checkout to avoid discouraging a sale
• Reduce the number of required fields in the signup form
• Provide social login options for easy signups

Pair this up with fluid website navigation, quick product searches, filter options, and detailed product/service information to deliver a pleasant user experience and boost the chances of them converting into customers.

8. Use UGC (User Generated Content) and Other Trust Elements

Customer Trust is an important factor in increasing your Conversion Rate. Including positive social proof in your marketing efforts will instill reassurance, brand trust, and reliability within potential leads, encouraging them to convert.

Leverage the power of UGC such as ratings, reviews, testimonials, customer-shared images/videos, endorsements, shoutouts, media mentions, partnerships, and more. It is a psychological concept where people tend to seek the opinions of other people for guidance when deciding.

Likewise, use other trust elements on your website such as security certifications (SSL), trust badges, two-factor authentication, online certifications, etc. to increase customer trust and aid conversions.

9. Create a Sense of Urgency 

‘Scarcity marketing’ is a proven strategy that creates a sense of urgency within cold traffic and can significantly boost conversions.

Display tempting offers/discounts with a time limit on your website to encourage visitors to quickly take action.

Some of the great examples of such incentives to use on your website are:

• “Only 1 Time Slot Left for Consultation”
• Countdown timer indicating when the Sale/Deal Ends
• “ONLY 2 IN STOCK”
• “Order within 8 hrs. 30 mins for Early Delivery”
• “50 People Are Viewing This Right Now”
• “20 People Have Added This To Carts right now”
• “Lowest Price in Last 15 days”
• “First 30 People Get A Free Trial”
• “Limited Edition”

This tactic works remarkably because a product/service tends to be more appealing when it is perceived to have limited availability.

10. Create a Sense of Community

Foster a sense of shared experience and community across your brand to build strong customer relationships and boost conversion rates in the long run.

Here are some of the ways you can create a community and sense of participation to boost user engagement, repeat visits, and conversions:

• Use social media to engage with customers via polls, contests, giveaways, live stream events, etc.
• Highlight your best-selling products on social media platforms via videos, photos, expert reviews, and UGC campaigns
• Integrate gamification elements into your website such as points, levels, challenges, rewards, shared achievements, leaderboards, or progress bars
• Add interactive games such as Spin the Wheel, hide-and-seek, etc.
• Showcase behind-the-scenes and your work culture

Tie up with a charitable cause and donate a part of your sales to create goodwill

11. Tap into the power of AI, AR, and VR

Cutting-edge technologies like AI, AR, and VR will help you reach a new audience, understand your customers better, and deliver pleasant UX, thus increasing the chances of conversions.

Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) is rapidly paving its way into the digital transformation strategies of businesses.

Leverage AI in your CRO plan to conduct predictive analysis based on current funnel performance. Predictive Analysis helps you gauge future trends and customer behavior, iterate real-time testing, suggest future recommendations, analyze survey responses, and so much more.

Even machine learning models can be trained to score leads based on specific factors.

Likewise, integrating AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) in your product pages helps you deliver personalized experiences to customers, eventually leading to conversions. Besides, it gives you a competitive edge in the market.

12. A/B Testing

Optimizing your landing pages by running A/B tests is a crucial step to increase conversions. The design, content, ease of navigation, and load speed of these pages decide whether a visitor will become a lead or an existing lead will engage more with your brand.

A/B Testing or Split testing is a process of experimenting with two variations of the same landing page to identify which design, layout, and content elements work best for conversions and which don’t.

You could perform A/B tests on funnel flows, CTAs, headlines, body copy, images, position of forms, UX page designs, etc. A/B testing together with heat mapping and behavior analytic tools will help you dive deeper into user insights and explore optimization opportunities.

Conclusion

To outshine your competitors with your conversion rate optimization strategies could be challenging in this digital world. Your CRO plan must strike a perfect balance between a customer-centric approach, integration of cutting-edge technologies, and catering to audiences as per evolving market trends.

Want to know how you can get started with conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies? Get in touch with us!