Is CRO a good investment?

When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, there is typically a heavy emphasis on increasing traffic. This makes sense, right? The more traffic you’re able to drive to your site, the more conversations you’re likely to make. Well, while this is partly true, it’s not the full story.

The truth is, driving traffic to your website is just the first step. You can have all the traffic in the world, but the simple fact is, if your site is not properly optimised for conversions, you’ll find it hard to keep your users’ attention and improve your bottom line. With this in mind, it’s also important to consider the quality of traffic you’re generating and the experience users have when they arrive on your site. This is where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes in.

In this guide, we outline the ways in which a professional CRO strategy can benefit businesses, helping you decide if this increasingly important aspect of digital marketing strategy is right for your brand.

What is CRO in marketing?

In its simplest form, CRO is a methodical approach to increasing the percentage of site visitors who take a desired action. This could be anything from actually making a purchase or subscribing to a service to simply filling out a form or signing up to a weekly newsletter.

Once a business’ desired action is targeted, the ultimate purpose of an aligned CRO strategy is to boost user experience on the site in order to make it easier for visitors to convert into customers.

To find out more about how CRO strategies work in practice, check out our CRO analysis service page. Here, we break down how CRO is implemented and monitored, from A/B testing right through to our in-house multivariate and usability testing procedures.

How to calculate conversion rate

Before moving on to assessing the benefits of CRO, it’s first important to understand how this metric is calculated. After all, if you’re unsure what the conversion rate of your site currently sits at, how will you measure the progress of any CRO strategy you put in place? Luckily, the formula is very straightforward.

Simply take the number of conversions registered on your site over a defined period of time and divide this figure by the total number of visitors to your site during the same period. Finally, multiply this number by 100. For example, if your e-commerce site had 1,000 visitors last month, and during this period you received 50 individual orders, then your site’s conversion rate would be 5% for the month. That is:

50 sales divided by 1,000 site visits = 0.05. Conversion rate: 0.05 x 100 = 5%

By tracking this metric over a set period of time, you can identify areas for improvement and measure the effectiveness of your CRO efforts.

What are the benefits of CRO?

Okay, so now you know what CRO is and how you can monitor the effectiveness of any strategies your business puts in place. However, the question still remains – is CRO worth it? Well, to help answer this question in the context of your own brand, below we take a look at the key benefits of CRO.

Better understand your customers

Improving the user experience (UX) of your site, and in turn boosting conversions, starts with understanding what your customers want and how they behave. With this in mind, the process of implementing a CRO strategy involves analysing your customers’ behaviour, preferences and general interactions with your website in order to gain a deeper understanding of what makes them tick.

Through trial and error analysis, CRO processes will help you identify key patterns that ultimately reveal insights into what motivates customers to convert. This invaluable data can then be used to create a better overall user experience on your website, impacting everything from the bespoke content featured on your site to the actual journey a customer makes from first-contact landing pages to checkout pages. This customer behaviour data can also be used in other areas of your business, for example in shaping your more traditional marketing and advertising campaigns.

Leverage your existing website traffic

As touched upon above, all too often too much emphasis is placed on increasing traffic in digital marketing strategies. While this is of course an important aspect of increasing conversions, focusing on maximising the value derived from your site’s existing traffic is also important. This is often overlooked.

When a successful CRO strategy is able to improve user experience and streamline the conversion process, you will quickly start to notice your site better capitalising on the traffic you already have. Remember – acquiring new customers is one of the most expensive aspects of digital marketing, and there are never any guarantees. From PPC advertising expenses to lead generation efforts, the investment required to bring in new customers can quickly add up.

Instead of pouring resources into driving more traffic to your site – not guaranteeing an increase in conversions – CRO allows you to make the most of the traffic you currently have, boosting your conversion rates and ultimately improving your bottom line.

Boost your SEO strategy

While we have highlighted the oft overlooked benefits of CRO above, we understand that for many businesses CRO will be seen as a way to complement existing digital marketing strategies rather than one to replace them. This is a view that we share here at Click. That’s why our combined services are designed to ensure all aspects of your brand’s digital marketing strategy dovetail.

For example, our CRO strategies are designed to boost your brand’s organic search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts, as well as focus on on-site conversions. Remember – algorithms that determine ranking position on Google and other search engines take a website’s UX into account. With this in mind, a website that has been fully optimised for conversion rate, which provides a positive and easy-to-use experience for visitors, is more likely to rank higher in search result pages for identified target keywords.

This is to say, by implementing a good CRO strategy, you not only stand to enhance your site’s conversion rates but also create a site that is more attractive to search engines. This synergy between CRO and SEO can result in improved visibility, increased organic traffic, and a stronger online presence.

So, there you have it – the key benefits of CRO. Although deciding whether or not to invest in this form of marketing may well come down to budget, it’s important to consider your digital marketing goals before ruling it out. If your current site’s conversion rate is not where you want it to be, CRO is unquestionably worth the investment.