4 Simple Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies!

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is about understanding each step of the current user purchase process, discovering at which step potential customers abandon their purchases and solving the problem.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of McDonald's classic product "Big Mac". In the half century since its birth, the Big Mac has spread all over the world, from Chicago to Beijing, bringing a delicious and relaxing experience to customers every day. The significance of the Big Mac far exceeds any other hamburger.

If you want to try this best-selling burger, you should do the following:

• Passing by a McDonald's;
• Want to buy a burger;
• Waiting in line;
• Browse the menu;
• Order food and pay the bill;
• Pick up the meal.

congratulations! You’ve just gone through the “sales funnel” buying model.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel refers to the purchasing process that sellers guide consumers through. Depending on the type of sales, a sales funnel is generally divided into multiple stages.

Let's recall how you buy a Big Mac:

• Passing by McDonald’s (awareness stage);
• Want to buy a hamburger (interest stage);
• Waiting in line (evaluation phase);
• Browse the menu;
• Ordering food (decision-making stage);
• Checkout (payment phase);
• Pick up the meal.

But what does this have to do with conversion rate optimization?

What is Conversion Rate

Imagine you run a business and want to increase your revenue through the Internet , what would you do?

You may:

• Content marketing (Weibo, video sites, live broadcast );
• Search engine optimization ;
• Social media marketing ;
• advertise;
• Keyword bidding.

These are all good decisions, but there are two important questions:

1. All require a lot of time, money and resources;
2. Focus on the top of the funnel.

The fact is that most businesses and marketers now focus too much on the "top of the funnel" strategy, and what you need to know is: the market is indeed a numbers game , but no matter how you improve the top of the funnel, it will be useless if there are problems with the rest of the funnel.

So what is conversion rate optimization?

In simple terms, optimizing conversion rate is:

• Why visitors don’t convert;
• Solve problems;
• That's all.

This may seem easy, but many people ignore it, resulting in a lot of money being invested but getting nothing in return.

4 strategies for conversion rate optimization

Don’t worry, conversion rate optimization is simple, it’s not about A/B testing button colors or boosting vanity metrics.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is about understanding each step of the current user purchase process, discovering at which step potential customers abandon their purchases and solving the problem.

Step 1: Clarify your goals and eliminate unnecessary options

On the homepage of a website, the most important part of conversion is to clearly express the website's goals .

You should not try to let visitors operate more than 3 functions on the page, which will make the web page look very cumbersome, so it is best to include less than 3 optimal conversion points on each web page. Therefore, ideally there is only one optimal conversion point.

Focusing on the purchase page, marketers recommend removing the following links from the purchase page:

• Top navigation bar;
• Side navigation bar;
• footer;
• Social media platforms.

And any links that take consumers away from the best conversion point, because the goal of the purchase page is a single click (purchase) from the user.

In fact, it is best for consumers to only click once on the purchase page. If the consumer clicks the mouse not on the purchase button but on the social media page, then the business is likely to be lost.

If you want people to buy an e-book, offer a free trial or schedule a purchase date. First, make sure that every page element serves the ultimate goal, with the only exception being the back to homepage button (you want users to browse the entire website unless it is a one-page website).

So how do you know what kind of links are distracting your visitors?

Here are two examples:

Example 1: Reduce the number of links to purchase services

Home

Initially, this webpage had three different purchase links. The merchant wanted to provide more service options, but consumers were caught in a dilemma . Therefore, the solution is to have one purchase link for each product, delete the other purchase links and consolidate them into one.

Home

Example 2: Reduce external links

Marry Me Tampa Bay

The site wanted better, more detailed data on its supplier traffic . The question now is how to track all outgoing traffic. Because sometimes users visit a third-party website (Facebook, etc.) before contacting the supplier. This means that if a user clicks through to a supplier via a third-party website, a portion of the traffic will appear to come from Facebook, when in fact the user found the supplier via Marry Me Tampa Bay.

This can remove the social media option to reduce the user's outflow channels .

We can also further optimize conversion rates and establish an easy way to connect with suppliers to get clearer data.

• Change supplier links to buttons;
• Put "Contact Seller" on top.

Compare this to the pages of competing websites:

Step 2: Monitor user behavior on the web page

When visitors understand 1-3 conversion points of a web page, they will then understand the structure of the web page.

What is distracting users from their sweet spot right now? How to know what users do on the web page?

Here are a few tools that can help you:

1. Google Analytics

There are two things you need to look at in Google Analytics:

1. Web browsing time;
2. The number one source of traffic.

(1) Web browsing time

The optimal time for web browsing is 1-3 minutes per page (less than 1 minute must be improved).

Google Analytics Page View Time

If the conversion point is very complex, the average page viewing time data of Google Analytics will sometimes be exaggerated, so you can use the following custom data to understand user behavior and time on the page.

Based on this data, we can obtain the user's behavior on the web page and make changes, such as:

• People only stay on the page for 10-15 seconds before closing it because they can't find the information they want quickly.
• People bounce off your page because you’re showing them the price before you sell the product.

(2) The first source of traffic

We can say that the biggest entrances to website traffic are Google, social media or email. Whatever your site's biggest traffic source is, you can use this data to understand where people are coming to a specific page on your site.

You can compare the relevant traffic from different sources under the same criteria, such as traffic from different search engines , bidding and media. Comparing all the data can help you better decide which traffic entrance is the most effective.

Traffic source data will tell you important information about consumer psychology:

• Is this hot or cold traffic? (Depending on the user's perception of the website)
• Where are they in the search process? (If most of your site’s internal pages are coming from search engines, then those visitors are probably in the awareness stage of your sales funnel. If most of your traffic is coming from links in emails, then those visitors are probably close to the decision stage.)
• Are they at the top of the funnel or in the middle?
• What is the level of problem awareness? (After going through the above process, the next page the user will browse. People who click on the purchase link directly after reading one page have a more resolute purchase decision than those who read 1-3 pages)

You can then focus on optimizing conversion points for these types of traffic (e.g. building message boxes).

2. Heatmap

Another key analysis data is the heat map. For example: your product purchase page comes with a video introduction, but the user browsing time on the page is very low, only 15 seconds. The user clicks the video fast-forward button multiple times and then scrolls down to the price page, which means that the user may see the price too early.

How to optimize based on data?

When users make purchases on the website, merchants need to take all aspects into consideration. The above tools can help you accurately locate which specific parts need to be optimized. Now you can find the problem and modify the web design to achieve better results.

Step 3: Simplify the design

Part of the reason users overlook your website’s key information is that the web design is too complicated. Understanding how people browse the web can help you make better decisions about conversion rate optimization.

Layer Cake Browsing Heat Map

• Layer-cake scanning : Users glance at the title and subtitle, then skip over the main text below. The heat map of this browsing method will be multiple horizontal lines, like a layer cake, with layers of cream and cake.
• Scattered browsing : Ignore large amounts of text content and only look for specific content, such as links, numbers, specific text, or words with special identifiers.
• Marked browsing : Focus your eyes on one place and move the mouse downwards, just like a dancer looking for a fixed reference object when spinning on the spot. This browsing method usually occurs on mobile phones.
• Avoidant scanning : When lines in a list begin with a repeating pattern, people will intentionally avoid the first few words on each line.
• Immersive reading : Read most of the content of the web page carefully. If users are very interested in your website, they will read the entire text or even the entire web page. (Don’t rely too much on this pattern happening, most users will just glance over it)

Here are two basic principles of design:

1. Readability is more important than design style

Sometimes a rich design may look eye-catching, but it is not conducive to the reader's reading. For example: It is better to use a white and transparent text background instead of using pictures. Pictures may look very beautiful and can show your personal style, but it will be difficult for visitors to read the text.

If the image is extremely important and has strong applicability, it should be processed, otherwise it is better to discard it.

2. Color selection

The best website for finding color inspiration is: Material UI color palette list. (Link at the end of the article for reference)

Google’s color palette is the official color style reference. This official guide is the result of in-depth research and extensive research, and is guaranteed to make your website colors more comfortable.

So how many colors should the website choose?

You'd better choose 6 colors or less (excluding black and white)

6 main colors for your website

Step 4: Message Interaction System

A website without a "Message Button" will make the webpage look cluttered.

Here are a few page layouts:

Tampa Homepage

Following up on our previous topic about “ clearly communicating the purpose of your site ,” these pages simply present too much content.

The goals of this website are to:

1. Allow visitors to browse the web page;
2. Gain user trust through certificates;
3. The user selects a service;
4. Introduce different types of shops;
5. The certificate modules are not unified;
6. Each store type is unrelated, and the level of the store is determined by the level of service selected by the user.

What is the first goal of the website? Second goal? Third goal?

Therefore, more than 3 information boxes are needed to interact with users. But note that each message box directly serves the key conversion point, otherwise remove these useless elements.

Establish a clear message hierarchy.

What is the message?

Web sections and messages are different. Many websites have multiple web sections but only one basic message interaction box. Compare this to the iPhone purchase page:

iPhone Landing Page

Obviously the iPhone landing page is very different from the homepage of the previous website.

Final Thoughts

We’ve packed a lot of content together, so if you learned something, bookmark this article.

Even after reading this article carefully, the concept of conversion rate optimization may still be a little vague to you. That’s okay, the key is that you already know how to start building a conversion rate optimization plan. Now that your goal is clearer, go for it.