What Are The Best Conversion Rate Optimisation Testing Techniques?

At the moment, most marketing teams are focused on driving traffic toward websites in hopes that this traffic will then convert into qualified leads for sales reps to close. However, that’s only half the battle.

Conversions are directly related to sales and revenue. If you would like your website to become a success, you have to beat these average industry benchmarks. In fact, 25% of industry leaders get conversion rates of 5.31% or higher by just using ecommerce conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

Getting more out of current website traffic and leads (as opposed to entirely new traffic) can drive companies toward long-term and sustainable growth. That’s where CRO comes in.

What are conversion rate optimisation testing techniques?

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the practice of boosting the percentage of users who execute a desired action on a website. Desired actions may include buying a product, clicking ‘add to cart’, signing up for a service, filling out a form or – alternatively – clicking on a link.

Standard definitions of CRO, such as the one above, put their attention on conversion percentages, averages as well as benchmarks. This focus on a numerical tactic comes with a downside — the more you look at spreadsheets that are full of conversion data points and actions, the less you think of the people behind them.

Here is another, more holistic and user-centric way of defining CRO. This about it as the process of concentrating on understanding what drives, stops and encourages your users – so you are able to give them the best user experience that you can  – and that, in turn, is what makes them convert and eventually improves your website conversion rate.

Why do we feel that this second definition works better? Focusing on the final action — the conversion — is obviously important, however in reality, a lot takes place before that point:

• Specific DRIVERS gets people to your website,
• Specific BARRIERS make them leave, and
• Specific HOOKS convince them to convert

What are the benefits of conversion rate optimisation testing techniques?

The major benefits of CRO — and conversion rate marketing, at least the ones that everyone speaks about — have to do with money as well as leads. However the main benefits of testing your website actually go far beyond that.

Here are a couple of the main benefits of using CRO on your website, all of which are crucial factors to think about when considering starting up a CRO programme.

You’ll make decisions based on data

Before CRO, if you were thinking about making a change to your website, you perhaps did so based on gut feelings. You may have once heard something such as “we should change this web page because I think it will do better if…”

CRO removes “I think” and changes it to “I know.” Rather than changing something, you are able to initiate non-permanent tests based on those gut feelings and then evaluate the results. That way, if your customers or visitors favour something completely different, you are quickly able switch it back.

CRO gives you the ability to make decisions based on data and facts as opposed to your gut. By utilising A/B tests and evaluating the results, you’ll be able to make more intelligent decisions in the future as you’ll have all the data you need in order to back yourself up.

You’ll get better results

In a similar fashion, when you utilise the data obtained from CRO testing to make decisions about changes on your website, you’ll find that you get far better results from these changes. If you alter the colour of a button as testing has proved that 5% more visitors click it, you’ll get at best that 5% —versus an unknown amount of conversions from changes that are made without testing.

You’ll make more money over time

Most articles that are written about conversion rate optimisation benefits speak about the additional money which CRO can make you. While this is very true, you shouldn’t expect your CRO testing to result in thousands of rands in additional revenue in the first week or two. Rather, expect incremental revenue which you’ll notice over time.

Why do we need CRO testing techniques?

CRO testing techniques allow you to grow conversions in line with the most successful methods during the test as opposed to waiting until the end of the test to move traffic to the most successful page. Also, it means that if suddenly another page begins performing better, you are able to suddenly shift traffic to that one.

Are CRO testing techniques a part of SEO?

In CRO testing (which is sometimes called CRO user testing or CRO A/B testing), you duplicate a web page or an email, altering one element. You are then able to send traffic to both versions of the page or email. Then the comparative conversion rates then reveal which version delivers a better conversion rate.

It is not possible to duplicate a web page in SEO split testing, which would be considered to be cloaking, a breach of Google’s webmaster guidelines. This may lead to your website being entirely removed from Google’s index or otherwise affected by an algorithmic or manual spam action.

In SEO split testing (which is sometimes called cohort SEO split testing), a change across a group of URLs is tested in the variant group compared to a control group with the intention of looking for a statistically significant result.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about driving conversion rates and optimisation testing techniques, check out our Sales Management Course as well as our Digital Marketing Course.