Those of you who occasionally work with digital marketers, or who may be considering adding digital marketing services to your marketing strategy have likely come across the term Conversion Rate Optimization. Conversion rate optimization refers to a specific practice within digital marketing of experimenting with changes to the website and funnels in order to increase the percentage of your website visitors that convert. In other words, it’s learning to make more sales with the same number of customers.
How Does Conversion Rate Optimization Work?
Every time you visit a website you have entered their digital funnel. The business who’s site you have visited wants you to convert and become a customer. But there are usually several steps along the way that will either encourage you to convert, or encourage you to look elsewhere for what you need. The aspects of the site that encourage you to become a customer we will refer to as hooks. These can be anything from a popup window with discount codes, to product descriptions, or even links in a blog post. Parts of the experience that encourage you to leave the site however we will call blockers. Conversion rate optimization focuses on identifying and removing blockers, while including the right hooks to attract their audience.
For example let’s evaluate a bit of an oddity in the automotive world, RockAuto.com. When you visit RockAuto for the first time the screen will look something like the one below.
The layout is incredibly simple. One of their hooks is that they know, you know what you’re here for. Let’s not waste any time getting to it. Here’s a complete list of every part we offer sorted in a manner that it’s easy to find the perfect fit for your vehicle.
Another hook is that all the parts are separated by stock replacement and performance parts in a way that allows you to easily compare pricing and specs.
Furthermore, they make it impressively easy to locate all the current promotions and rebates.
All of these hooks are ones that in their continuous evaluation of the site they have found to be effective in getting website users to become purchasing customers. They’ve designed the website to highlight these strengths and eliminate as many blockers from the users path.
That certainly doesn’t mean that they’ve eliminated all blockers however.
One significant conversion blocker that they suffer from is not knowing exactly what you need. Most casual mechanics will find their website to be a challenging experience because they are lacking the knowledge about the difference between models of the same year. To use the 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado as an example, a vast majority of Oldsmobile Toronados from 1966 to 1970 were built with an Oldsmobile 425 engine. A few models from 1967 to 1969 were built with an Oldsmobile 455 engine and badged as a W-34. In 1970 however, the W-34 name badge was changed from W-34 to GT or in many parts catalogs simply the “Custom”. The production run of these GT models was still significantly limited when compared to the standard trim, yet when looking for parts for a 1967 Toronado on Rock Auto the only parts they have listed are for the Olds 425. Those looking for parts for their 455 would need to search the 1968-1970 model years to source many of the parts they need for the W-34, and even turn to gmcrvparts.com for some of the larger purchases (Due to the GMC Motorhome sharing the same power plant package as the W-34 Toronado.
This will not affect those purchasing parts for the 425 Engine, But for manyToronado Owners, the shorter deck height on the 425 models results in a shorter engine stroke, changing several of the bottom end components used in the engine. Additionally, the location of the wrist pins differ from engine to engine. These slight differences prevent many potential customers from converting on Rock Auto’s Site pushing them to find appropriate parts where they are easier to locate.
By simplifying the parts selection process and ensuring all their data is accurate Rock Auto stands to further improve their conversion rate. Performing analysis such as these and taking action on the findings is the essence of what Conversion Rate Optimization is.
How We Use CRO At Arcane Marketing
In my time here at Arcane Marketing I have found conversion rate optimization to be one of the best tactics for improving the revenue a website generates. Continuous evaluation of the website and user experience is critical in Identifying the blockers your users are experiencing in their journey. Any of our SEO offerings places Conversion Rate Optimization as a top priority. If you are looking to improve the conversion rate of your website, Contact us to schedule a consultation!
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