No matter what kind of business you run in Australia, you want more customers, right? Whether you’re a plumber, a retailer, a consultant, or a lawyer, you want potential customers to visit your website, learn more about what you do, and take a desired action – like calling you, ordering online, or sending you an email.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the number of conversions on your website. Essentially, it’s a set of steps that you can take to increase conversion rates – to bring in more website traffic, to convince visitors to learn more about your products and services, and to increase the percentage of visitors that turn into customers.
But how do you get started? CRO is a big task, and you may not be sure where to begin. There’s definitely a lot to learn. But don’t worry! In this blog, Australian Internet Advertising is a CRO agency that will walk you through the basics of CRO strategies, and help you learn where you should start when it comes to conversion rate optimization.
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Start By Understanding The Basics Of The “Conversion Funnel”
First, it may be helpful to understand the “conversion funnel” used by digital marketers. There are four different stages:
- Awareness – This is the earliest stage of the funnel, where a potential customer becomes aware of your business and its services. Maybe they used a search engine like Google and found your company. Now they need to be convinced to explore your services.
- Discovery – The next step is “Discovery.” This happens when a user clicks your website and begins to engage with your company. For example, maybe they found your restaurant’s menu, and are now reading about what sort of food you have to offer.
- Consideration – In this stage, a visitor continues to explore your website and what you have to offer them. This usually when they will make a decision to “convert” – or to leave your website.
- Conversion – As mentioned, this is when a customer takes a specific desired action. For a lawyer, this may be scheduling a phone call to discuss their case. For an eCommerce website, this would be buying an item. For an emergency plumber, it would be making a call to schedule plumbing service, and so on.
Why Does The Conversion Funnel Matter? Because It’s The Basis Of CRO!
So, why does this matter? It’s simple. Because CRO is all about helping customers move smoothly through the “micro conversions” of each part of the “conversion funnel.”
If a potential customer has a bad experience during any of these steps, they’re likely to abandon your website and your brand – and they may not come back.
And, in contrast, the easier it is for customers to move between each stage and learn more about your business, the more likely they are to convert. Therefore, the goal of CRO is to optimize each step of the digital conversion funnel, by:
- Building awareness of your brand through things like SEO, social media posting, blogging, and other such steps.
- Simplifying your website, including high-quality information, and ensuring a good user experience during the discovery process.
- Creating unique value propositions and providing more information and encouraging users to convert during the consideration stage.
- Building Call-To-Action (CTAs) that effectively convert customers during the conversion stage.
Use Analytics Tools To Get A Baseline And Set A Conversion Goal
CRO is analytics-based, which means it relies on data gathered about your users. This data allows you to refine your website and marketing efforts – and work toward your goal.
So the first thing you need to do is implement analytics on your website. Google Analytics is free, and very popular. This tool lets you measure and assess how people are interacting with your website. You can get insights about things like:
- Which web pages get the most traffic
- Which web pages most users land on first
- Which website features they engage with
- How long they spend on each web page
- How they found your website (e.g. Google, social media, another website, etc.)
- Demographic information such as the age, interests, and location of users
- When, how, and where users leave your web page
- What device and browsers your visitors are using
And a lot more. By digging deeply into analytics, you can learn a lot more about the behavior of your visitors – and take steps to focus your efforts accordingly.
Our Top Tips For Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
So, how can you get started with CRO? We could fill a book with tips and advice – but here is a brief overview. By following these tips, you can bring in more visitors, convert them effectively, and improve the overall performance of your business through digital marketing.
- Build brand awareness to bring in more visitors – CRO is concerned with converting the most possible visitors. But to begin with, you need to make sure your website is getting enough views.
Using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to boost your search rankings, adding your business to local directories and websites like Yelp, and creating a strong social media presence on websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are helpful for building brand awareness and reaching more potential customers.
- Target the right audiences – Targeting the right people is essential for increasing the percentage of conversions at your website. Use the analytics data you gather to make sure you create useful content that your audience will love, target the right people with ads, and make the most of your marketing budget.
- Use paid ads to expand your reach – Paid advertising like Google Ads and Facebook Ads are very useful for reaching potential customers. One of the best things about these platforms is that they let you target specific demographics.
For example, using Facebook Ads, you could create an ad for college tutoring services in Sydney – and specifically target college-aged students, people attending Sydney universities, and other such demographics. This will provide the best ROI (Return On Investment) for your advertising budget.
- Build effective landing pages – Landing pages are key for increasing the percentage of users who convert when they visit your website. They are specialized pages on your website that are meant to encourage users to take a specific action – such as signing up for a consultation, buying a product, or learning more about a service. This guide from HubSpot can help you learn more.
- Incorporate CTAs – Every page on your website should have a Call-To-Action, or CTA. CTAs are what encourage a visitor to convert into a customer. For example, a restaurant could have a CTA such as “Order Now For 10% Off.”
Incorporating CTAs into your website helps keep users on track – they help provide clarity about the next steps they need to take to purchase your products or services, and keep them moving smoothly throughout the conversion funnel.
- Implement split testing for ads, CTAs and more – Using A/B testing or multivariate testing is a good way to test different ads, CTAs, and content, and see how well each one works.
A/B testing uses two ads, which are similar but different – such as using a different image – and then you measure the results to see which is more effective. Multivariate testing is similar, A/B Testing Or Multivariate Testing
- Add social proof to your website – “Social proof” is a term used to refer to things like user reviews or testimonials. Social proof is very powerful, and can lead to a 15% increase in conversions.
- Measure your results and optimize further – There are always more steps you can take to optimize conversion rates. Using your analytics suite, you can measure the percentage of visitors who convert, your total number of visitors, and other key metrics. These insights can be used to further refine and optimize your website and digital marketing strategy.
Need Help With Conversion Rate Optimization? Contact Australian Internet Advertising!
At Australian Internet Advertising, digital marketing is our specialty. If you think your website could be more effective and you’re interested in CRO strategies, we’re the best choice in Sydney – and all of Australia.
Our marketing experts are always here to help, and with our deep understanding of modern web development, SEO, and analytics, we can develop a CRO plan that will boost both website traffic and conversions – which means you’ll get more qualified customers for your business.
So don’t wait. If you need help improving your website and your conversion rate, leave it up to the experts. Contact AIAD online now, or give us a call at 1300 304 640 to discuss our services in more detail. We’d be glad to explore CRO and our related services, and explain how we can help set your business up for success.
