CRO: Turn Website Traffic Into Profit

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Agencia INNN
  • Date Published
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The term Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) refers to the sum of techniques that improve a webpage’s conversion rate

When planning digital marketing initiatives, the norm is to focus on web traffic, whether in the form of attracting visitors via SEO and paid digital marketing (SEM, display ads, etc.), or in the classification of these through a content marketing strategy or Inbound Marketing. This is something we experience in our company too. So here at INNN, we have reflected on this tendency quite a bit. We’ve been thinking, what about the sales themselves? Could it be that sometimes the secret doesn’t lie in generating high levels of traffic, but in our ability to take advantage of the visits we already receive?

Of course the traffic that our websites receive require some segmentation or posterior classification for traffic to truly turn into leads (leads being understood here as viable potential clients). Additionally, a website’s traffic volume will always be key for organically augmenting the site’s relevance in terms of SEO. Still, while keeping these points in mind, we must also ask ourselves: Do we sufficiently “assist” the clients who enter our website? Whether or not we have e-commerce in our website, each visit to our domain (pun intended) must be attended to as if a customer is entering our shop: the customer is a visitor that we should welcome, guide, assist, and build a relationship with. So we would be wise to pay attention to the impression that our website makes, just as if it were a Place of Purchase (POP) advertisement.

To achieve our desired effects, first we have to ask ourselves an obvious question that can be difficult to answer (and is often unintentionally ignored): What is the objective our website? It is for branding? For providing information? To serve as a work tool? Is it a content repository? It is a little of everything? Whatever the purpose of our website is, in one way or another it is either directly or indirectly serving a larger purpose: doing business. Everyone wants to sell…but what is it we are selling? The trick is always in conversion. So what is it we mean by conversion?

  • Leads
  • Clicks
  • Downloads
  • Visits to specific URLS
  • Measurable objectives for interaction
  • Sales

“We would be wise to pay attention to the impression that our website makes, just as if it were a Point of Purchase advertisement.”

What if we focused more of our efforts on the sales and traffic conversions that we already have visiting our site? At INNN we understand that the best way to position ourselves as closely as possible to each brand, to each client, is by adjusting the inputs that directly affect the business. It’s exciting and motivating to see how concrete decisions directly affect sales. As we take part in this process, we continue to better understand the behavior of different publics. Agencies like ours design beautiful websites, create excellent content, promote efficiently, capture attention and classify it, position clients and analyze data, control strategy and technology, but… How are sales? We must reflect on this point periodically.

What if we focused more of our efforts on the sales and traffic conversions that we already have visiting our site? At INNN we understand that the best way to position ourselves as closely as possible to each brand, to each client, is by adjusting the inputs that directly affect the business. It’s exciting and motivating to see how concrete decisions directly affect sales. As we take part in this process, we continue to better understand the behavior of different publics. Agencies like ours design beautiful websites, create excellent content, promote efficiently, capture attention and classify it, position clients and analyze data, control strategy and technology, but… How are sales? We must reflect on this point periodically.

Some Basic Concepts about CRO

The term Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) refers to the sum of techniques that improve a webpage’s conversion rate. When a professional team with different profiles (marketers, graphic designers, layout designers, programmers, copywriters) work together, they can generate traffic and optimize conversion. Unfortunately, occasionally CRO can be increased while decreasing the other two pillars of our digital strategy: branding and SEO. For example, changing the color or text of a CTA (call to action) might increase the CTA’s efficiency by 15%, but the change could be at odds with another aspect of the brand’s visual identity or tone (for example, using a “salesy” text like “receive it tomorrow!”). We could also be missing an opportunity to use the link as an anchor text for our SEO strategy. The secret lies in finding the right balance between the quality and differentiation of our content, the capacity to attract organic traffic (and paid traffic), and the ability to maintain a customer in order to sell more. But this only works if we have a clear value proposal and if we work through plenty of trial and error. In the end, we’re talking about the classic “battle” between the marketing and sales departments. In this scenario, CRO represents sales.

When we talk about CRO we need to be clear about a few things:

  • It doesn’t mean changing products
  • It doesn’t generate traffic alone
  • It isn’t part of graphic design nor is it just user interface (UI)
  • It is scientific and requires trial and error
  • It has a love-hate relationship with SEO
  • It isn’t (only) user experience (UX)
  • It generally optimizes natural traffic (organic traffic)
  • The majority of websites can convert 2-3 times more with just small changes
  • 2% is a great percentage

Cro Using the LIFT Model

A simple process for beginning to work with CRO techniques:

  • Analyze the site (design, functionality, interaction, descriptions and content, navigation, CTAs, etc.)
  • Define objectives (for example: we want to increase the number of information requests by 2% over the previous fiscal year)
  • Establish a hypothesis (What would happen if…?)
  • Execute initiatives and implement testing
  • Analyze the results

Some tests to try out:

  • Create larger CTAs of different colors
  • Include a lead magnet (extra content to collect information)
  • Better position the value proposition
  • Include H1 tags in less than 2 lines and to the left
  • Shorten texts
  • Shrink form fields
  • Minimize the use of columns

The LIFT model (Landing page Influence Function for Tests) enumerates six factors that determine conversion:

  • Value proposition, trust, and uniqueness
  • Relevance
  • Clarity, “thinking like the user”
  • Urgency and desire activation
  • Anxiety and speed
  • Distraction

CRO tools to use:

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