How to Stop Your Conversion Process in Its Tracks (Hint: Don't)

You've designed an amazing campaign but you're not quite hitting the numbers you were hoping for.  Assuming that you have the utmost confidence in your strategy, what can you do to improve your results? Digital marketing in general, and inbound marketing specifically, provides sufficient data to guide subtle (or not so subtle) changes that will help attract more visitors to your website and convince more of them to take the desired action. Let’s take a look at what this process, known as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), looks like piece by piece.

Attract the Right Audience

Clearly defining target audiences, maximizing search engine optimization (SEO), and attracting multiple sources of traffic are key factors that lead potential customers to your virtual doorstep. If you're not attracting an adequate flow of traffic, it won’t matter how well your website performs, nor how valuable your offers are. Getting more of the right kind of visitors to your website is the most important task on any inbound marketer’s to-do list.

This is where quality over quantity will win every single time.

Attract more qualified visitors with CRO – By using analytical tools, you can measure the traffic driven to your website through organic, referral, and paid sources. Compare the performance of each source over time to guide short-term adjustments that will test the validity of your perceptions.

Pro-Tip: Avoid knee jerk reactions just because you see a dip in traffic one month. Websites are fluid, and it would be unrealistic to expect growth every single month without fail. Look for trends over time. Your success lives in what you do with the trends, not how you react in the moment.

Wow Your Visitors

The most important factor that guides website design is User Experience (UX). Websites can no longer exist as virtual brochures that list features and benefits of products and services. Instead, we must capture the attention of every visitor with an attractive presentation that immediately addresses the concerns of our target audiences (personas) and provides practical answers to their actual problems. Without that, you can forget about driving conversions.

Improve visitor engagement with CRO – Visual tools allow marketers to view the interactive behavior of website visitors, showing which content attracts the most attention, and which pages, images, content, and CTAs are passed over. Because the real estate on your website pages is more valuable than a corner office in Manhattan, it is imperative you use all of the data you have available to optimize your visitors’ user experience throughout all of your digital assets.

Another Pro-tip: Having several analytics tools show the same trends is more reliable than just a single tool saying it. This makes your CRO process more reliable and takes out much of the guesswork.

Lead the Way

In addition to an exciting presentation that is custom-designed to appeal to the intended audience, the written and visual content should actively guide visitors take specific actions. Whether they are led to your website from paid social media ads, organic search results, or referrals from third-parties, once visitors reach your landing page, they should encounter a clear message that describes the value they will receive when they carry out the desired action – converting from a visitor to a lead.

Guide more visitors through conversion with CRO – Knowing the challenges faced by your audience is key when developing any type of marketing materials. As part of the inbound marketing process, we can use A/B testing, streamline conversion paths, automate responses, run retargeting ads, while employing other tactics. Analyzing the data we have helps us learn from our past successes and failures, and encouraging our teams to think outside-the-box can result in significantly improved results.

A Final Pro-Tip: Don't be afraid to fail. Failure is the best way to learn what not to do next time.

If you listen and observe, the data will tell you where you need to go next. If you respond to the data and drive future decisions based on what is working, this will help drive your success.

The Magic Lies in the Data - Get Your Own

Would a website performance score, competitor comparison report, and visual user-interaction report on your landing pages help you optimize your conversion rates? Click below to set up a time to discuss how you can get this data on your website.