Why is Conversion Rate Optimisation Important? And How Does It Work?

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is a term mentioned across all forms of digital activity; largely used with reference to websites utilising a range of digital marketing channels to engage their users. I have already covered what CRO is in a previous article, but now it’s time to explain its importance to a business and why it’s a no brainer.

Why is CRO important?

When producing a marketing strategy a common metric for success is the return on investment (ROI), especially from a paid media perspective. This is calculated by taking your return and dividing it by the allocated cost, allowing you to evaluate how effectively you have spent your budget.

How does this apply to you? Well, have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to cut costs? Or been asked, “how do we improve the conversion rates”? Then CRO is a logical step to take – you’ll ensure your traffic delivers more than it ever has before, with the metrics speaking for themselves with CRO improving every downstream site metric.

Don’t believe us? Why not check out one of our CRO case studies here.

A favourite software for many is Google Optimize, which is free and allows regular testing without copious amounts of development resources! So why not give it a go and enhance your user experience?

This will be especially relevant when communicating to a board or your manager as getting improved results without a large upfront cost is a no-brainer.

Now, how does CRO work?

As a digital marketing agency, we have seen a lot of disbelief in CRO, we are often asked: “Is CRO worth it?” or “how does CRO work?” so the purpose of this section is to lightly explain some principles which allow CRO to yield those valuable increases we all desire.

For this, I want to cover a few user experience “laws” (without giving away all our secrets) which we have found invaluable when creating new user experiences that follow CRO best practices.

• Serial Position Effect: Users are most likely to remember the first and last items in a series. Having the most important messages at the beginning and end can reinforce the aim.
  • This has direct implications on offline assets as well as webpages. Ensuring the next stage in the user journey is clear and well-positioned will boost conversion rates and click-throughs with a small proportion of users missing the overall aim.
• Jakob’s Law: Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users will prefer your site if it works the same way as all the others.
  • Taking ideas from other areas of the internet can provide valuable learnings.
• Aesthetic Usability Law: When using a website, an aesthetically pleasing design is seen as more usable.
  • A common area where companies save on design. This could be having an effect on your performance without you realising it. Trialling colours, styles and visuals to make your site more appealing could be invaluable. Don’t scrimp on the design!
• Occam’s Razor: Among competing hypotheses that have similar aims, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected to reduce over-complication.
  • Apart from test ideation, there is also an important emphasis on the testing method. This law highlights how making decisions based on known variables and data will, in most cases, yield greater results. Consistent learning and analysis based on real data will lead to a successful CRO strategy. Your gut feeling may not always be right.

Now we have mentioned some of these laws, you’ll start to notice them in your everyday life. As even if you don’t want to believe it, you are influenced by everything you see and interact with every day.

This influence can come in many forms:

• Colour: White reflecting purity or red suggesting romance.
• People:  Someone’s appearance and their behaviour can have a direct effect on your perception of them e.g. attire or behaviour.
• Language: Choice of language can instantly dictate an opinion of yourself or the company. This is why it is important to set tone of voice guidelines in larger companies 

Association is a massive factor within CRO and can be used to influence the journey without changing it massively. Just for a proof of concept, what happens when you Google the word Happy? Everything is yellow!

As a final comment, CRO can be extremely beneficial if you devote the time and resources to it. We’d love to hear how your CRO efforts are going or if you haven’t even considered it!