image: SEO
Conversion rate optimization – or CRO – is the single most important thing to look at when you have a website. It doesn’t matter how big your audience is, or how beautiful your website looks; if it isn’t converting, it isn’t working.
However, many small businesses don’t pay too much attention to CRO. They are happy to have a website and pay an SEO firm to improve their position in the SERPS – but confused when they don’t make any more sales. With this in mind, here are several reasons why you should care more about conversion rate optimization.
You already pay for traffic
All companies pay for traffic in some way. You might hire an SEO company to give you a boost in your search engine rankings, and even if you don’t, you still pay for the privilege of having a website in the first place. The costs to build it, host it and market it are all investments that every business should be making a return on. If you aren’t, you are just throwing money away and it is doubtful that having a website brings you any value at all.
It targets the right people
A major part of improving your conversions is refining your audience. Without CRO, it is likely that the visitors to your website aren’t a good fit for your business. That means that they may be interested in something else entirely, or not at the right stage of the buying process. Essentially that means that all of your efforts in what you do on your site are a waste of your time. CRO helps you target the right people at the right time, and makes it easier for them to buy into what you do.
It is cost-effective
All businesses use cost per sale as a key performance indicator. And, if you aren’t paying attention to your conversion rate, it is more than likely that your cost per sale is too high. Using CRO techniques will bring those costs down and help you win more sales for less money. It’s surprising how many businesses are great at optimizing their cost per sale in the real world, yet don’t seem to concern themselves when it comes to their website. If this is something you are guilty of, perhaps it’s time to have a rethink.
It is easier than you think
One of the major reasons why people don’t concern themselves with CRO is because they don’t understand it. However, it doesn’t take long to find out about what you need to do. There are many resources on the web that will teach you for free, or you could do a conversion rate optimization course to make sure you have everything covered. Essentially, it’s about marketing psychology and giving the customer what they want when they want it. CRO is based on a principle of testing at all times – seeing what works and eliminating every single factor that doesn’t. The Internet is a very busy place, and unless your website is laser-focused on driving sales or sign ups, it may get lost amongst the noise.
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We hope this has helped inspire you to take conversion rate optimization seriously. Let us know how you get on.
