Driving traffic to your site is the easy part of the digital marketing process; converting that traffic into sales and repeat customers is where the real struggle is. Optimizing your conversion rate involves factors like the layout of your website and the effectiveness of your calls to action. To get started on this process, you will first want to learn more about it.

Know Some Basic Definitions

Conversion Rate Optimization, CRO, is a toolset designed to optimize your marketing campaigns and landing pages to convert as many site visitors to customers as possible in a month. This rate is calculated by the number of sales transactions divided by visitors to your website. It is essential to determine which traffic and transactions you include in this calculation to get the best data to measure your success. For instance, if you take the total number of sales transactions in a month, some existing customers will be mixed in with your conversions. This data set will make it more difficult to calculate which campaign generated the most successful leads. These numbers are specific to your company but can be easily calculated by your sales platforms and displayed on your company dashboard for easy access. You can even code your dashboard to generate CRO numbers and access the information in the field on your rugged tablet or another mobile device.

Understand the Benefits

One of the most significant benefits of adding CRO to your digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization efforts is that you can generate more meaningful traffic and more lead-to-customer conversions. These conversions mean that your cost-per-acquisition of a customer will drop, and your digital marketing team can do more with your existing budget to raise profits.

Other benefits of CRO include the need for regular updating and tweaking of your website and landing pages to maximize user attention and limit your bounces, as well as increasing your market share and value to business partners. The more likely users are to purchase something from your site, the further ahead of the competition you are getting, and the more valuable ad space is on your pages.

Experiment With Small Changes

If you or your bosses are still unsure about embracing the CRO toolset, it is good to start with small, measurable changes and track your metrics. For instance, if you refine all your calls to action to line up more closely with your most successful ones, then you can use your SEO tracking tools to determine how much traffic and conversions change in the first week or month. Once you have seen some gains with that small change, you can focus on other aspects of the sales funnel and CRO, such as your audience groups and the design of your landing pages.

Build Up Optimization

Optimization is an ongoing process that involves regular checking of the data and tweaking your site in response to fluctuations in that data and seasonal changes or new product lines. Not only do these changes help boost your CRO and SEO numbers, but they also keep your web pages updated and relevant for users and current promotions. By building up your optimization toolset, you can learn which metrics are most important for your sales goals, which design elements need refining, and which lead generation techniques work the best for your company.

As online shopping and marketing continue to grow, finding ways to separate your website, products and services from the competition is likely to get more complex. Optimization tools often rely on a series of small changes or tweaks to page design, calls to action and other aspects of your digital marketing campaigns. These small changes can lead to significant sales jumps with the right metrics tracking and patience. With the proper optimization toolsets of CRO and SEO, you can drive more search engine traffic to your website, reduce your bounce rate, and convert more of those leads to customers.