When you include all of the text, lines of programming code, images, software platforms, and other components, a website is a virtual machine with 10,000’s of moving parts. And because 99% of websites were never professionally optimized, CRO experts can routinely boost conversion rate by around 50% on average. Google and Apple are two of the largest tech companies on the planet with entire departments filled with web designers, copywriters, social media guru’s, seo whizzes, etc. And yet both companies recently hired 3rdparty conversion rate optimization firms to come in and optimize their multi-billion dollar generating websites. Why you ask?
Because conversion rate optimization is a true game-changer. Most companies have to fight and scrap to grow their business by just 10% a year. But in all honesty, most conversion rate optimization companies won’t even optimize your site if they can’t generate at least a 20% increase or higher. And when talking about ROI itself, CRO experts far outperform their SEO, PPC, or social media counterparts for 1 simple reason:
Conversion rate optimisation permanently boosts conversion rate so that your increased sales and profits continue to accrue for the life of the website. Yes, there will be some decay in the increase in conversion rate over time due to market fluctuations and new competitors. But unless you make a radical change in your business model, the increased conversions will continue for years after the site is optimized.
Ideally, you want to hire 3rd party conversion rate experts to optimize your website just like Apple and Google. After all, CRO experts are hired to fix the problems that are suppressing online conversions. That means you probably have people on your staff or in your employ who were responsible for either making those mistakes or failing to fix them when managing your website. These same people will not likely want to embrace optimizing a website and effectively admitting to their own mistakes. So where possible, you want to hire outside experts but we understand this is not always possible.
Therefore, here are 3 conversion rate optimization strategies that you can implement immediately to boost online sales without hiring outside CRO experts:
CRO Strategy #1: Create a “Smart” Slide Show
Know how to instantly boost online sales? Get a higher percentage of visitors to your primary sales or landing page. To do so, CRO experts will implement “smart slideshows” that have two primary features:
1) USP’s to Capture Visitor Attention
2) Link Directly to Primary Landing Pages/Product Descriptions
Unlike “dumb” slideshows that only have images and maybe some obscure text, “smart” slides help differentiate you immediately from your competitors with the USP’s displaying above the fold. And for visitors eager to learn more about those USP’s, they can click on the slide and be funneled to your primary sales conversion tool. This one conversion rate optimization strategy can help boost overall conversions by up to 10% or more.
CRO Strategy #2: Eliminate Worthless Keywords from Ad Campaigns
Are you driving a significant percentage of traffic to your website using PPC or other paid traffic sources using targeted keywords? Do you also have Google Analytics set-up and configured to track conversions? If so, then you can reduce your paid marketing budget by 25% or more just by pausing or deleting the keywords that are driving traffic but not converting into buyers. To see which keywords aren’t converting, simply login to your Google Analytics account and:
1) Click on Acquisition in Left-Column Navigation
2) Click on Keywords
3) Click on Paid
This page will pull up all of the targeted keywords from your paid ad campaigns that are actually sending visitors to your website. Immediately above results, you will see a Conversions box with a little black arrow pointing down. You can adjust this to “All Goals” so you can see keywords that generate any of the conversion objectives for the site. Or, you can set it track a specific goal and then it will only show keywords that generated that specific conversion.
If you notice, this page is only displaying 10 targeted keywords but you may literally be targeting 100’s, or even 1000’s, in all of your ad groups. So immediately below the results you will see a Show Rows box with a black arrow next to it pointing down. This allows you to adjust the number of results displaying on that page so you can see all of them on one screen.
Next, simply go and delete all keywords that aren’t converting from your ad groups. If you are lucky, you are only using one paid traffic source and thus won’t take too long to hopefully find and delete the lame keywords. If not, you may have to login to several platforms and spend a considerable amount of time tracking down and deleting all non-converting keywords.
Although this strategy will not boost sales volume, it will reduce your marketing costs by up to 25% or more. So what is your Adwords, Facebook or overall paid traffic budget each month? Well, imagine generating the same number of sales now—but paying up to 25% less for the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
Conversion rate optimization can permanently increase conversion rate, online sales, and overall profits by optimizing web components like copywriting, web design, and web programming. And while it is ideal to hire outside CRO experts who can objectively identify and fix conversion problems, you can quickly and efficiently implement the conversion rate optimization strategies listed above to immediately boost online sales and profits.