CRO Strategies to Increase Website Sales

March 10, 2022 Mihaela Lica Butler

CRO is a strategy to turn website visitors into paying customers. Before starting a conversion rate optimization project, you must define your priorities and expectations using PIE, a framework that helps you set up your goals based on potential, importance, and ease.

Ask yourself:

  • What is the potential of this CRO strategy to improve your website?
  • Is this strategy important for your website? Are these changes essential for visitors to complete a transaction?
  • Is it easy to implement these changes, or do you require more complex strategies, like redesigning entire pages?

Give a score from one to five to each of these questions, where one is the lowest and five is the highest. Then, divide the total by three to get an idea of what you could fix fast and what requires a different, more complex and time-consuming approach. Prioritize your CRO strategies: don't postpone easy fixes and give complex projects enough time and thought to ensure they deliver on your goals.

 

Use CRO Tools to Improve Website Performance

You could use various tools to improve your site's performance, and many will help you simplify and automate your lead capture process. They are also helpful for research, analytics, and A/B testing.

Google Analytics: understand your customers to give them better experiences on your website. It will provide you with the right metrics to help you identify your most engaging content and the underperforming pages of your website. You can even use Google Analytics to determine which users are likely to convert, analyse purchase activity on your site, and see how your marketing channels work together to create sales and conversions.

CrazyEgg offers heatmaps, scroll maps, referral traffic, and audience demographic reports that show people interact with your website and why. Once you gather the data, you can use CrazyEgg's A/B testing tool to see what you could improve to reach your CRO goals.

Hellobar is a lead-capture solution you could use to increase visitor engagement, collect email addresses, and reduce cart abandonment. It includes analytics and A/B testing tools to help you set up new and better-performing campaigns.

Rate Parity is another example of a CRO tool coming from the hospitality and hotel industry. In this area, the importance of direct bookings and purchases directly through the site is critical for the property’s revenues. Rate Parity has a smart tool that acts as a widget in hotel sites and its job is to help increase direct bookings through the hotel website. The tool consists of a few different elements that can influence the user's behavior and encourage them to place an order/booking while already visiting the hotel’s site.  For example, this Super Widget includes the presentation of a clear price comparison, reviews of the hotel, push buttons for direct order, special packages and more.

Many other tools are available; choose the ones that serve your goals. You will also consider your budget: while many are free, and you can use Google Analytics for almost all your needs, the best will charge a monthly subscription.

 

CRO Strategies

If you need better sales performance for your website, you must apply several conversion rate optimization strategies. Here are some actionable ideas to get you started.

 

A/B Testing

A/B testing is an essential CRO strategy when you want to boost the performance of your marketing materials. You can use it for landing pages, website design, blog pages, call-to-action buttons, and more.

A/B testing (or split testing) is necessary because some people respond better to specific website elements, while other components may entice different people.

This CRO strategy requires an advanced level of skill and deep knowledge of user behaviors, analytics, and other factors impacting the user experience on a site.

You could always use software to automate the process, but you will benefit more from hiring a company or consultant with experience in this field.

 

Improve CTA Buttons and Texts

The call-to-action is an "old-school" strategy found everywhere where marketers and advertisers want you to pay attention and buy something. CTAs are subliminal in TV and radio ads, but they must be straightforward in print and online.

A call to action on your website can appear in titles (H1), buttons, and other text forms. For example, you can use a text-based CTA styled like an H3 between two paragraphs and link it to a landing page, sales page, subscription form, or a different type of content depending on your conversion goals.

Whatever your purpose for using CTAs, make sure you optimize them.

For buttons: use playful colours and short texts. "Buy now" may be too aggressive sometimes, while "learn more" may be misleading for a sales page. "Shop now" is more appealing but use your imagination to inspire your buyers. Also: don't use red for CTAs. Red is aggressive, and most people associate it with "STOP." Use greens, orange, or neon colours whenever possible.

For texts (including titles acting as CTAs): make them impactful, emotional, and appealing. Less is more every time: limit the number of words to fit on a smartphone screen.

If you plan to use banners for your CTAs, reconsider your approach as they will underperform on mobile devices, and users will ignore them on your website.

Buttons make sense for a shopping cart or to lead people to subscribe to something. Texts are for those instances when you want them to "read more" or "learn more."

Craft your CTAs to the users' expectations.

 

AI-powered Chatbots to the Rescue

Chatbots are nothing new, and they tend to be a bit of a nuisance when they "pop up" on every page upload, on every site visit, or just out of the blue. But, as a CRO strategy used wisely, they are effective to improve conversion and helpful for website visitors.

Chatbots work on sites where people are likely to ask questions: marketing, hotels, consulting, real estate, and similar. However, big sites like Amazon, eBay, and the like do not use chatbots because they will only interrupt the shopping experience.

Do note: use chatbots on your website only if they make sense for your customers. Don't include such a CRO tool just because "it's trendy." Sometimes, what works for one site will be detrimental for another. People value or need different things.

Therefore, you may choose to add chatbots or live messaging only to those pages of your website where your visitors need customer support or guidance. Alternatively, you could "mute" your chatbot for a predetermined time (30 seconds, one minute, or more), then trigger it to "nudge" your visitors to ask questions or seek help from a human representative.

 

Instead of Conclusion

These CRO strategies hold universal value, and you could implement them on any underperforming site. However, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for conversion rate optimization. Instead, it would help if you researched, tested, applied, and then restarted the process as many times as needed until you reached the desired result. Plus: some web pages may perform better, while others will never achieve the potential you imagined.

As tempting as DIY may seem, without the proper tools and expertise, it will simply not work. You must invest time and effort to optimize your site for better conversions without external help. Therefore, consider hiring experts or investing in a CRO platform with a dedicated third-party account manager if you want to focus on your clients and the tasks you love.