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What is conversion rate optimisation + 4 steps to get started
Attracting more traffic to your website was the best way to grow an e-commerce business in the past decade. This often increased your market share and thus also your turnover. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is limited in the current busy online market.
The more effective way to increase your market share is to focus on converting more website visitors into customers. That’s where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes in. CRO optimisation is a winning strategy to increase your company’s turnover through existing traffic and leads.
In this guide, we will go deeper into the meaning of conversion rates and why it is essential for the success of your business to optimise them. Let’s dive in.
What is conversion rate?
The conversion rate is a measure of how well your website converts visitors into customers. It is calculated by dividing the number of conversions, an action such as subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product, by your total number of visitors. The higher the conversion rate, the more effective your marketing strategy.
The most common desired action is a final purchase. The goal would then be to get as many website visitors to actually buy a product as possible. If on average 1 in 200 visitors would buy a product, the conversion rate would be 0.5%. This would mean that your conversion rate is below the e-commerce average of 1 to 4%, and that it might be time to look into CRO.
What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
Simply put, CRO is the strategy that is applied to increase the conversion rate. And that is done with smart tactics that allow you to optimise the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.
On average, a solid conversion rate should be between 1% and 4%, although this strongly depends on your industry. And on the conversion goal that you have defined.
With the conversion goal of “sale”, a conversion rate of 4% would be considered high. This means that your website offers a hyper-personalised customer experience. Or that your brand has a strong fan base that uses your company as a starting point in their customer journey.
The most important success factor in CRO is how well you understand your customer. To then convert that knowledge into hyper-personalised customer experiences. Because the most effective way to optimise your conversion rate is to show your customers what they want to see.
How to start with CRO optimisation in 4 simple steps
There are many effective ways to start your CRO optimisation journey. But it all starts with the right tools.
1. Implement a CDP
To know how to optimise your conversion rate, you need a lot of data. To simplify the process of collecting and combining data, you need to start with the implementation of a Customer Data Platform (CDP). With this software, you integrate all your different data sources into one platform, so you have a complete overview of all customer data.
Our CDP, Spotler Activate, goes one step further. From the collected data, predictive customer profiles are created for each individual customer. This allows you to easily create hyper-personalised marketing campaigns, email campaigns, and content. As an added benefit, it provides in-depth insights into all the statistics that affect your conversion rate.
2. Set your conversion goals
Once you have implemented a CDP, you need to define your conversion goals. Don’t be afraid to aim high, because there is a lot to be gained with the smart personalization tools that a CDP offers. No experience with conversion goals? See if you can find industry averages online. This should be your minimum goal!
3. Visualize the customer journey
The customer journey is a beautiful tool to track the progress of the journey your customer takes, from awareness to buying a product and more. A good CDP like Spotler Activate helps you to easily set up the customer journey. Start by identifying all touchpoints and localize them in the different phases of the customer journey model. Once you have all the touchpoints in order, you should have a complete overview of all the interactions that customers have with your company.
4. Identify the most important touchpoints and optimise them
It is the most important touchpoints that have the strongest effects on your conversion percentages. So start by determining which interactions are the most important. Now analyze their effectiveness. Are there visible bottlenecks? Are customers leaving after this specific interaction with your company?
Then ask yourself how this touchpoint can be optimised. Once you have come up with a solution, you can run an A/B test to measure the effectiveness of the new touchpoint compared to the old one. Optimisation is an ongoing process, so you can come up with a wide range of possibilities and test which one is the most effective.
Repeat this for each individual touchpoint for the best results. Optimise them all so that your customer experience flows smoothly and is tailored to the specific needs of each individual customer. We assure you that this will do wonders for your conversion!
Want to optimise your conversion rates?
That is possible with our CDP Spotler Activate! Our consultants are ready to show you the capabilities of our CDP in a demo.
