A worrying—if understandable—trend among businesses today is to prioritise traffic acquisition above all else. The digital landscape provides brands access to a massive international consumer base, so boosting website traffic and pitching to these potential customers is always going to be an attractive proposition.
However, as businesses across the globe sink hundreds of millions into acquiring website visitors, more and more are finding their investments to be less than fruitful. In order to truly increase sales, a robust and proactive conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy is vital, ensuring users across the sales funnel are engaged, informed and incentivised to part with their hard-earned cash.
As the North East’s premier CRO agency, The Bank combine data-driven and psychological insights to create powerful conversion strategies that decrease marketing spend and boost ROI. Our conversation rate optimisation team has extensive experience revamping landing pages for B2B and B2C markets, covering a range of sectors including retail, finance, education, and healthcare.
We offer an extensive list of services to ensure your online presence delivers maximum ROI: we can conduct detailed user testing, create effective call-to-actions (CTAs), and optimise page structure, among many other things. We also work closely with our clients to track and analyse the success of our strategies, allowing us to continually refine and improve your conversion rate.
To learn more about our conversion rate optimisation services, contact our team today. Alternatively, keep reading for our comprehensive guide to CRO.
Conversion Rate Optimisation: The What
In short, conversion rate optimisation is the process of tweaking a website’s design and content in order to drive more conversions. This can involve anything from changing the colour of call-to-action buttons to rearranging page structure, with the ultimate aim of increasing sales, signups or other desired outcomes.
CRO is different from traditional marketing as it focuses on customer experience and user behaviour within the sales funnel, rather than external factors like website traffic or brand awareness. By understanding how users interact with a website, CRO specialists can identify areas for improvement and make subtle changes that can drastically improve conversion rates.
Conversion Rate Optimisation: The Why
The benefits of addressing conversion rate optimisation as part of your marketing strategy are numerous.
Higher Conversion Rates
Okay, so an obvious one to start off. As CRO focuses on generating an improved conversion rate, it stands to reason that it can drive more conversions from existing traffic. This means increased sales, signups or other desired outcomes with minimal additional cost.
Decreased Cost Per Acquisition
CRO should also decrease the cost of acquiring a customer. By driving more visits through the same funnel, businesses can enjoy the economies of scale associated with marketing and advertising.
Lower Marketing Spend
As CRO can drive more conversions from existing website traffic, businesses don’t need to spend as much money on acquiring new customers. This frees up the budget for other strategies and could also result in overall savings if the impact of CRO is significant.
Improve Brand Loyalty
Conversion rate optimisation isn’t just about driving sales; it’s also about creating an optimal customer experience. By improving the quality of the user journey, businesses can drive customer loyalty, with more users who are more likely to return for repeat purchases.
Refined Understanding of Paying Customers
CRO can provide businesses with an unparalleled level of insight into their customer base. By analysing how users interact with the website, CRO specialists can identify areas for improvement and focus marketing efforts on customers who are more likely to convert.
Long-term Success
The final benefit of effective CRO is that it helps foster long-term success. By developing processes for continual improvement and refinement of a website’s design, businesses can identify areas for improvement and increase ROI in the long run.
Conversion Rate Optimisation: The How
Conversion optimisation services are often complex. With so many different elements affecting your website conversions, it’s vital to take a macro approach and consider the entire customer journey.
In simple terms, CRO agencies will usually examine the following elements of your business’ website:
Design
How does your page look and feel, and how does it compare to other websites in your industry? Does the design draw users in, or does it look outdated and uninviting?
Your target audience wants your website design to be modern, engaging and reflective of the quality of your product or services, particularly on key pages. Furthermore, as first-party data collection becomes increasingly important, contact forms need to be highly refined to encourage contact from qualified leads and meet lead generation targets.
Copy
Copy is one of the most important elements in CRO, as it can be used to convince users to take a desired action. Is your copy persuasive and engaging? Does it clearly explain what users should do or why they should purchase?
Conversion rate experts can also assist in boosting visibility across organic search channels, adopting an SEO approach to your website pages that bring brings in more customers and helps you convert them when they get there.
Action
Your landing page calls-to-action are the main drivers of conversion—it’s essential that users can quickly and easily navigate to where you want them to go. Are your CTA buttons in an accessible location, or do they require excessive scrolling? Do they stand out as clickable options?
CRO specialists can help create a seamless user experience, removing any potential barriers that could prevent customers from taking the desired action.
Navigation
Navigation is key to improving user experience, as it provides customers with an intuitive way to explore your website. Is the navigation structure consistent throughout the website? Are users able to quickly find what they’re looking for?
CRO can help businesses create a simple and intuitive website navigation system that ensures customers have a positive journey every time they visit. Conversion rate optimization teams can test variations to the navigation structure to see which works best for your customers.
Experience
User experience is one of the most critical elements of website design, as it can make or break a customer’s journey. Are users able to quickly and easily interact with your website? Do they respond positively to specific messages or calls to action? Do they feel that they can make informed decisions about your business?
CRO specialists can help businesses create an optimal user experience by testing different page designs, CTAs and messages. This allows them to identify the elements that best engage customers, and come up with new ideas to help increase conversions.
A Step-by-Step Guide to CRO Services
At The Bank, we take pride in providing bespoke CRO services that are tailored to the unique wants and needs of our clients. Unlike other agencies, our small team of digital experts are committed to maximising conversion opportunities—a cookie-cutter approach simply doesn’t work.
Despite this, there are some key elements we like to follow when it comes to successful conversion rate optimisation. Take a look below for an outline of the key steps:
Step 1: Site Audit
A CRO audit is an essential first step: what is your business already doing right, and what are the areas that need improvement?
The CRO audit process involves analysing the existing website structure, design and content. During this process, we’ll analyse user behaviour, identify any potential conversion blockers, and determine any changes that need to be made in order to improve your customer journey.
Our powerful software stack leverages heat mapping software and data analysis tools such as Google Analytics—the result is a comprehensive report that provides actionable insights and recommendations for future improvement.
Step 2: Establish Objectives
It’s vital to establish conversion goals early on. Not only does this help us develop a strategic plan of action, but it also helps you to see the areas in which we’re delivering tangible results for your business.
We’ll need to know what kind of action you’d like customers to take, whether it’s downloading a whitepaper or making a purchase. Set measurable goals and track performance over time in order to refine our approach and make necessary adjustments as needed.
Step 3: Competitor Analysis
The digital marketing landscape is cutthroat—it’s essential to have a full understanding of what local and international trade competitors are doing in order to stay one step ahead.
We’ll conduct an in-depth competitor analysis, looking at their website features and design, as well as their content marketing efforts. This will help us determine the best approach for optimising your own conversions.
Step 4: Persona and Behavioural Analysis
Creating customer personas can help businesses better understand their target audience and tailor content, messaging and design in order to resonate with them.
Our team will analyse user behaviour data to identify the types of customers visiting your website. We’ll use heat map software and in-depth user research to create detailed profiles that outline their wants and needs, as well as what motivates them to take action
Step 5: Keyword Research
Relevant keywords are essential for SEO performance and customer targeting. Our team will conduct a keyword research analysis to identify the most effective keywords to use in content, titles, meta descriptions and other website elements.
We’ll also analyse competitors’ keyword strategies in order to determine the best approach for your business. By leveraging our expert knowledge, we’ve generated hundreds of potential keyword opportunities for our clients, resulting in increased clickthrough rates and conversions.
Step 6: CRO Strategy Development
Combining the data collected from the previous steps, we’ll develop a CRO strategy tailored to your business. This could involve everything from A/B testing to conversion funnels, as well as on-page optimisation and email marketing campaigns.
We take a scientific approach to CRO strategy, leveraging data-driven insights to inform every decision we make. We’ll also consult with you throughout the process, ensuring that we’re taking a customer-centric approach and focusing on your goals.
Step 7: Implementation and Monitoring
By actioning the strategy on your live website, our team will work to implement, test, and monitor changes in order to ensure we’re on track with performance goals.
We’ll use software such as Google Analytics to monitor user behaviour, correct errors or technical issues, and refine the CRO strategy as needed. This ensures that your website is always up-to-date and optimised to provide the best experience for your customers.
Step 8: Reporting and Ongoing Optimisation
Conversion rate optimisation is never complete. Generating more revenue in the long term requires a commitment to improving the user journey as well as the website design and content.
We’ll use reporting tools to track performance and progress, providing actionable insights and recommendations for future improvement. Regular analysis of customer feedback can help us identify potential improvements and further optimise your strategy over time.
The Bank: A Conversion Rate Optimisation Service with a Difference
If you’re looking for an experienced conversion rate optimisation service, look no further than The Bank. Our team of experts have helped hundreds of businesses optimise their websites and generate more revenue with custom CRO strategies tailored to their specific needs.
Our goal is simple: to help you achieve the best possible results through data-driven decisions and laser-focused customer targeting. Let us show you how our expert digital marketing and conversion rate optimisation services can take your business to the next level.
To get started, contact our team today. We can’t wait to get to work!
