It is no secret that in the world of marketing, branding, and advertising that the attention you get is often the measure of success. Or is it?

All brands in (and out of) the digital ecosystem are constantly battling to be top of mind and striving to capture the lion’s share of search, ad clicks, social engagement, and far beyond.

The mindset since the birth of digital marketing has been “the more attention you command, the more you can sell.” On the surface this is true; however, as the internet and us marketers have matured, the focus has shifted.

Attention is great, but what you do with that attention is vastly more important.

What is more valuable? A 1,000 visitors entering and exiting your site without a purchase or 100 entering and 50 leaving with a purchase? The volume doesn’t matter if conversions are not taking place.

In essence, we are saying, conversion is the actual king.

But what makes a customer convert? What entices them to choose you over a competitor? We are not talking about pricing models and button colors—instead, it is more often the experience you provide that will persuade your customers to convert above all else.

#1. The User Experience

User experience may be nothing new; however, the intense focus on an outstanding user experience is only growing more important as more search Traffic shifts to mobile. But let’s dive a bit deeper.

Google announced its Core Web Vitals update that will take effect in the beginning of 2021—you can read more about that update here. But at its core, this update is 100% about the user experience. Your site needs to load, be stable, and allow users the ability to interact with it faster than ever before.

Think about it, if you click a search result and are waiting more than a few seconds for a site to load, you are likely going to think the site is broken and bail.

But ok, let’s say it loads up quickly but the user can’t scroll, click, or navigate around yet—right off the bat, doubt is being cast in the mind of the user about making any type of purchase from this website.

The experience you provide is at the core of the trust you are building that will inspire a customer to convert. Clean layouts, simple navigation, and clear search options are critical to providing an above-and-beyond experience that will start the journey of conversion out on the right foot.

#2. Every Page Needs a Goal

You may have spent years adding pages of content to your website to help boost SEO rankings and organic traffic. But if these pages have attracted users to your site and don’t have an overarching goal or action you want the user to take, how will you know if this content is valuable at all?

This is why every page that you invest time in—from products and services to blogs and articles—needs to have a purpose, provide a solution, and have a goal that can be measured.

Do you want them to fill out a form, click a product link, watch a video, or add a product to their cart? Goals come in many forms after all.

Part of what these goals may be will come down to the customer journey and where your pages of content fall along that journey, which we will cover in the next section. But overall, before you create another page of content, ask yourself, if this was the ONLY page of content a customer saw, what would you want them to do next?

Build these goals into every page on your website. Without a goal to convert against, measuring conversion will be very difficult.

#3. Building for the Customer Journey

We mentioned that your goal will depend where in the customer journey your site visitors are—stages like discovery, consideration, action, conversion (or purchase), and perhaps even post-purchase. 

Discovery pages like a homepage can have multiple goals that can be measured to understand what parts of that page are converting and which need to be improved.

For example, you may have some of your newest product line featured, a form lower on the page, and perhaps a video further down. The point is the goals you are measuring on a discovery page are often not always going to be the same as a contact page or an order page.

So build your content (and pages) with each stage of the customer journey in mind and how you will move visitors further into their journey from discovery to customer. This will vary depending on your product, service, and overall business model.

#4. Eliminating Conversion Friction

Conversion friction is an often-overlooked part of the equation.

Many brands figure that they have content, products, an ecommerce platform—and all they need to do is drive enough traffic to make it all worthwhile. But this is where testing and proper quality assurance (QA) will make all the difference.

Consider for example the user experience for something like men’s shirts you find on Amazon.

A common practice is the brand selling on Amazon will provide every color, pattern, and sizing variation in each of their listings. Why? Because this keeps the visitor from having to click out and back in for whatever possible variation they may be looking for.

The seller has reduced any friction for a customer looking for a certain color, cut, or sleeve length by proactively providing these options within the product listings. But this is not exclusive to Amazon—you can do this on your ecommerce website as well.

Another area for reducing conversion friction is the dreaded checkout area on your site.

We say dreaded because ANY minor reason can cause those abandoned shopping carts to stack up. Limited payment options, payment options not appearing secure, hidden fees, inflated shipping costs, the list goes on.

Make sure you attend to these friction points proactively to reduce the chances that users bail on you just before completing their order.

#5. Conversion Roadblocks and Opportunities

Okay, you are all in on focusing on conversion. Now comes the hard part…uncovering where to begin.

As with most things marketing related, you need to begin with the data. Luckily for you, if you have a website, you already have an abundant source of data to begin with.

We are talking of course about Google Analytics.

If the thought of looking at pages of data makes your eyes glaze over, don’t worry, it is not as scary as it seems.

First off, you already have a goal to find out where you have opportunity for better conversions. So here are a few places to begin:

• High traffic pages: Start by looking at what pages are getting the most traffic. This will likely be your homepage, but this may also be specific product pages or recent blog articles. You need to have goals for these pages, like leading to a product or filling out a form. If you have their attention, now it’s time to guide that attention to where you want it.
• High bounce rates: If you are seeing pages with high bounce rates (especially if they are the same as your highly traffic pages), you have an issue that needs to be remedied. If your bounce rate is high, this means people are leaving without taking any action. Give them some actions (goals) to take and see what happens.
• High or low page times: You may find pages that are getting more time being spent on them—this is great! This means you likely have content that your visitors are finding valuable, like a video, infographic, or something that is just really well written. See if you can duplicate these ideas onto your pages with lower view times to help those pages convert.

Ready to Ramp-Up Conversions?

Obviously, there is a LOT that goes into uncovering the best conversion opportunities for your website.

And the pathway to greater conversion will be unique for every brand and business model, but the tips outlined here give you some great places to start.

Remember, higher traffic flowing to your website via SEO is great, but that traffic needs to convert to bring actual value. If you need some help uncovering these opportunities (beyond looking at Google Analytics), don’t hesitate to contact us and we can send you a full conversion report to help direct your strategy.

Happy holidays and remember to never stop converting that valuable website traffic!

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization for 2021 (CRO) appeared first on National Positions.