What is Con­ver­sion Rate Op­ti­miza­tion (CRO)?

The main objective is to measure the re­la­tion­ship between traffic and con­ver­sions – expressed as a value in the con­ver­sion rate – long term using web analysis tools such as Google Analytics and to con­tin­u­ous­ly improve it by carrying out targeted im­prove­ments on usability, content, layout, and so on. What exactly are the different steps and methods of con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion?

Ad­ver­tis­ing on the world wide web is a lucrative and valued source of income, but for many website operators it is only a secondary source of income. Today, a large number of websites are linked to business interests, which put the sale of products and services or sub­scrip­tions first. Even getting users to sign up for newslet­ters is often more important than selling ad­ver­tis­ing space.

Re­gard­less of which con­ver­sion target you are pursuing with the re­spec­tive project, it is of course important to know how many users you reach on average. An online store with 100,000 visitors per month naturally promises greater sales success than a web store that is visited by only 10,000 potential customers in the same period. However, if the latter store manages to motivate users to make a purchase, the supposed advantage of the traffic-intensive online business (which is in­evitably linked to a higher resource re­quire­ment) doesn’t exist. The same applies to elab­o­rate­ly conceived newslet­ter campaigns, high-quality whitepa­pers and the like – the desired success can only be achieved with a healthy con­ver­sion rate.

The potential of con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion becomes clear when you have a concrete example in front of you. For example, the basic data for an exemplary online store before and after op­ti­miz­ing the rate by 1% looks like this:

Since web projects differ greatly in their structure and ap­pear­ance, it is not possible to formulate a uni­ver­sal­ly valid solution for con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion. While one website may require op­ti­miza­tion when it comes to the nav­i­ga­tion, another may lack concrete in­struc­tions (call-to-actions) that convert users into buyers, sub­scribers, and so on. With a third web presence, the first com­po­nents are solved, but the buttons for the con­ver­sion target are not well placed. It is therefore important to decide in­di­vid­u­al­ly which parts of the web project need to be optimized in order to actually improve the con­ver­sion rate. If this is not the case, the worst-case scenario is that well-func­tion­ing elements are reworked and more problems therefore occur.

In order to achieve sat­is­fac­to­ry results for your own project, it makes sense to base the con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion process on the following five basic com­po­nents:

1. Analysis of the status quo

• What is the business objective of con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion?
• Which website elements are relevant for the desired con­ver­sion(s)?
• What are the visitors’ ex­pec­ta­tions and motives?
• What is the users’ bounce rate and when do they leave the site?

2. Hy­poth­e­sis and planning of con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion

• Where are there weak­ness­es in the con­ver­sion process?
• What effects do the weak­ness­es have on visitor pur­chas­ing mo­ti­va­tion?
• How can user in­ter­ac­tion be improved?
• Design a plan for con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion

3. Designing and creating al­ter­na­tives

• Im­ple­men­ta­tion of al­ter­na­tive pages, in­ter­ac­tive elements, designs, or contents
• Simple adap­ta­tions and complete redesigns are possible
• Live version remains unchanged in the meantime (op­ti­miza­tions have to be im­ple­ment­ed sep­a­rate­ly).

4. Testing the optimized com­po­nents

• In which period of time should the test be carried out? (the longer, the more accurate the data is)
• Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the desired test com­po­nents according to different pro­ce­dures such as A/B testing or mul­ti­vari­ate testing
• Observing the ongoing tests using specific software or analysis tools such as Google Analytics or Matomo
• In­ter­pret­ing the test data and selecting the most promising variant(s) for con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion 

5. Rolling out

• Trans­fer­ring optimized com­po­nents to the live version.
• Observing the per­for­mance of new variants in order to return to the original version if necessary (in case of technical problems or the con­ver­sion rate decreases)
• Doc­u­ment­ing the acquired knowledge  
• Using the acquired data via the func­tion­al­i­ty of your own web project for future con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion.

Depending on the type of web project, there are different aspects that help con­ver­sion success or hinder it. Func­tion­al prop­er­ties can also have an influence on user actions as well as content: visual or struc­tur­al. We have compiled the most important methods for op­ti­miz­ing the con­ver­sion rate, which can be used either on their own or in a network to achieve the desired progress.

Shopping cart op­ti­miza­tion is used ex­clu­sive­ly in e-commerce. The aim is for a purchase to be completed, but the decisive factor is when a user moves an item to the shopping cart. If only a few users make use of the shopping cart option, this is just as much a reason for op­ti­miza­tion as a high bounce rate among users who had already selected goods to buy, but then clicked off the site. This may be due to the ordering process being too com­pli­cat­ed, missing payment options, or a lack of trust. Possible measures include the following, for example:

• In­stalling trust elements (e.g. Trusted Shops)
• Offer ad­di­tion­al payment options (PayPal, credit card, direct debit etc.)
• Sim­pli­fy­ing the ordering process e.g. by allowing visitors to order without needing to register
• Pop-up reminders if items have been in the shopping cart for a long time and haven’t been purchased  

User-friend­li­ness, also known as usability, is not only one of the most important criteria for the search engine ranking, but is also in­valu­able for the con­ver­sion rate. It doesn’t matter if the web project is an online store, a news portal, or a company website. In short, usability is about how in­tu­itive­ly a visitor can navigate through the website and collect in­for­ma­tion. The page structure, the website hierarchy, and the in­ter­ac­tive elements used should therefore be checked for weak areas in the con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion.

The more har­mo­nious the in­di­vid­ual com­po­nents of a website are co­or­di­nat­ed with each other, the more likely it is for the desired con­ver­sions to be achieved. Core com­po­nents that should be checked during the usability analysis, for example, are:

• The nav­i­ga­tion menu, which presents the different subject areas of the website to visitors and links them together.
• In­ter­ac­tive elements such as buttons, forms etc., which the visitor must click on or fill out in the con­ver­sion process
• The leg­i­bil­i­ty of the embedded texts and text elements (emphasis, contrast, style, etc.)
• The internal search function

A page’s content also has op­ti­miza­tion potential. This starts with the content design of the snippets (meta tags): of course, it is easy to lure the user to your website with keywords such as 'free' or 'bargain' via Google results. However, this creates ex­pec­ta­tions that must be fulfilled. Otherwise, the user is quickly gone again and a con­ver­sion is further out of reach.

The quality of a website’s content is very important. High-quality content that meets the visitors’ ex­pec­ta­tions promises the greatest prospects for con­ver­sions. It makes sense to use different types of content (text, images, videos, etc.) in order to offer visitors the optimum degree of variety. A special role is also played by the pre­vi­ous­ly mentioned call-to-actions, whose for­mu­la­tion and skillful placement are also among the most important tasks in con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion. Examples of promising content op­ti­miza­tion measures are:

• Im­ple­ment­ing per­son­al­ized content linked to user behavior e.g. product or article sug­ges­tions
• Focus on well-balanced keyword density, es­pe­cial­ly in para­graphs that are of high relevance for the desired con­ver­sion
• Including tutorial videos to help visitors explore the website and explain, for example, the ordering process or the internal search function
• Using design elements such as headings, bold font, or lists to loosen up the text

A website‘s ap­pear­ance is just as important as its content and user-friend­li­ness. Layout and design have a proven influence on the behavior of users and should not be over­looked when it comes to con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion. In this context, so-called neu­ro­mar­ket­ing, which deals with the decision-making process and pur­chas­ing decisions in the human brain, has become in­creas­ing­ly important in recent years. Whether it’s about dis­tri­b­u­tion and placement or coloring certain elements, optical ad­just­ments can help optimize the amount of con­ver­sions.

Overview of the possible op­ti­miza­tion steps for layout and design:

• Test different color samples
• Provide several se­lec­table designs for the web project
• Change design depending on season i.e. Christmas time

Since a large part of today’s internet traffic orig­i­nates from mobile devices, con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion is the same as for search engine op­ti­miza­tion: how the website is displayed on the mobile device should receive as much attention as the desktop coun­ter­part. Mobile op­ti­miza­tion combines all methods presented so far, from shopping cart op­ti­miza­tion to usability, content, and layout/design op­ti­miza­tion.

Basically, there is no need to dis­tin­guish between desktop and mobile versions, but this is often rec­om­mend­ed. Par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to using in­ter­ac­tive and mul­ti­me­dia elements, you shouldn’t forget that mobile device users often access websites when they’re on the go and therefore have a limited bandwidth. A short, quickly-loadable website code is therefore much more important for mobile versions than desktop versions. The following measures for op­ti­miza­tion are therefore possible:

• Com­pro­mis­ing images including adapting to smaller displays
• Limiting the amount of mul­ti­me­dia elements
• Out­sourc­ing CSS and JavaScript code (com­pressed) into separate files
• De­vel­op­ing mobile apps that display the web service precisely to the re­spec­tive mobile devices
• Using Ac­ce­larat­ed Mobile Pages (AMP), provided that they are suitable for the web project.

Con­ver­sion rate op­ti­miza­tion also plays an important role in search engine ad­ver­tis­ing (SEA) because if you place an ad on Google or other search engines, you obviously want people to click on it. Op­ti­miz­ing these ad­ver­tis­ing banners def­i­nite­ly pays off since you can win visitors over to your own web project, who will then hopefully provide desired con­ver­sions later on. On the one hand, the aim is to make the ad as in­ter­est­ing and emotional as possible without false ex­pec­ta­tions. On the other hand, it is important to find suitable place­ments in the display network and choose them as desired ad­ver­tis­ing locations for your own campaign. Here are some possible steps for op­ti­miza­tion:

• Redesign of the used ad­ver­tis­ing texts
• Mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the active bidding strategy (re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of the available campaign budget)
• In­di­vid­ual selection of ad­ver­tis­ing place­ments instead of the automatic dis­tri­b­u­tion by the re­spec­tive search engine
• Optimize SEA ads es­pe­cial­ly for the main con­ver­sion(s), such as high-selling products