A beginner's guide to CRO strategies

In the world where every online store is fighting for the attention of potential customers, it is hard to stand out. And, even if you manage to attract visitors to your store, it is even harder to convert them into customers. This is where the strategies of Conversion Rate Optimization come to play.

What is CRO?

To understand the optimization process, we first need to understand what conversion rate is. A conversion rate is a value that represents the ratio of visitors who do a specific action on your website. In the case of e-commerce, this action is usually a purchase, and the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase (in other words, the percentage of visitors who convert into customers).

Conversion rate is quite easy to calculate. First, you need to know the number of visitors to your website. Then, you need to know the number of visitors who made a purchase. Finally, you divide the number of visitors who made a purchase by the total number of visitors and multiply the result by 100. The result is your conversion rate.

This percentage is usually quite low (not many stores have a conversion rate of over 10%), but it is crucial for the success of your business. The higher the conversion rate, the more customers you will have, and the more revenue your store will generate.

According to the Oberlo’s 2023-2024 Average E-commerce Conversion Rate, the average yearly conversion rate for e-commerce stores is around 1.90%. If we take a look at the monthly conversion rates, we can see that the month with the highest conversion rate are November and December, with 2.27% and 2.26% respectively. The reason for this is the holiday season, when people are more likely to make purchases. On the other hand, the months with the lowest conversion rate are February (1.70%), August (1.65%), and September (1.58%). These months are usually slower for e-commerce stores, as there are no any major holidays to boost sales. Although the difference between the highest and the lowest conversion rate is in the range of around 0.7%, it can make a significant impact on your revenue.

Now that we know what the conversion rate is, let’s talk about Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). We always strive to increase this percentage, and CRO is the process of doing so. In better words, CRO is the process of improving your website in order to increase the number of visitors who fulfill the desired action.

Ways to improve your CRO

Before we event think of improving our conversion rate, we need to know what our current conversion rate is. There are many analytical tools that can help you with this, such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, or the built-in analytics of your e-commerce platform. The second step is to ensure your website is user-friendly, well optimized, and easy to navigate. If your website is slow and buggy, don’t expect visitors to stay for long!

After you have done these two steps, you can start thinking about improving your CRO.

Step 1: Create a conversion funnel

Now, what is a conversion funnel? A conversion funnel is a series of steps that a visitor needs to take in order to convert into a customer. The steps can vary depending on the type of your business, but they usually include the following:

1. Awareness: The visitor becomes aware of your brand and products.
2. Interest: The visitor shows interest in your products and starts exploring your website.
3. Desire: The visitor decides to make a purchase and adds products to the cart.
4. Action: The visitor completes the purchase.

By creating a conversion funnel, you can identify the steps where visitors are dropping off and optimize them to increase the conversion rate.

As an example, let’s say you have an online store that has a new newsletter sign-up form. You can create a conversion funnel that looks like this:

1. Awareness: The visitor sees the newsletter sign-up form.
2. Interest: The visitor decides to sign up for the newsletter.
3. Desire: The visitor fills out the form and clicks the “Sign up” button.
4. Action: The visitor receives a confirmation email.

The conversion funnel can help you identify the steps where visitors are dropping off and optimize them to increase the conversion rate. It gives us a clear goal to work towards and helps us understand the behavior of our visitors.

Step 2: Lead your visitors to the desired action

Once the conversion funnel is set up, it is time to put our visitors on the right path. Each step of the funnel has many different elements that can be optimized so the visitor is more likely to convert.

The ‘Awareness’ step is the first one. This is where the visitor gets into the funnel. Depending on the goal of your funnel, this step can be reached by visitor through a web search, social media, paid ad or any other channel. The key here is to make sure to choose the correct channel and target the right audience.

In our example, the ‘Awareness’ step can be reached at the moment when the visitor finds an information about the newsletter sign-up form. This might be done through a pop-up, an announcement bar at the top of the website, or when the visitor is scrolling through the website and sees the form. To get the visitor to the next step, we need to make sure the form is visible and easy to find.

Step 3: Give your visitors a reason to convert

The ‘Interest’ step might be the hardest one. Each individual can have a different reason to convert, so it is important to give them multiple reasons to do so. This can be done by offering visitor something in return. It also depends on the type of visitors we wish to attract. For example, if we are targeting visitors who have already made a purchase, we can offer them a discount on their next purchase. If we are targeting visitors who have not yet made a purchase, we can offer them a discount on their first purchase.

In our example, when it comes to newsletters, it is not everything about the money. Visitors might be interested in the content you are offering, the exclusive deals, or the latest news. Make sure to highlight these benefits next to the form, so we can spark the interest of the visitor.

Step 4: Make it easy for your visitors to convert

There is nothing worse than a visitor who is ready to convert, but can’t finish up the ‘Desire’ step. This is why most of the e-commerce stores have problems in the checkout, as the visitors are presented with a big form to fill out with their personal information, shipping address, and payment details.

Fortunately, there are many ways to make this step easier. Many e-commerce platforms have apps that can provide visitors with a one-click checkout. If your platform doesn’t have this feature, you can always optimize the checkout process by giving visitors an option to sign up to your store and save their information for future purchases.

The ‘Desire’ step should be as easy as possible, as it leads our visitor to the final step. Make sure that the path from the ‘Desire’ to the ‘Action’ step is visible and easy to follow. In our newsletter example, this can be done by asking the visitor just for the email address. No need for the name, phone number, or any other information. The easier the form, the more likely the visitor is to convert.

Testing different strategies

Sometimes, there are no clear answers on how to improve your conversion rate. This is why it is important to test different strategies and see what works best for your store, and the easiest way to do this is through A/B testing. According to the Harvard Business Review, A/B testing is a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better.

In the case of e-commerce, this can be done by creating two versions of the same page, and showing them to different visitors. Both versions should be identical, except for the part where we want to test out our CRO strategy. For example, we can test out two different content pieces for the newsletter sign-up form, and see which one makes more visitors convert. The version that performs better is the one we should keep.

Conclusion

Although this article covers only the basics of CRO, it is a good starting point for anyone who wants to improve their website’s conversion rate. To sum up, here are the key takeaways:

1. Understand why CRO is important and how it can help your business.
2. Calculate your current conversion rate and set a goal for improvement.
3. Create a conversion funnel and identify the steps where visitors are dropping off.
4. Lead your visitors to the desired action and give them a reason to convert.
5. Make it easy for your visitors to convert and test different strategies to see what works best.

By following these steps, you can increase your website’s conversion rate and generate more revenue for your business. Good luck!