Conversion Rate Optimization

OnPage conversion rate optimization is what most people think of when they want to increase the conversion rate of a web page/site. This is for good reason. If a landing page is poorly designed or optimized then it is very hard to get a competitive conversion rate. However it’s not always apparent what can be done to increase the conversion rate. There are three useful methods to begin the process of optimizing a page’s conversion rate: putting yourself in the shoes of a visitor, looking at the analytics, and surveys.

Being the Visitor

Many times I’ve been discussing conversion rate optimization with a coworker and we’ve been able to pinpoint obvious friction points in the conversion process by simply imagining the process from the point of view of the visitor. Simple questions to ask are:

• What is the first thing a visitor will see when they come to the page?
• Is the value proposition simply communicated above the fold?
• Is there a clear call to action on the landing page?
• How hard is it to take the desired action?
  • How many steps are involved in the checkout process? Could these be reduced?
  • How many fields are required in the form?
• Are there any design elements that could cause friction with the visitor?
  • This one is harder to judge without any data, but if the page is incredibly ugly, there may be some simple things to improve the look.

Analytics

This is also known as the quantitative data analysis method. Here you want to look at the data showing how people are behaving on your site. In order for this to work you need to make sure that Google Analytics is set up correctly with filters and goals. Analyzing the data here will provide information like:

• Where people enter your site, i.e., which webpage they are landing on first
• Which features they engage with
• What channel and referrer brought them in
• What devices and browsers they use
• Who your customers are (age, demographic, and interest)
• Where users abandon your conversion funnel

A lot of the above data doesn’t provide information directly correlated with conversion rate optimization. However is some information that can really help point in the right direction.

Looking at what features a visitor engages with can show what is and isn’t working. If there is a video on a landing page that most people only watch 25% of, you may want to consider trying a different video. If there is a button to a More Information page that is rarely clicked on, but the people who do click convert at a high rate, consider changing the button or implementing some of the information on the landing page itself. There are a lot of ways to look at the data here, but there is likely something that can be learned to increase the conversion rate.

Where users abandon the conversion funnel is also a very useful area to investigate, especially eCommerce. If you have a lead generation site where the landing page has a button that links to a page with a form, you may want to consider moving the form to the landing page. A client of mine has a survey that leads to a meeting scheduler. It would be good to look at the survey itself and see if there is a question or point where a lot of people abandon the survey. If we can find a specific spot this happens we could shorten the survey or change the question. Again, there are a lot of ways this data can be looked at. It’s up to you to be creative and find ways to use this data to improve the conversion experience of the visitor.

The demographics can be really helpful to see what type of people convert on your site. This can help direct changes to the way the message is being delivered. For example, you might address an audience of 40 – 60 year old people different than you would 20 – 30 year old people. So, if looking through the demographic data you find that a certain age group converts at a higher rate than another you can tailor the message more directly to that age group. You could also think of creating a new marketing campaign targeted to one of the lower performing age groups and creating a landing page targeted to that group.

There are many other ways that you may be able to analyze the data to help make conversion rate optimization decisions. Be creative and there will always be something you could try based off the data.

The Customer Survey

This last method will require you to work more with the client than the other two. Here you want to look at the why of behind the behavior of the visitors. This people-focused method, known as qualitative data analysis, is more subjective. It requires you to have the quantitative data found through analytics in order to know who you should be asking. It’s also best to optimize for the ideal user, not everyone. There are three main ways to get the data:

1. On-site surveys
2. User testing
3. Satisfaction surveys

Following are some questions you should try to answer through the surveys:

• Why did they engage? Why did they originally decide to visit your site or navigate to a specific page? What about the page or product appealed to them?
• What do they think your site offers that makes you different from competitors? Is there a feature or service offered by your company that makes buying from you a better experience?
• What words they use to describe your products, services, and the pain points they address? How would they describe your product or service to a friend? In essence, how do they talk about what you do?

Combining the answers to these questions with the analytic data will provide the best direction for your conversion rate optimization efforts.

 

When deciding what next step to take in Google ads, a necessary question to ask is whether to focus on conversion rate optimization or increasing traffic. When the conversion rate is at an acceptable level, a good marketer will focus on traffic. Usually this means working within Google Ads. However, often when the conversion rate isn’t at an acceptable level the marketer will immediately jump to on-page efforts to increase the rate. While this can often be the right choice, there are many cases where the efforts would be better spent inside of Google Ads.

There are three main reasons the conversion rate isn’t at an appropriate level. The first is because the landing page is not optimized. We’ve covered how to approach this in the previous section. The second is because the cost per conversion is still too high, and the third is that the visitors aren’t as relevant as they should be. This section will discuss the latter two reasons.

When someone says that the conversion rate is too low, what they are really saying is that the cost/conversion is too high(or the value/visitor is too low). If the conversion rate is only 0.5% but the ROI is $5, it would make the most sense to work on increasing traffic, not increasing conversion rate. This may depend on the client, but most clients would be okay with spending $1 to get a $5 return.  The lesson to take from this is to think of conversion rate as a rate where you are happy with the return. The return depends on the conversion rate AND the cost.

When optimizing for the conversion rate within Google Ads you need to think of increasing the relevant traffic. Increasing the relevant traffic to the site will increase the conversion rate. For example, you have a client who sells industrial 3D printers. There is an ad group with two keywords. One is “industrial 3d printers” and the other is simply “3d printers”.  This ad group has an ROI of 1.2. The ROI is above one, so the ad group is profitable, but it doesn’t have the volume necessary to generate the desired profits. Situations similar to this arise often.

There are two ways to approach this situation. One way is to try to decrease the cost per click. The other way is to increase the relevant traffic. This could actually include increasing the cost per click. Increasing the relevant traffic is increasing the conversion rate. These have a direct relationship. So the question is, how do you increase the relevant traffic?

Keywords

Above I presented a situation with two keywords. It’s pretty obvious that “industrial 3d printers” is more relevant than “3d printers”. One way to increase the overall relevance of the traffic could be to pause “3d printers”. However, this may be too extreme. The only time you should consider this option is if the keyword is very irrelevant or the campaign is limited by budget. Another, less drastic way would be to lower the cost per click for “3d printers”.  This can have a twofold consequence. First, it could lower the overall cost/conversion which increases the ROI. Second, it could also lower the total cost of less relevant traffic. This free’s up spend for the more relevant “industrial 3d printers”. The overall affect will be a lower cost per click and a better conversion rate.

Ads

There are many other ways to increase the relevant traffic. Ads tests is also a simple method to increase the relevance of the traffic. Sometimes a good ad test will decrease the click-through-rate but increase the conversion rate. This means that your ad is communicating the right message better. It’s getting clicked less by irrelevant traffic and more by relevant traffic. Another way to do this is through extensions. Extensions help communicate the right message to the right people before they click. It also can give them more of an incentive to click.

Bid Adjustments

The last thing I’d like to focus on are bid adjustments. Bid adjustment’s sole purpose is to increase the relevant traffic to your site. By looking at the ad schedule you might find that people who visit your site during the evenings are more likely to convert. They are more relevant. Thus you can either decrease the bid on the less relevant times or increase on the relevant times. (If it’s a limited-by-budget campaign it’s best to only decrease the bids.) The same is true for the other areas where you can adjust bids. When optimizing the conversion rate within Google Ads it’s very useful to look at ad schedule, location, device, demographics, and audiences. Make sure to only adjust the bids where there is enough data (at least 100 clicks).

As with on-page CRO there are many ways to optimize the conversion rate within Google Ads. Hopefully this will help jump-start those ideas.