What is CRO?
CRO, as mentioned above, is the practice of A/B testing two versions of a website against one another. The ultimate goal is to find the version that converts better—that is, the version that sends the most leads, contact forms, phone calls, purchases, and so on. The more conversions, and the higher your conversion rate, the better.
CRO involves testing a multitude of factors on a website to see if and how they impact conversions. It may involve testing large elements, like an entire checkout process, or small ones, like the color of a button.
What Are the Biggest Conversion Rate Optimization Benefits?
The biggest benefits of CRO—at least the ones that everyone talks about—have to do with money and leads. But the key benefits of testing your website actually go beyond that.
Here are seven of the key benefits of using CRO on your site, all of which are important factors to consider when thinking about starting a conversion rate optimization program.
BENEFIT #1: YOU’LL MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON DATA
Before CRO, if you were considering making a change to your website, you probably did so based on gut feelings. You may have once heard something like “we should change this page because I think it will do better if…”
CRO eliminates “I think” and changes it to “I know.” Instead of changing something, you can initiate non-permanent tests based on those gut feelings, and evaluate the results. That way, if your customers or visitors prefer something completely different, you can quickly switch it back.
CRO allows you to make decisions based on data and facts rather than your gut. By utilizing A/B tests and evaluating the results, you’ll be able to make smarter decisions in the future, because you’ll have all the data you need to back yourself up.
BENEFIT #2: YOU’LL GET BETTER RESULTS
Similarly, when you utilize the data obtained from CRO testing to make decisions about changes on your site, you’ll find that you obtain better results from these changes. If you change the color of a button because testing has proved 5% more visitors click it, you’ll get at least that 5%—versus an unknown amount of conversions from changes made without testing.
BENEFIT #3: YOU’LL MAKE MORE MONEY OVER TIME
Most articles about conversion rate optimization benefits talk about the additional money CRO can make you. While this is true, you shouldn’t expect your CRO testing to result in thousands of dollars in additional revenue in the first week or two. Instead, expect incremental revenue that you’ll notice over time.
Most of the time, CRO can help you identify small areas of opportunity that will result in increased conversions—and thus increased revenue—over the course of a few months. For example, changing the location of a form on a page may earn you an extra two leads per month. This may not seem like much, but that’s an extra 26 leads a year, and if your close rate on leads is 10%, and new customers spend an average of $15,000, that can definitely add up!
While some A/B tests can identify immediate opportunities to earn large amounts of revenue, expect CRO to help you find long-term strategies to improve your website and conversion rates.
BENEFIT #4: YOU CAN OUTRANK YOUR COMPETITION
Can conversion rate optimization help with your SEO? Strangely enough, yes. Depending on what you test on your website, you may identify elements that improve the amount of time visitors spend on your page. By doing this, you can reduce your bounce rates, which Google considers as part of a ranking factor. If your bounce rates drop, you may have a better chance at outranking your competition.
Additionally, if your conversion rates increase, you may find that your website traffic, social media activity, and overall popularity online all increase as well. These increases are known to correlate with search engine ranking increases. So the more you test, and the more changes you make, the better you could perform in search.
Source: Webpagefx
