5 min read
If you feel you’re successful with driving traffic to your website, but just can’t seem to attract those leads, it’s time for conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO helps get visitors to convert from a website visitor into a lead. You can use conversion tools to help turn website visitors into leads, allowing you to turn a larger segment of your visitors into actual customers.
Although driving traffic to your website is admirable, you can’t sustain your business if you aren’t capturing leads. Here we explain how to use conversion tools to improve conversion rate so you can truly leverage your investment in traffic.
What are Conversion Tools?
Conversion tools encompass a pretty broad range of apps designed to assist with different aspects of conversion optimization including:
- Lead capture tools
- Research tools
- Analytics tools
- Mouse tracking and heat maps
- Feedback tools
- Experiment tools
Conversion tools help you understand visitor behavior while also making capturing leads easier. They don’t just capture leads but also help improve the user experience on your site. From high-level changes like a landing page and email design inspiration to in-depth insights on how your visitors navigate through your content, these tools are the key to improving the performance of your site.
You might be surprised to learn how something as simple as changing the color of your primary “Call To Action” button (CTA) can drive leads into your funnel. However, you’ll also have vital information about every element of your site and lead generation process, so you find opportunities for improvement.
Where To Implement A Conversion Optimization Strategy
There are four areas of your website that will benefit from conversion rate optimization:
1. Homepage
Homepages should be a major player in your CRO. This is not just a visitor’s first impression, but also an opportunity to guide visitors further into your website to retain their engagement. Your goal is to emphasize links to product information, offer a free signup button, or use a chatbot to solicit questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience. In other words, optimizing your conversion strategy makes it easy to engage with your brand right from the get-go.
2. Pricing Page
Your pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many visitors. CRO gets more conversions whether it is by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g., price-per-year vs. price-per-month), effectively describing product features to show value, prominently displaying contact information, or having a pop-up form to collect email addresses. Hotjar, for example, got over 400 new leads in just three weeks simply by adding an email opt-in popup form on its pricing page.
3. Blog
While the goal of a blog may be information and brand awareness, it's also a massive conversion opportunity. CRO allows you to leverage your thoughtful and helpful industry content. You can convert readers into leads by adding carefully placed calls-to-action (CTA) in the article. You can also invite readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for an eBook or industry report.
4. Landing Pages
Your landing pages help people take action. It makes sense they have the highest average conversion rate of all signup forms at 24%, so you need to start using them properly. For example, an event landing page can be optimized with a video of last year's event to show visitors what they’ll miss if they don’t register right now. An offer page for a free resource like an e-Book can be optimized with a little preview of the content to entice visitors to download it. Landing pages should make it easy for visitors to do what you want them to do.
These four pages are the real producers, allowing you to focus your CRO efforts in the areas most likely to generate more leads. However, to be successful you’ll need to create a strong CRO strategy.
What is a Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy?
A good strategy is designed to convert more of your visitors into paying customers. While each conversion optimization strategy will vary from company to company, how you create your strategy tends to follow the same steps. Your goal is to:
- Identify key metrics and your audience so your strategy is both measurable and targeted.
- Next, you have to collect user feedback and other data to decide what you’re going to test.
- Last, you’ll run A/B tests to improve different pages and parts of your site for conversion.
Optimizing your conversion rate is an ongoing process offering opportunities to constantly improve, set benchmarks, and increase leads.
What Tools Are Available for Conversion Rate Optimization?
CRO tools simplify or automate the process of optimizing your conversion rate. They might help with lead capture, research, analytics, mouse tracking and heat maps, feedback, or running experiments. For example, Lucky Orange helps you pinpoint why traffic isn’t converting to leads or sales. You’ll see what visitors do on your website, presenting opportunities to include better content, CTAs, and offers on pages that are popular but fail to capture leads.
Using features like heatmaps to spot the most popular places on your site, and session recordings to follow a visitor’s experience and behavior, you start to see patterns that tell you where and why you’re losing your audience. You can also intervene using live chats to pop up on key pages where you note people might feel they need more information or encouragement to proceed.
Also, a free tool like Google Analytics has a “Behavior flow” feature that reports on the path users followed. As a result, you can see what content visitors find most engaging and the content that fails to meet expectations.
How Do You Know if Your Conversion Optimization Is Working?
The most common and effective CRO test is A/B testing. It allows you to compare apples to apples for different elements of your CRO to see what version works best. You add, re-arrange, and redesign elements on your website and compare the results to find the most effective versions to maximize conversions. Different CRO tests might focus on optimizing the copy, design, or placement of your CTAs, while another looks at the length of your headlines. The key is to see where you succeed and incorporate better and better elements to increase conversions.
Begin Optimizing Your Website's Conversion Rate
Although there are many best practices you can adopt for your conversion rate optimization strategy you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business. You have to start with a strategy so you understand your audience and can set measurable metrics to help you know where you should be testing your progress. In hand with conversion tools to track those metrics and test website elements, you can constantly improve your CRO.
Are you interested in maximizing your ROI in your marketing strategy? In addition to CTA’s, there are many other areas you can also optimize. Download StructureM's free Revenue Accelerator today to find out some ways to increase revenue and drive ROI!
