First things first: What is CRO?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the performance of a landing page to increase the likelihood that your visitors will do what you want them to, whether that’s making a purchase or filling out a form.

By focusing on CRO, you can generate more leads, make more sales, and maximise your marketing ROI. In today's highly competitive online marketplace, it’s crucial to ensure that your landing pages are performing at their best to stand out and take advantage of the traffic they receive. 

How can you calculate your website CRO?

The conversion rate can be calculated by dividing the number of people who completed a purchase or inquiry by the total number of people who started it.

Let's look at the following examples:

1. Imagine you are selling a product/service that costs £50. If 100 people visit your website, but only 10 of them convert, your conversion rate would be 10%. In this case, the revenue you generated would be £500 (10 conversions x £50).

2. Now, consider another scenario where the conversion rate is higher. Let's say out of 100 people who visited the website, 40 of them converted. With the same product priced at £50, the conversion rate would be 40%. In this case, the revenue generated would be £2,000 (40 conversions x £50).

In this situation you’ve attracted exactly the same number of people to your site, but generated four times more revenue. That’s the power of Conversion Rate Optimization. 

How can you spot areas on your landing page that could improve your CRO?

To optimise your conversion rate, you’ll first need to arm yourself with some data on how your visitors behave once they reach the place you want them (such as a form). You can achieve this by using Google Analytics (or any other web analytics tool of your choice – we’re not judging).

At this point, you might be wondering: okay Fabio, I'll check the analytics – but what specific parameters or filters should I be looking at to effectively analyse my audience's behaviour?

To that question, I say:

• Devices 
• Browser (e.g. iOS)
• Internet site search
• Traffic channels
• Location 
• Demographics

Identifying Bottlenecks

Using the data points above, you can now start to identify areas of your website that could be impacting your overall conversion rate. For example, the conversion rate of your landing page for mobile users could be way lower than desktop users. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Hypothesising & Testing

To confirm your suspicion, you can use CRO tools (like Userlytics) to watch how random users interact with your website on different devices. This will give you some deeper insight into what it is specifically on your landing page that’s actually turning people away.

Now that you've got your smoking gun, you can try some different optimisation variables and conduct a bit of A/B testing – where you show different versions of your site to different users to see what performs better – to compare the performance of your original website with the optimised version. You can now determine which version is more effective at improving our conversion rate.

Interesting, right?

Whilst you can and should make optimisations to live pages or checkout processes, there are also a number of best practices you can follow to set strong foundations for your pages as you build them and give yourself the best chance of having a high conversion rate.

8 CRO best practices you can use across every niche and industry

1. Headline 
   Come up with a strong headline that clearly illustrates the purpose of the page
2. Aesthetics & UX 
   Make sure to use a highly visual, eye-catching and attractive design at the top of the page. Using high contrast colours between your images and the website background helps your content to pop.
3. Calls To Action
   If your landing page is quite long, it’s important to place calls to action (CTAs) at frequent intervals throughout your page. This way, your landing page's purpose is repeatedly emphasised, which makes the customer journey more efficient and clearer for users.
   
   To make things as easy as possible for your customers, all CTA buttons should be larger than normal text. This is especially important on mobile devices, where some people can struggle to click on small buttons right away.
4. Easy to read
   It’s important to avoid large blocks of text, as they can look intimidating and unappealing to readers. All information should be scannable and easy to read.
5. Hierarchy of content 
   1. Using a strong headline that tells the users what the page is about is crucial at the top of the page. This will increase traffic quality.
   2. After that, a clear value proposition should be integrated.
   3. In order to engage the audience, consider highlighting text which addresses different questions or pain points your reader might have. 
   4. It’s important to always present this information in a digestible way, with a call to action at the end.
   5. Elements of persuasion can be the ‘make-it or break-it' factor for many landing page viewers. Examples of these include authority / social proof content. This will remove any blockers or doubt they may be experiencing. 
   6. After you’ve made sure any potential blockers are eliminated, you should then present your desired action (such as a form).
6. User-friendly
   Your page must be UX/UI efficient in order to be easily navigated, with lots of calls to action. You should place the menu on the right side of the page, as most mobile users navigate their mobiles using their right hand. Small touches like this make your landing page as customer/thumb-friendly as possible by decreasing friction – which could otherwise make your user drop off.
7. No distractions
   External links should not be implemented into the page. All your CTA buttons should drive the target audience directly to the conversion point. External links on the page can become a barrier to conversions.
8. Forms
   The ideal form should have a maximum of 5 fields. Longer forms cause friction and usually lead to higher drop-off rates, as people tend to not want to put much effort into filling in forms.

I also highly recommend using multi-stage forms, rather than a static form. You might be wondering, "Okay, Fabio, what are the differences between them and why are you recommending it?".

• As the name suggests, multi-stage forms are innovative web forms with multiple steps. This doesn't necessarily mean multiple form fields, but rather a set of questions that are grouped together in separate steps or views.
• On the other hand, static forms are essentially web forms that present all the relevant questions on a single web page — or in the same view — enabling users to see all the questions simultaneously.

I advise using a multiple step forms instead of static forms for two reasons:

1. The "one question at a time" approach makes an online form feel more human. In face-to-face interactions, we wouldn't ask ten questions simultaneously — it would be overwhelming! Multi-stage forms follow the same logic. 
2. The data suggests multi-stage forms perform significantly better than static forms. A HubSpot study concluded that marketers using this type of form reported 17% higher satisfaction rates with their lead generation efforts, and their self-reported conversion rates were 86% higher.

Best tools for CRO

If you’ve followed all the steps above, you’re well on your way to a stellar landing page – as well as a killer CRO! Now that your powers are growing, it’s time to start taking advantage of some of the great tools out there that can help further optimise your page.

As mentioned before, software like Userlytics, Lookback and Usertesting help us spot navigation patterns around your website and conduct usability tests to evaluate the user experience of your website or webpage at all stages of the design and development process.

They offer 2 types of tests: Unmoderated and moderated tests.

Unmoderated tests: The platform contacts individuals who fit your ideal user persona and asks them to perform a UX test on your website. After these users interact with your webpage, they provide feedback. These tests are great for their simplicity and time efficiency.

Moderated tests: Here, you will be the one instructing people in real-time to complete specific tasks on your website/webpage. These tests allow you to immediately understand if any elements on the website are causing friction.

But wait, there’s more! Nowadays, heat mapping tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity let you see the hottest webpage areas where visitors look at. The advantage of this? You can place the most relevant information of your business on these specific spots. Smart stuff.

This nifty example below shows how heatmaps can increase your ad’s effectiveness. Researchers tested two landing pages for a diaper brand – keeping the copy and creative the same, only changing the image of the baby. The tool revealed that when a person's image is used, the user's eyes follow the eye line of that image. When the baby faced the camera, the user looked at the baby, rather than the ad copy (and who can blame them). However, when the baby was shown looking at the text, so did the audience – making the side profile landing page more likely to convert.

Now it’s your turn!

Before you go, let’s recap:

To create a successful landing page that converts, you should:

1. follow the 8 vital rules mentioned above.
2. Track your web analytics and research your audience's behaviour. If you notice something that you want to validate with data, you can conduct qualitative research with some of the tools we discussed to see how people interact with your website in real time.
3. Compare the results of the previous version of your site to the current version to see which one is more effective at converting. You can continue to make changes until you achieve the results you want.