March 12, 2013 – This month’s event zeroed in on conversion rate optimization. Click Advisors’ Theresa Baiocco joined us for the evening to share her tips on CRO, including a 7-step process that will convert more traffic and ultimately, improve profits.
Before diving in, always begin by looking at the big picture and decide where conversion rate optimization fits in. Calculate the revenue equation (Revenue = Traffic x Conversion Rate x Value of Conversion). It’s important to focus on each component equally.
Once you’ve looked at the big picture, work through the following seven steps to increase your site’s conversion rate:
1) Who are our site’s visitors? Build customer personas, focusing on psychographics rather than demographics.
2) What are they trying to do? Continue building customer personas in this step. Differentiate between primary and secondary personas.
3) What do we want them to do? Define KPIs based on your business objectives. Configure both macro and micro conversions in analytics.
4) What’s preventing them from doing it? Look at analytics and user feedback. In analytics, ensure goals are configured and the correct tracking is installed. Figure out which page is the problem. When gathering user feedback, continue to focus on the data. Tools such as FiveSecondTest, UserTesting.com and Lucky Orange provide great insights into users.
5) Develop a hypothesis to fix it.
6) Test. Don’t get hung up on the tools.
7) Repeat steps 4 – 6. What else can we do?
After working through these steps, go back to the big picture. Calculate the revenue equation with your new numbers and reinvest the extra revenue in traffic.
Sarah is a search marketing consultant, helping clients improve ROI through paid search, SEO and social media initiatives. She is also the Official SEMpdx Event Blogger and can be found at all of the monthly events.