Conversion Rate Optimisation

CRO or Conversion Rate Optimisation is a buzz acronym at the moment but it's a buzz acronym with the ability to deliver great results at minimum cost. With the advent of SaaS businesses and theories such as 'lean testing', CRO is becoming more and more popular amongst digital and web marketers. If you were a traditional marketer who carried out campaigns using your experience or on a pure simple hunch, this is the time to stop and re-think. Get in with the cool kids! More and more businesses are now operating like start ups and use CRO to their advantage.

CRO is:

-Usually a structured and systematic approach to improving the performance of a website, which is informed by insights, specifically analytics and user feedback. (This is defined by the usual web KPI's). You can also extend your CRO efforts beyond the website and tie it to the whole funnel so that you improve the conversion of the whole funnel end to end.

CRO is not:

-Based on guesses, hunches or what everyone else is doing or what someone thinks is the right thing to do.

Traditionally, testing was predominantly strong in email marketing, especially from an A/B testing perspective or multivariate testing level. These concepts are still valid and should be used in CRO. However, the key difference in CRO is that you get an accurate confidence level and then make a decision to either Pivot or Persevere ASAP.

Tools such as Google Analytics have built very strong testing platforms based on theories such as multi arm bandit and by using algorithms that would provide you with a 95% confidence level in a test, even when the traffic to the pages are relatively low. This helps marketers plan the next phase of the test and then execute in a timely fashion.

As in anything in marketing, you need to be clear about your objectives before you plan a test. Once you define the CRO objective of the test, then you need to understand your current baseline metrics and then forecast what you would expect to achieve. This could be based on ROI, Growth etc...Some marketers tend to do a low, medium, high so that they can quickly deem whether the test was a failure or not.

The most difficult part in CRO is interpreting test results. For e.g. if your funnel consists of a lot of content driven marketing, i.e. white papers etc...and someone says you need to get rid of the data capture form so that you could show your stuff to more people, then you should suggest a CRO test with and without a form for the same white paper. Split the traffic to each page equally and then run the test for a defined time period until you get to your stipulated confidence level.

For argument sake, let's say the page without the form had a 50% better conversion rate. Does this mean your test was a resounding success? Think again! Even though you managed to show your content to 50% more people, would you have been able to make meaningful conversations with that incremental increase and maybe engage with them in some other way or form? In simple words, were you able to capture their details some other way so that you could talk to them later on? Or are you satisfied with that incremental lift alone because at least 50% more people have seen your brand? What is more important to you? This is why you need to clearly define your objectives upfront. Interpreting CRO results is key to your 'Pivot or Persevere' decision and we highly recommend having an analyst in your team.

In a future post, I will talk about a typical CRO team and will also provide you with a template to monitor your CRO tests through my blog Metric Makers.