Have you spent a lot of money on PPC and social media ads, but the results you’re getting don’t reflect your effort?
Many medium and small-sized businesses focus on basic website usability and SEO and that’s a mistake. Fortunately, when using Conversion rate optimization tools you’re sure that many prospects will turn into customers.
Therefore, if you aren’t seeing your bottom line starting to increase alongside the increase in the web traffic, then you may be overlooking CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).
Overall, by improving your conversion rate, you can quickly improve your bottom line. This makes CRO a highly valuable strategy because it can help you focus on the strategies that matter most.
Conversion rate optimization ensures that your sales and marketing teams collaborate to convert more and more leads.
Today we will explore conversion rate optimization — from the definition to the best tools and tips — that’ll change the marketing tactic for your business.
Let’s dive in!
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is the strategic approach that involves converting more leads into customers, viewers to subscribers, or increasing the number of users performing a desired action.
But that’s on a numerical approach.
In a more user-centric approach, conversion rate optimization is the process of understanding what drives, stops, or persuades your prospects from taking action.
It’s about focusing on the deepest felt needs of your audience and addressing them for the best user experience, so people visiting your site will do more than reading, viewing your content. They take action.
Conversion Rate Optimization: Best Tips For 2021
#1. Use a CRO planner on Your Website
From where do you begin when looking to optimize conversion in your business? Get a CRO planner. That way, you’ll access your figures from a central place where you can easily analyze, compare, and develop a strategy to boost conversion in your business.
With a CRO planner, you’ll monitor how prospects interact with your site and identify the mistakes blocking maximum conversion in your business. You’ll understand your site conversion funnel and identify areas to improve for better results.
HubSpot CRO planner is an example you can use on your site.
#2. Create a Knock-them-down Copy
The copy on your site is your online salesperson and plays a critical role in conversion rate optimization. If you craft a masterpiece, you increase the chances of conversion. If it’s total crap, you lose the opportunity to win more business and boost sales.
So, what are the basics of a result-oriented copy?
- Headline: Make it short but attention-grabbing in terms of the meaning, font type, size, and color.
- Body content: The body should answer the question “What’s in for the customers/prospects.” It should be fluff-free and concise.
The formatting should include small paragraphs for easy readability, subheadings for readers to scan the content easily, bullet points if necessary, and the font size/type/color must be visible.
The writing style must be persuasive and customer-centric for better results. Address the prospects or customers with the word “you” and use the tone they recognize — fun, casual, or professional- depending on your audience.
Most importantly, bold the selling points in your copy to address prospects who are too busy to read from beginning to end. Lastly, have a call to action (refer to point #8).
Some persuasion tactics include:
- Empathize with your audience: Involves using customer or prospects’ eyes to see the world from their perspective;
- Sell benefits, not features: Instead of saying your product has feature X, tell your audience how feature X can change their lives;
- It’s all about your customers: Focus on them using the word “you” to add some personality to your copy.
- Keep things readable: While you can enjoy writing some sophisticated content for your copy, remember that your reader won't appreciate it a lot. Keep things readable by rewording the hard parts either yourself or by using an online rephrase tool.
#3. Include Testimonials, Logos, and Reviews
No one wants to be the first customer to use a product or a service, and research has proven so. According to a 2017 survey, 92% of buyers hesitate to purchase a product without customer reviews, while 97% claim that reviews factor into their buying decision.
You’re missing out on a good opportunity to boost conversion if you lack social proof on your site. Testimonials from your existing customers are perfect for showing new prospects why they should buy from you.
Therefore, include those logos from companies you’ve worked with (if you’re a B2B organization) to build trust with your prospects. Have those testimonials and reviews on your site to boost credibility and prospects’ confidence in your products.
Even when selling on social media, be sure to link the content to the review page on your site or convert the reviews to pictures for instant impression on prospects.
So long as your customers enjoy your products or services and the testimonials or reviews are positive, your conversion rate has a higher chance of growing.
#4. Be Easily Reachable
Web visitors may fail to convert because of questions or concerns about your products or services. To avoid such situations, be readily available to tackle concerns about your product.
You can add live chat, a chatbot to handle basic questions, or make the “contact us” form readily seeable on your site.
Also, have your business contacts right on your homepage to reduce prospects’ anxiety since they can easily pick up their phone and talk to you if something goes wrong.
Make it easier for prospects to reach you whenever they have questions about your products or services. In return, you’ll erase their doubts and clarify any issue that may hinder conversion.
#5. Clarify Your Value Proposition
With so many businesses like yours in the industry, why should prospects ignore others and buy from you? That’s what you must communicate on your website or marketing campaigns for peak conversion.
Your copy must target a specific audience and solve specific problems. You must address the deepest felt needs of your audience, maybe pain points or motivations.
Ask yourself: How are your products or services decreasing or eliminating their pain points and making clients' lives better? What makes you stand out in the competition?
Once your value proposition is set, it gets easier to convert a lead to a customer.
#6. Deliver What You Promise
Before a lead can convert into a customer, you must deliver what your promise on your copy. If you promise crazy offers, that’s what your audience should get when buying your products or services.
If your headline or Meta description on Google tells prospects they’ll get product X, they shouldn’t click through the link only to find that you’re selling product Y.
In short, don’t use click-through traps to drive traffic to your landing pages or marketing content. Stay genuine because failure to meet prospects’ expectations reflects zero conversion.
To make sure you deliver your promise, think about the entire conversion process from prospects seeing your ad, visiting your landing page, and taking desirable action on your site like subscribing to joining your email list or purchasing a product.
#7. Test Your Offers
Conversion optimization is incomplete without testing your offers. This is because its offers are a huge part of the value proposition that sets you apart from the competition in your niche.
To test your offers, here are some questions you should ask. Are your offers aligned with your audience’s needs? Do the offers relate to the content on that specific page?
In other words, avoid generic offers like a free consultation. Go for something insane and irresistible. One that prospects will find difficult to ignore. Only then can your offers convert massive leads to customers.
#8. Have Strong and Straight-forward CTA
You may use empathy, show prospects that your copy is about them, or sell benefits instead of features, but one thing is for sure.
Without a strong and clear CTA, your efforts are more likely to reduce to nothing.
This is because, without a clear Call-to-action, you’ll leave potential customers wondering what to do next. You may intrigue prospects with a stellar copy, but your CTA will be the final verdict.
It’s the junction between two turning points: prospects obeying you vs. prospects leaving having done nothing that benefits you.
To use CTAs, first, ask yourself why you're writing that copy. Do you want people to subscribe to your email list? Do you want people to book a call to buy your products?
Once you know the 'why,' tell your prospects in the simplest way possible on the CTA section of your copy, go straight to the point.
How To Create A Killer CTA
Depending on the business and the product or service you’re promoting, you can use the following persuasion tactics to craft strong and result-oriented CTAs.
Make Your CTA Benefit-Oriented
Persuasion isn’t meant only for the headline, introduction, or the body of your copy. It applies to your CTA too. Take a CTA like “Order now and get 50% off” — not only are you offering great benefits to the buyer, but you’re presenting them with an irresistible offer. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to buy a product for half the price?
The point is, don’t design a raw CTA that lacks the spices of persuasion. Remind them what they’ll get by obeying your CTA.
Use a Simple But Strong Command Verb at the Beginning of your CTA
It’s all about consciousness when drafting your CTA. It’s about putting your point across without beating about the bush.
So, start your CTA with the action you want your audience to take. Let’s look at some examples. If you run an e-commerce store, you’ll want to start your CTA with strong but simple verbs like “Buy,” “Order,” or “Shop”.
If you want someone to seek more information, you can use “Fill out a form for…..” or “Book a call to…..”.
If you’re promoting your newsletter, you can start with words like “Download” or “Subscribe.”.
These are just examples. The list is long, depending on what you’re promoting.
Leverage Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
Nobody likes to be left out, and that’s why FOMO is very effective in a CTA. Using FOMO is surprisingly easy — just mention that the offer will not last forever. For instance, you can place an offer on a stock and mention, “Shop now! Sale ends on Friday.”.
You can also have one-time offers that take a very long time before they’re available again. Once you make your offers time-sensitive, it provokes your audience to take action before it’s too late.
Get Creative
Call-to-action is a part of your copy. You must be creative when drafting it. Instead of a boring CTA like “Book a call now,” you can go for “Don’t miss out! We’re just a phone call away.”.
Instead of “Fill out a form to begin,” you can go for “A healthier lifestyle starts now.”.
The point is, think outside the box. Don’t stick to boring CTAs in the name of being direct.
#9. Remove Frictions and Increase Trust
Frictions in conversion rate optimization are the things that slow down the buying process or decrease the level of trust between your business and prospects.
So, how do you remove friction and increase trust?
Have money-back guarantees. “What if I buy and end up hating the product” is a very common question in a buyer’s journey to purchasing a product.
Offering them money-back guarantees gives them confidence that their hard-earned dollars won’t go to waste if they don’t like your products after purchasing them.
You can also update your content regularly, optimize user experience in your site, and eliminate broken or spammy links that create distrust.
Even more, avoid too many form fields on your website because it’s one way that impacts conversion rate negatively. Stick to essential form fields that help accomplish your goal.
What’s more, tell customers who you are because they want to know who they're doing business with. You can include a video on your site to humanize your brand.
On top of that, show prospects that your online store is legitimate and has industry-standard security measures in place. This will boost their confidence when filling in their credit card details.
To boost security and elevate legitimacy level in your site, you can do the following:
- Install Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate that’ll earn you the padlock sign at the beginning of your web address. Most web visitors check the padlock to verify the credibility and security of a site.
- Use small images of the payment providers you partner with as a visual signal of customer-trusted payment options. The images can be credit cards compatible with your site, PayPal, or any other payment gateway.
- Display a security badge of an antimalware provider like McAfee, GeoTrust, or any other you have an active account with.
#10. Test Your Headlines
The headline on your landing page can attract or repel prospects. The idea works similar to how people judge movies and books with their titles — they tend to pay attention to those with killer headlines.
If you want people to read or listen to your promotional content, create attention-grabbing titles. To do so, experiment your headlines with the following variables and identify the structure reflecting more conversion.
- Use of numbers;
- Tone;
- Length;
- Use of Statistics.
#11. Offer Several Payment Methods
Your payment method may inconvenience a prospect ready to convert into a buyer. If your online store is only compatible with PayPal, yet your prospects are using TransferWise or Payoneer, you’re losing a big deal of business.
Offer a variety of payment methods to fit the preferences of many (if not all) potential customers. PayPal alternatives include Payoneer, TransferWise, Stripe, Google Pay, Square, Skrill, Amazon Pay, and more.
#12. Use High-Quality Video or Images on Your Product Page
Online shoppers can’t put on or touch the products they are buying. Use high-quality images to show them what they are getting from you. After all, prospects will not spend their cash if they don’t know exactly what they are buying.
#13. Build a Multilingual Website
If your online store is multilingual, you get higher chances of converting visitors to customers (this applies if you're a worldwide seller or a supplier for specific regions of the world).
Not all your web visitors are native English speakers. Targeting your audience in their specific native language can boost sales.
But you don’t want to merely translate your website to another language lest you end up with literal translations that are hilarious or weird. Hire a professional native speaker of the specific language for accurate interpretation.
#14. Get Customer Feedback
Apart from the reviews and testimonials, ask for direct feedback that’ll help improve customer experience on your site and satisfaction with your products or services.
This can be through:
- Surveys: At the end of transactions on your site, you can request customers to participate in a survey as the final part of the buying process. You can attach small coupons, gifts, or discounts as a way of motivating them to participate in the survey;
- Comments: Have a free and easy-to-access comment section for each product on your online store.
The insights you’ll receive from the comment section and surveys will shed light on areas of improvement for optimum conversion.
Conversion Rate Optimization Tools
As you already know, driving traffic to your site isn’t enough to get you the high conversions you’re looking for. You must use conversion rate optimization tools for research, analytics, feedback, and more.
In this section, we’ll look at several conversion optimization tools in the following categories:
- Lead capture tools;
- Research tools;
- Analytics tools;
- Heat mapping and mouse tracking tools.
Lead Capture Tools You Can Use For More Conversions - 2021
These are lead-generating tools you can use on your site for more conversions.
#1. Hubspot Lead Capture Software
Price: Available for free and payment plans
This tool provides exit intent forms for more lead generation, and you can customize their location and timing. It lets you trigger your offers based on prospect behavior.
HubSpot lead software also allows page targeting and setting time and scroll depth triggers. This way, you can learn and optimize the conversion path in your site for more lead collection.
Some of the things they offer in their free plan include:
- Forms;
- Email marketing with Hubspot branding;
- Live chat with Hubspot branding;
- Ad management;
- Limited landing pages features and more.
Here are some of their monthly payment plans.
- Starter — $45;
- Professional — $800;
- Enterprise — $3200.
#2. Sumo
Price: Free and a paid plan
Similar to HubSpot, Sumo comes with lead generation features to integrate on your site. For instance, Sumo offers a scroll-triggered box, email subscribers, and contact us forms.
Some of their free plan features include:
- Email opt-in forms;
- Visitor targeting;
- Social media sharing;
- Email campaigns and integrations;
- Reduce Cart Abandonment.
Sumo comes with only one monthly plan — Pro $49.
Research Tools
#3. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
Price: Free
How to access it: Visit https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer and try it out.
As the name suggests, this research tool gauges the effectiveness of titles through a score between 1-100%. The tool calculates the score based on vocabulary, word usage, grammar, word count, and characters.
With such insights, it’s easier to predict how your headline will perform on email titles and Google.
You must create a CoSchedule account to get a full report of your headlines.
#4. SubjectLine.com
Price: Free
How to access it: Visit https://www.subjectline.com/
It works like the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer but is different in several ways. First, no account creation is required. Second, it provides advice on making your title better after calculating the score.
The calculation is based on the number of characters, words, and urgency.
#5. Land-book
Price: Free
Land-book is a land page design gallery. If you’re creating a landing page from zero, this tool will be really helpful. It offers a collection of the internet’s best landing pages where you can monitor how others are using layout, copy, and design to increase conversion on their sites.
Even better, you can choose your favorite template from the Land-book database and use it on your landing page.
Analytics Tools
There’s no conversion rate optimization without tracking content performance and analyzing how the fluctuations affect your business. That’s where analytics tools come in.
#6. Kissmetrics
Price: Contact the provider for pricing
This is a complex analytics tool that offers more functionality. While you can analyze and email your audience in specific groups, Kissmetrics can help you monitor their activity on your website, build data sets, conduct A/B testing and calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) from your campaign.
Kissmetrics analytics tool is available for SAAS vendors and e-commerce sites.
#7. Google Analytics
Price: Free for basic. Contact sales support for premium
Google Analytics tool does not involve web visitors’ contacts like emails. However, it delivers unique insights that only Google can give. Powered by machine learning capability, Google Analytics lets you track your web visitors, see how long they take to exit your pages, and the sources driving traffic to your site.
The tool will show you the keywords people use to find your page, the device (mobile or desktop) people use to find your site, and their specific location. With all these insights, it’s easier to optimize conversion.
#8. HubSpot Website Grader
Price: Free
If you want to know your website’s overall performance, HubSpot’s website grader is what you’re looking for. It provides insights on factors like website speed, page requests and size, mobile responsiveness and site appearance, security, site maps, headings, page titles, and Meta description.
Once you fill in your email and website address, HubSpot Website Grader offers suggestions about improving site performance for more conversions.
Heat Mapping and Mouse Tracking Tools
If you’ve been looking for tools that show how web visitors interact with your content in terms of scrolling and clicking, here we are.
#9. Crazy Egg
Price: $24 - $249 per month
Crazy Egg offers click tracking and heat maps that specify the clicks by source and evaluate link effectiveness. As a result, you can improve your website by optimizing what’s working and fixing what’s not.
You must create an account before using the tool.
#10. Hotjar
Price: Free for a basic plan, $29 per month premium plan
Hotjar offers screen recordings and heat maps to monitor how web visitors navigate your site and view your pages.
More than that, Hotjar offers analytics to track page performance and find out what’s working and what doesn’t for modifications that boost conversions.
The following table summarizes all the conversion rate optimization tools we’ve looked at.
| Category | Tools |
| Lead Conversion |
|
| Research |
|
| Analytics |
|
| Heat Mapping and Mouse Tracking |
|
Why Should You Care About Your Business Conversion Rate
When we’re talking about digital marketing, one key metric to monitor is your conversion rate.
Therefore, if you aren’t seeing a positive change to your bottom line that reflects the increased web traffic, then it may be time you paid some attention to your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
CRO is objective-driven and it ensures that more prospects turn into customers. Also, using Conversion rate optimization tools will not only save you money and time but it’ll guarantee that the lead conversion strategies you use run smoothly.
What’s more, CRO tools are pretty efficient and easy to use for marketing professionals.
Tags: conversion, conversion tools, CRO
