When wanting to expand one’s business or product, a lot of words are thrown around the room such as SEO (search engine optimization) or data and digital marketing. Such things can go over the heads of a lot of people, me included. But one of the main factors to take into account when speaking of business or expansion, is conversion optimization.
A strange term to some I know, especially to those that aren’t very knowledgeable in the business world or setting. But that’s something I hope to remedy, as by the end of this article, you will at the very least have some working form of knowledge about conversion optimization.
What Is It?
What better way to start than addressing the elephant in the room: what exactly is conversion optimization? Conversion optimization, or perhaps more commonly referred to as conversion rate optimization (see more here), is defined as a process that helps website owners and other marketers improve the current rate that users convert from visitors to customers. To better describe it, it’s a method to help turn potential customers into actual customers. This process helps the overall goal of conversion optimization, which is to take the action of completing a purchase whether it’s signing up for a subscription or consuming a product.
How Does It Work?
Conversion optimization encompasses two categories when it comes to business technique, namely on-page optimization and off-page optimization.
- On-page- describes changes that can be made to the design or format of the actual website. The primary purpose of this is to make the site more user-friendly and attractive to those visiting the website. This is done usually by helping improve how visitors navigate and experience a website’s content from the time they visit it to the time they leave it. Some examples of on-page optimization include effective titles, well-written headers, ensuring there are no broken links, and using fonts like Calibri or Times New Roman that are as easy to read for the viewer as they are common to use.
- Off-Page- describes any form of action taken off of the website to help improve conversion optimization rates. These include advertising campaigns, social media publicity, email marketing, or landing pages. Off-page optimization even has sub-categories of its own, the likes of which are paid marketing and natural marketing, the former being paid for, and the latter includes free methods like SEO practices or maintaining social media accounts.
Different Types of Conversion Optimization
There are quite a few methods of CO that involve their own separate processes and benefits. They include:
- Speed Optimization– involves improving the speed at which a user can navigate a website. This involves things such as improving loading times, improving code, and updating old images. A slow website is a bad website, and a bad website can and will lead to poor conversion rates.
- Navigation Optimization– involves making the website easier for the user to navigate through. This can include neat and visible headers, content arranges in an orderly and visibly pleasing way, and making effective call-to-action buttons. A website that’s hard to navigate through creates a lack of interest to the user, and that also leads to poor CO rates.
- Usability Optimization– a process that in a sense puts the website creator’s head in that of the user’s. This process serves to help one consider the needs of the user and consider what would make a website appealing to them and what they’re looking for.
- Human Optimization– much like usability optimization, this process involves consideration into the user’s needs, but also includes empathy into the mix. In human optimization, one seeks to create an experience that serves to help not only meet but exceed the user’s expectations when visiting a website on a more personal level. More on CO can be found at the website below:
https://gustdebacker.com/conversion-rate-optimization/
Examples of Conversion Optimization
As with the different types of CO, there are also many examples of it that can be found in the world today.
- Discount Codes and Coupons- one of, if not the most common format of conversion optimization. Few things are more enticing to a potential customer than reduced pricing on a product. That’s where the appeal of a discount comes, usually in the form of a coupon or code that reduces the price of a product on offer. While doing so may seem like you’re losing money at first, it helps build customer attraction, which will continue to stay on if the customer finds the product on offer to be worth buying again.
- Call-to-Action(s)- Call-to-Actions (CTAs) are another example of CO as they, like the name implies, encourage the user to sign up for an offer in the form of emails or sign-up forms. When tied in with the promise of coupons and discounts, CTAs seem less like recruitment forms and more like enticing offers, which in turn brings up conversion optimization rates.
- Pre-filled Forms– as the name implies, these are forms automatically filled out with information that just needs to be added to. Forms by themselves can automatically be unattractive to the user. But a form that needs to be completely filled out involves a more detailed and convoluted process that makes the website less appealing to the user. Pre-filled forms help to alleviate some of that disinterest, which makes the process of signing up more accessible to the user.
Where Can I Learn More About CO?
There are many listed sites on the web that deal in conversion optimization rates. They can come in the form of guides and how-to videos that can help make your CO rates and direct response campaign increase in number and customer attraction and satisfaction.
Conclusion
When building your business, it’s important to have a good website, not just any website. You want one that encourages user-friendly methods and visibly pleasing formats that make your website not only nice to look at and easier to access, but also enticing. For where there’s enticement, there’s an invitation for the user to learn more about your product, and from there lies more purchases and more CO rates.