Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies and Best Practices

Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies and Best Practices

Every day we learn something new in digital marketing. In order to make our efforts count, we apply different methods, techniques and a lot of brain to achieve marketing goals. The most important part of marketing campaigns is number of Conversions. We work very hard to achieve highest conversions from marketing campaigns. Today I am going to share some insights about conversion rate optimization. It will help you to understand how can you optimize performance and increase conversions. Every marketer in the world be it advertiser, campaign manager, business owners or marketing strategist could understand the importance of conversions. Today I will share some information which can help you to enhance the performance of your campaign and gain maximum conversions.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization This is a method of analysing end user data points to understand high and low conversions.

Conversion rate optimization is used to improve the sales conversions for any product or services. By working on CRO, marketers encourage users to perform certain actions. Depending on website product or services, the actions are defined. For example, if you are running a website which offer services, then the action should be encourage user to make a payment for services. However, if you have a product on your website, then the action would be to make a purchase.

Signup, subscribing for newsletters, Filling forms, product enquiry and making an appointment are also considered as actions. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through the website, what king of actions they take, and what make them stop for completing the purchase.

We can categorize conversions in to Micro conversions and Macro Conversions.

Micro Conversions

Micro conversions are those where users spent lesser time on web and complete the action. For example:      

Creating accounts Sign up for newsletters Adding product to wishlist Creating Bookmark of product Schedule Meetings Product Enquiry

Most of the micro conversions are available for free. Users don’t need to invest their money while completing the action. These conversions are used to collect user data which can be used for product or services marketing. Also it helps marketers to understand the user behaviour and their interest.

Macro Conversions

Macro conversions are those where user spends good amount of time on website and then complete the action. For example:   

Making a purchase Purchasing premium subscriptions Request product Demo

During the macro conversion, user verifies the product and services then get the product. They invest their money in this type of conversions. In order to achieve macro conversions, marketers need to put in the best efforts in representing the product or services. The choice of words should be relevant and according to targeted audience.

Strategies for On-Page Conversion Rate Optimization Before getting into tips, tricks and suggestions to create strategies for conversion rate optimization, let me tell you that you need to create an amazing product or services and focus on quality. It is very hard to meet expectations of every customer on website. Given below are few points which you can consider while creating strategies for better CRO.

Use of Buttons instead of Text

In order to describe the actions, focus on creating buttons to make it easy for users to complete the action. Simple text such as Click Here, Proceed Here & Buy Now looks great with button texts.

In above image, you can see the difference between text and buttons. However, it is also important check the location of button. It will be lot easier for users to complete the action if the placement of button is easily available. Also, create an attractive set of buttons which can attract users and make them complete the action.

As you can see in the image, the button size is big than the regular ones. It’s because the AIM of marketer to make users understand the importance of this button. Depending on your actions, you could adjust the button size.

Page Speed On January 17 2018, Google released an update on page speed insights. They accepted that speed has been used in ranking for some time. Page speed is not only the ranking factor in SEO but it can also help you in improving conversion rates. If the page load time is not good, then it will be hard for users to complete the action. The bounce rate would be high which can impact the conversion rate.

A small issue could leave a big impact on your performance. Being a SEO Strategist myself, I would suggest you to get the fastest loading servers and give users a page which can respond within fraction of second.

You can check the page speed insights with the help of PageSpeed Insights tool provided by Google.

Use of Headings Using an attractive headline based on product could make a lot of difference. Use the words wisely on pages. For example “Exclusive” and “Limited Edition” these words made any product special and could bring a different prospective in user’s mind towards the product. Let’s take an example here. I was looking for Video Conferencing and found a page of Cisco.

In above image, you could see the use of headings and button along with product description. While drafting the product description, invest your time in creating the best headlines.

Use of images Use of correct images at right location could make a big difference in customer actions and can bring a good positive result in conversion rate. It sounds strange that images on pages could affect the Conversion Rate but it is one hundred percent true. Let’s take example of two advertisements for same product.

In above example, you could see the power of right images. The impact of left and right images would be different. Even both the images represents same product.

Simplify form fields Create the forms with simple information. Don’t ask users to fill too much of information in forms.

For example, if you want users to subscribe for newsletters then asking for email address is enough for goal completion. Adding Gender, Date of Birth and Location is not required. Make it easy for users. Short actions are easy to perform for users.

These were few key points to include in your on page conversion rate strategies.

Strategies for Email Marketing Conversion Rate Optimization Conversion rate in Email Marketing is different from On-Page. It depends on several different methods such as Opening Email, Landing on Promotion Page, Click through rate and finally completing the conversion. In email marketing method we could optimize differently to improve the conversion rates. In this method we will learn about adjusting customer actions and increasing the percentage of clicks and visits to the promotional landing page.

E-mail platforms are different from web. We get limited options to in terms of performing actions.

But if we consider every small factor while creating email campaigns, we could get best results.

Given below are few important factors which can help you to boost your conversion rate in email marketing campaigns.

Subject Line Subject lines could be categorized in two sub categories.

1. Small Subject Line 2. Descriptive Subject line

Small Subject Line Small Subject lines are very useful while creating gesture campaigns such as Festival Wishes, Welcome Mails, Loyalty Programs and Bonus offers.

Let’s take an example of Thank you mail I received after placing one order online.

The subject line in this mail has only my name and a Thank you for placing an order.

Descriptive Subject Line Descriptive subject lines are important for describing your campaign. User’s may open or may not open the email. In this situation, we could use descriptive subject lines to convey our promotional message to users. Let’s take another example here. Few days back I received an offer from Amazon.

It was a promotional email for watches. Refer the screenshot below and see the subject line.

As you can see in the image, the subject line contains offer details, product information and promotion expiration date. If you are running a campaign, then you must describe your product & offer details in email subject line.

Email Body Test every possible template before using it for campaign. A lot of text doesn’t help in increasing clicks. Keep it simple and use lesser text in your email body. Content length should be descriptive enough to convey message. Do not put extra efforts in putting a lot of content in email body. Given below are few additional points to remember while creating email body for promotional campaign. 

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HTML Ratio: Always keep the platform in mind while creating templates. You simply can’t apply the same rule of website design template on email templates. Both are different from each other. In many cases, plain text email performs better at scale than HTML email.

Infographics: Use of infographics could bring a change in your campaigns. Attractive graphics with information on it create curiosity but use them wisely in your campaigns. It’s a big challenge to control infographics because responsive templates may behave differently on different platforms such as mobile or tablets.

Campaign Timings Timings are most important part of email campaigns. Choose the right time of day and the right day of week, especially when sending digest emails once a day/week/month. Depending on your audience, set the timings. For example it doesn’t make sense to send an email after midnight.

Strategies for Social Media Conversion Rate Optimization There are different prospective behind social media advertisements. Every campaign is different from each other. For example, you might see sponsored posts for page likes, Applications installations and watch videos. But sometimes, you might see a custom product landing pages. For example, Enquiry Pages to collect data, admission forms and early access/subscription

advertisements. The sole purpose of these advertisements is to generate more business leads. Given below are few key points to remember while working on Social Media Conversion Rates.

Geo Location Targeting accurate location is one of the biggest factors in social advertising. You should always choose the location wisely for your promotional campaigns. It can give you better results in terms of business leads and impressions. Let’s take an example here. In India, there are multiple languages are used in different states. If you are willing to run a campaign in regional language, then choosing exact location is must. If you are running an international campaign then always check the influence of language on locations before drafting campaign. However, most of the time campaigns are created in default language (English-US).

Advertisement Creatives Creative images could leave an impact on your campaign so you should choose the creative image wisely. You might see some images with high CTR but the conversion is very low. However, there are some images where CTR is low but conversion is very high.

However, you have to follow the text & image guidelines while running ads on social media platforms. According to Facebook text in ad images “Image text is any text that exists on your ad image or creative. It doesn't include text outside of your image, such as the body text of your ad- Facebook” Age & Gender of Targeted Audience Getting a click from audience which is not targeted could increase the number of Clicks but the Conversion from those clicks is very hard to achieve. Do an analysis on demographics and check the performance data to understand the impact of demographics on your campaigns.

Strategies for Adwords Conversion Rate Optimization Google adwords conversions are basically calculated by simple formula. The formula is total number of conversions divided by total number of interactions. For example imagine you got 40 conversions from 2000 conversions then the conversion rate would be 2% since 40 ÷ 2,000 = 2%.

In Google Adwords, you need to set up the conversion tracking before running a campaign. You can follow the steps to enable conversion tracking by visiting Set up Conversion Tracking for your website.

Now let’s move on to the steps to for adwords conversion rate optimization.

Quality Score Every ad you create in Google Adwords, go for quality checks. You have to create ads with quality in order to get maximum benefits.

Using Sitelinks (Call to Action) in Advertisement Meta and Description Correct use of call to action in Advertisement description and Meta data helps a lot to achieve better conversion rate. Create the sitelinks according to product and business and use it in your adwords campaign. Let’s take one example here.

The highlighted portion represents the call to action button in this advertisement. You can create as much as sitelinks and use them in different ad campaigns.

Use of trademark (™) or registered trademark (®) symbols If you have a product or services where you could use any of these symbols then conduct a test. Run a campaign with these symbols and see if you get better results. These symbols help to build trust between users.

Set up Negative Keywords No business owner or marker would like to spend on keywords which are not related to business or have negative impact. None place a bid on keywords which has no conversion. Within the ad campaign, you could set up list of negative keywords. It is a good practice to save money on click generated on irrelevant keywords.

Multiple Landing Pages Landing pages are important for testing and running multiple sets of ads. You could use different keywords for each landing page and run different ad campaigns. Be it single product or multiple products, multiple landing pages gives you an opportunity to test variety of ads.

So far we have learnt about conversion rate optimization for different marketing segments. Hope it would help you to draft the best strategies to get the maximum benefits in terms of conversion.

Sources: Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies and Best Practices