So you’ve built your website and taken it live. What now?

Perhaps you’ve launched your website without taking into account what you want it to do for you. To be more precise, what do you want visitors to do once they land on your website?

For most bloggers, the fact that someone is reading their blog may already be enough. But, you are not just a blogger who’s only out to express your views about the world. You’re a business owner who wants to use your website to improve your profit margin—or, at the very least, improve your image and popularity.

Whatever it is that you want to achieve with your website and ads, there must be a clear action that users should take. For example, you’d like the user to buy a product, or you’d like them to type in their email address in exchange for something such as a coupon, a free eBook, or a PDF file. Perhaps you would want them to create an account with your service. Whatever direction you want them to go, if the user does not do anything, you will have failed to “convert” them.

Whatever direction you want them to go, if the user does not do anything, you will have failed to “convert” them.

This is the reason behind Conversion Rate Optimization marketing.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO aims to increase the percentage of website visitors that are converted into customers. This is generally true for eCommerce websites. In other instances, the website simply wants a user to take action (create an account, submit their email address, etc.).

To further understand what conversion optimization is, it helps to also look at what it is not.

• It is never based on guesses.
• It is not about copying the norm, or doing what other websites are trying to do.
• It is not based on opinion.
• It is not about user count alone.

CRO is highly structured. It follows a system to ensure your website performs the way it’s supposed to. To achieve this, you need insights.

Web analytics makes the formation of insights possible. In addition to insights, what will define and improve your conversion rates are your website’s KPIs, which are unique to every business. This is why it is not about user count alone; it’s about taking that user count and adjusting your website and ads through analytics and customer feedback for maximum conversions.

Here’s a quick video on how you can set up conversion funnels in Google Analytics:

Source: Kissmetrics YouTube Channel

How can you implement CRO?

For those with very little or no experience at all when it comes to conversion rate optimization, you can hire a provider and assist with your CRO strategies. Through extensive collaboration with your provider, follow these steps:

• Make highly contextual relationships between your paid ads and landing pages. Your ad should contain a call to action (CTA). If the user takes the appropriate action, your landing page should deliver on the ad’s promise.
• Your exact match, short-tail, and long-tail keywords should be highly relevant to your ads. Those ads should be compelling enough to convince users to follow the CTA. Remember, you want to vacuum them into the conversion funnel, and keywords are crucial here.
• Always test your landing pages. Your CRO service provider should know how to do this right. Analytics will help determine what elements are converting the highest percentage of website visitors. For instance, elements like design and color have an effect on how visitors react to an ad or a landing page.
• Gather qualitative and quantitative data that you can use for your business and use it to form hypotheses. Using these hypotheses, come up with variations of your pages.
• Test the page variations long enough to arrive at actionable insights. Implement the changes based on insights gathered via analysis of your test results.

Website conversion is the intent behind your business’s presence online.

Website conversion is the intent behind your business’s presence online. If your ads and landing pages deliver quality, have the right conversion rate optimization and high functionality, those visitors will start turning into customers. Implement the right CRO strategies and make your site bear the fruits of your SEO.