Your go-to conversion rate optimisation (CRO) agency in Auckland.
Most marketers today are focused on simply driving traffic to their website, in the hope this will magically result in more visitors taking the action they want them to take. While getting good website traffic is a great start, what happens when visitors get to your site is just as important. This is where conversion rate optimisation has an important role to play.
Website optimisation and customer conversion are key elements of many Auckland digital marketing campaigns. However, while 46% of businesses don’t have a structured CRO process, companies that excel at it generate 50% more sales at 33% lower cost.
What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
To understand CRO, it’s important to grasp what elements make it up. Firstly, ‘conversion rate’ refers to the percentage of visitors to your website who complete a desired action. Common actions include buying a product, filling out a form, subscribing to updates, or signing up for a service.
If you have a high conversion rate, this means your website is designed and formatted effectively and it appeals to your target audience. It also means that visitors clearly understand what’s being offered and what the next steps are.
What’s regarded as a ‘good’ conversion rate depends on factors like your industry, your goals, which channel you’re interacting with visitors on, and your audience demographics, such as if they live in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, or another New Zealand city or region.
For example, the average conversion rate for eCommerce sites in one report was 2%, while another found it was 2.63%. Overall, though, conversion rates in Auckland are usually in the low single digits if you don’t apply conversion rate optimisation. Conversion rates also differ by industry. For example, the average conversion rate of eCommerce sites in food and beverage is 5.5%, while in the hair care sector it’s 3.5%. It is also important to note that your conversion rate will vary depending on the referring traffic source. Google search ads, for example, will often have a far higher conversion rate than Google display ads or blog traffic. It is often more beneficial to assess the conversion rate of each source, as opposed to the site overall.
It then follows that conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of conversions of people who visit your website. Techniques to improve your CRO generally involve identifying areas for improvement by tracking, testing, and ongoing improvement of the key elements on your website.
Where to apply a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy on your website
The best place to begin optimising your website is to hone in on those areas that receive the greatest amount of traffic, or which already generate the greatest number of conversions. By focusing on these pages you can see the results of any improvements sooner, with a positive impact on your business.
On the flip side, you could also start optimising your highest value pages, or those that are underperforming compared with the rest of your site.
There are typically four main areas on your website that can benefit from conversion rate optimisation: home page, pricing page, landing pages, and blog or news pages. To maximise the potential of converting website visitors into customers, you should aim to optimise each of these key locations on your Auckland website.
1. Home page
Your home page is your website front window, so it makes a strong first impression on your visitors. If it’s designed and structured well, it will lead your visitors to other important parts of your site, where you can prompt them to take action. If your visitors ‘bounce’ from your home page, this will reduce your opportunity to convert them to customers.
2. Pricing page
A visitor to your website who wants to buy a product or service will often jump to your pricing page right away, to see what a purchase will cost. If your pricing is laid out clearly and the steps to purchase your product or service are clear, this will improve the chances of making a successful conversion.
3. Landing pages
These pages are mostly designed as a key component of a targeted campaign and are there to prompt website visitors to take action. Your offering needs to be clearly spelled out, with a strong call to action.
4. Blog or news pages
These pages are used to provide thought-provoking and helpful content for your visitors and they help to educate your website visitors and build your brand’s credibility. An article or blog can use conversion rate optimisation to nurture your readers and convert them into leads.
Why is conversion rate optimisation (CRO) important?
Conversion rate optimisation is important because it reduces the costs of acquiring new customers by getting more value out of the website visitors you already have. If you improve your conversion rate using optimisation, you can increase your revenue per visitor, and grow your customer base.
Even the best companies in the world are constantly optimising and increasing their conversions by improving their websites. CRO is used to generate ideas on how to improve the key elements on your website, and then validate these using various forms of testing.
4 signs you need CRO
If you tick any of the boxes on this checklist, it’s likely your website would benefit from CRO with Flow.
- You’re having to increase your online advertising budget to increase your online orders.
- You don’t have in-house optimisation and testing skills, or your efforts aren’t producing results.
- Your checkout conversion rates and average order values are low.
- Your follow-up emails to those who abandoned their shopping cart aren’t getting results.
How to apply conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
While conversion rate optimisation is a specialised field that requires knowledge and expertise of CRO techniques and user experience (UX) best practice, here are a few common and relatively easy-to-implement tactics:
- Ensure your text and colour combinations meet best practice guidelines.
- Run A/B testing on your landing pages to see what works well.
- Use strong CTAs at the end of every blog post.
- Add pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value.
- Add messaging and chat to high-converting web pages.
- Optimise your best-performing blog posts.
- Use retargeting to continue engaging with visitors and nurture them to conversion.
Are you ready to optimise your Auckland website with Flow?
You might be wondering, “Where do I start with CRO in Auckland?” There is a wide range of conversion rate tactics available, but it boils down to
- Doing a comprehensive audit of your website,
- Finding out what your customers respond to, and
- Fine-tuning over time, to improve results.
As we mention in our Obvious First Choice Principle article, one of Flow’s clients is now achieving a 25% conversion rate, which is significantly above the average conversion rate. We have access to some of the top CRO specialists in Auckland and internationally and we’d love to talk about how we can lift the performance of your website.
Flow has helped clients in New Zealand and globally harness the power of conversion rate optimisation. Producing a comprehensive website CRO analysis is a fine art that requires advanced skills and expertise, however, once you see the results you’ll wonder why you didn’t get it done sooner!
If you’re considering optimising your website and lifting your conversion rate
get in touch with the team at Flow today – Auckland’s leading conversion rate optimisation CRO agency.