Conversion Rate Optimization: it’s a team effort
Demystifying CRO
Here’s how we keep a focus on conversion in everything that we do
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For example, on an e-commerce site, the goal might be to persuade users to click “buy now” or “add to cart”, on other sites, conversions might include downloading a sales PDF, registering for an event, or even playing a track on a music streaming service. So each time a user takes this action, it’s counted as a successful conversion.
Persuading users to take positive actions (conversions) is the ultimate goal of any digital platform — it’s what drives business. But since so many considerations come into play in order to achieve high rates of conversion, it requires high levels of attention. These considerations should come from every aspect of the development of the project, including business strategy, design, content, and development.
Placing conversion at the center of every project means understanding how each area of expertise impacts conversions as part of the user journey. At Nansen, we put a lot of thought in how we can make meaningful conversions at the highest possible rates. Here’s how we work with a focus on conversion in different areas:
At the start of a project, understanding the nature of business requirements is paramount. In doing this, a business director is able to pinpoint the most effective conversions that a project should be focused on, as well as suggesting a strategy that is centered around this conversion goal. This means that from the very highest level, decisions are made from the perspective of optimizing the conversion rate.
Once an overall strategy has been established, the creative and user experience team can work on designing an interface that is engaging visually and persuades the audience to complete the conversion. This could be designing a form that is as simple to complete as possible, or using color to draw attention to specific calls-to-action.
One of the most important factors for impacting the success of conversions is communication. Developers need to understand the full intentions of layout and the reasons for these decisions from the designers, and help to ensure that development supports efficient and smooth interactions.
Content needs to aid the visual design to reinforce the calls to action. Content should be written specifically for the target audiences intended for each interaction, and its messaging and copy format should be kept as simple and clear as possible — giving the user the information they need without distracting them from the action that they need to take.
A large part of understanding conversion is thinking of it not as just creating action, but converting a mindset and creating motivation. It’s a conversion of thought, and a conversion of action. This is achieved by considering all perspectives in the CRO process, and maintaining a high-level view at all times.
In order to achieve the best conversion rates, testing needs to take place. With a continual process of refinement in mind, testing techniques could be A/B testing (which measures the effectiveness of one single change), or multivariate testing (which measures the effectiveness of multiple variable changes) to heat map tracking and more, testing will help to make informed and incremental changes to improve conversion goals.
Each interaction with a user on your website is an opportunity for meaningful conversion. You have started to capture their time and attention; not taking advantage of that is a lost opportunity. As you embark down the CRO road, it’s important to know that not every test will be a winner: some will fail and some will demonstrate outstanding results. But as each test informs the previous, you’ll get one step closer to an “optimal” setup for maximum user conversions. That’s just good business.
