Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is one of the newer ways businesses have started implementing when looking to optimize their landing page or site experience based on their users’ behavior. However, while this tool can help businesses improve the probability of users taking the company’s desired action, there are several misconceptions on how it all works and the results that CRO can deliver.
Plenty of businesses believe that once they implement CRO, their sales will skyrocket overnight, or simply because the first time they tested this, they saw a big increase in conversions, that’s going to continue in the future. It’s something we see often with new digital PR campaigns. However, that’s rarely the case, simply because CRO is not a tool for sales but more for learning.
It’s mainly used to learn about consumer behavior by doing experiments. That way, businesses can continually deliver better experiences for their customers online, and these experiences will increase their conversions, sales, or even sign-ups. Furthermore, this is a tool that should be used long-term and works best when integrated with other marketing activities, and while there can be positive results, they shouldn’t be expected from the very beginning.
There are very rare cases where businesses have seen positive results simply by changing the color of a single button, making all of the reports about this strategy’s success quite inflated. In terms of small features, a much better option has seen a much better outcome, and that’s introducing ‘filter’ and ‘sort’ function, which improves the customers’ experience when they are browsing through the store and are trying to find a particular product.
The main thing about CRO is that it requires a lot of testing and experimentation, and while creating and running those tests is relatively simple, the rhythm of testing and its process isn’t. It takes a lot of time and plenty of years of experience to choose the right systems and tools for every single business. Even then, it’s difficult to achieve the right results because every website is different.
Fortunately, there is a great benefit of working with a CRO professional because they completely understand the experimentation process, including what should be tested and where. Instead of trying it out on their own, businesses can try working with a professional to avoid seeing their website performance decrease and their companies suffer.
Plenty of companies look at CRO as a way to potentially increase their leads or sales. Still, this tool has plenty of other benefits, including finding operational efficiencies or identifying friction points. It’s an excellent tool for businesses looking to learn more about which areas of the website are performing so well and why and learn more about their potential customers.
Unfortunately, too many businesses fail to see these benefits and often end up making the same mistake, which is trying out CRO for a short period and then giving up because they didn’t see the results they were expecting, without ever learning about all of the benefits that CRO offers.
