Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is orientated around optimising or converting the traffic that has landed on your website or blog. It’s easy to throw lots of money into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and traffic generation but this means nothing if you have no plan to convert or monetise that traffic that you’re successful in attracting. You wouldn’t ignore a customer that walked through the front door of a traditional shopfront, would you? Why should your behaviour be any different online?
This post is somewhat of a (very brief) precursor to a series of posts where I’ll share a variety of CRO-related techniques. It’s important to provide a brief introduction so those that aren’t familiar with the topic can refer back here when I reference the subject in other posts.
Most of the techniques and tools are those that I’ve applied or created myself, but I’ll also share some awesome third-party products as well. CRO is a massive topic that deserves ongoing consideration. All CRO posts will have the Conversion Rate Optimisation tag to ensure that they’re easy to find.
Ironically, I generally don’t apply CRO techniques on this blog. Despite my portfolio exceeding over 400 sites with a significant 6-figure return, I don’t actively promote Internoetics in any way. That will change. So, generally speaking, I’ll share techniques I use elsewhere.
What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
CRO is the method of creating an experience for a website or landing page visitor with the goal of increasing the percentage of visitors that convert into customers. It’s orientated around minimising the bounce rate, or the number of people that transient your website without expressing any sort of interest.
This post will serve as a very basic introduction to Conversion Rate Optimisation with an emphasis on raw traffic and the “upsell”. I’ll refrain from talking about the (unethical?) hype associated with the (persuasive) “call to action”. I’ll also talk about things like ‘squeeze pages’ and video sales pages another time.
Conversion Rate
A Conversion Rate is “the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators“. Increasing the conversion rate is the basis of this post.
A simple example: if you have a contextual based (or any other) advert that has a Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of 1.5%, you could employ certain strategies to try and increase it. This might include repositioning, size or type. If you manage to increase your CTR to, say, 3%, you have increased your conversion (and profitability) by doing nothing other than changing how information is presented. This particular technique is known as ad optimisation.
Why a Conversion Rate is Important
Understanding how to convert is the holy grail of not just ‘Internet Marketers’, but anybody that does business both offline and online. If you could double the number of “transactions” on a website without having to increase your external marketing efforts or presence, you will obviously double your success (with success measured in conversions – or sales and subscriptions).
Raw Traffic
Raw traffic lands on your website via any number of means; search engines, remote links or any other form of advertising. It’s natural to want to convert any of that traffic into “something”… anything. Let’s look at a few ways of “converting” that traffic.
Know your Audience. Understand your Market.
Any type of opt-in encouragement is unlikely to yield success if you’re simply targeting the wrong audience. First and foremost, it’s important to understand who you’re trying to sell to. What are their needs? What do they want? If I had a advert on this site selling a weight loss product it likely wouldn’t sell. If I were selling a Twitter script, for example, the conversion rate would be far higher.
Most analytical software will give you an indication of the reasons a potential customer lands on your website. Sometimes it’s important to adjust your advertising strategies based on the keywords that delivered you a visitor… and sometimes it’s important to cater a sales-pitch based on the visitor’s geographical origins (not unlike third-party contextually based advertising).
Mailing list
If you don’t have a mailing list on your website, there’s something seriously wrong with you! An opt-in mailing list is an opportunity for like-minded and interested people to remain connected with you via regular email. It’s your opportunity to connect with people and potentially convert them into either a paying customer or an advocate of your brand.
Sometimes, having a mailing list alone isn’t enough. You might want to consider some sort of popup banner or footer slider to convert transient traffic that does land on your site. Whether or not you’re a fan of such tactics, they do work.
Having a mailing list subscription form underneath each post is an effective means of attracting subscriptions. A reader’s interest is spiked once they’ve read a post of value… and they’re far more likely to subscribe.
Free Offer
Having a mailing list (and a visible means of encouraging a subscription) often isn’t enough. If you have a product or service to give away at no cost, doing so in return for a mailing list subscription is often a good idea. If you have rights to an e-book – of if you’ve written one yourself – giving it away in exchange for a verified email address is guaranteed to increase your conversions. I’ve found that giving away some functional PHP code, a collection of images, an instructional video or a WordPress plugin all convert extremely well. If you’re somebody that plans to sell to a pool of email subscribers, “your money is in the list”.
Blog Comments
Comments contribute to the value of a post and they generate alternate points of view that’ll result in additional reader engagement. They form an extension to your post that adds additional value to your thoughts and they help in building a strong keyword presence in search engines.
Blog comments are an awesome means of converting traffic because the visitor is part of a captive audience we can “upsell” to after they’ve submitted their feedback (more on this shortly). They’re people that are engaged enough with the content of a post to contribute to a discussion and, more importantly, they’re prepared to initiate an online relationship. The vocal brand advocates that are prepared to share, tweet and comment on your posts are potentially your most valuable asset.
How to get comments is a post in itself. However, I’ve personally found (on well over a dozen blogs and a few hundred sites) that the best way of eliciting a response from readers is to simply ask them a question. If you’re in the business of a “how-to” type website, you’ll find that you’ll generate a lot of engagement simply by way of technical support.
Converting a raw visitor into a Facebook fan can be an excellent means of conversion. Once a visitor ‘likes’ your Facebook page, they’re inviting your messages into their social timeline along the posts of family and friends. We’ve just created a Facebook page for this site; perhaps you’ll consider joining us?
Having a raw visitor follow you on Twitter is an excellent means of establishing a relationship… although the transient nature of the Twitter timeline means that your thoughts will often be lost in a stream of irrelevance.
Featured Posts, Popular Posts, Related Posts & Top Downloads
Highlighting popular posts, popular downloads or most commented posts are a good way or directing traffic to active areas of your blog. It’s often worth creating a front page banner for a popular post if it’s a stand-out success. Your intent here is to convert a page view into multiple page views (in the hope that this visitor will later convert to some sort of subscription). Give the reader an easy means of launching from one page to another. Related Posts under each post is another method of directing readers to content or subject matter they’ve already expressed an interest in.
Social Sharing
It’s important that we make it easy for visitors to share our content. You’ll note that I have three tweet buttons on each page; one on the top right hand corner of every post, another in the Sexy Bookmark cluster underneath each post and another in the Sharebar that floats to the left of the page. We have to ensure that it’s easy and convenient for a user to submit our post elsewhere. Sharing is a form of conversion!
The Upsell
Once a visitor surrenders their details or makes a purchase, you’re now in the business of the upsell. It should be noted that I don’t subscribe to trickery or unethical tactics when it comes to an upsell. I won’t sell a product with the intent of selling an unannounced upgrade… and I won’t sell anything with the intent of selling additional modules after a purchase. They’re all somewhat legitimate strategies, but in my books these tactics amount to nothing other than fraud.
I purchased some white-label e-books only a few days ago for a small sum. It was really only as a matter of interest to see what it was others were doing. After the purchase, I was redirected to a page that offered the (graphic) covers to the books for twice what I paid for them. In fact, the total cost of the upsell was nearly four times that of the initial purchase. Really? It’s my opinion that any person engaging in online business should under-promise and then over-deliver. In this case, the complete opposite applied.
In my personal opinion, the general nature of an upsell should be orientated around either promoting a completely different product (the “you might also be interested in…” kind of thing) or encouraging a subscription to a mailing list, your Facebook page or Twitter. There are a number of excellent ways in which to do this.
Subscribe to Comments
The Subscribe to Comments plugin gives commenter’s the option of subscribing to additional threaded comments. Although it’s not a true “upsell”, it does mean that a visitor is registering their interest in further information from your blog. It’s better than nothing. And it works.
Comment Redirect
The Comment Redirect Plugin from Yoast.com is an awesome idea. When a first-time visitor posts a comment to your blog, the plugin will redirect the user to a non-public page of your choice. Here you can offer them a free product, direct them to other areas of your site that you feel may be of interest, or you can simply encourage them to connect with you via other social means. If nothing else, the landing page simply gives you the opportunity to thank the individual for posting a comment to your site.
You can download the Comment Redirect plugin here from the WordPress plugin repository.
Anybody that makes a comment on this blog (Internoetics.com) will receive a free white-label e-book that they can use for whatever purpose they wish. It’s a pretty crappy book… but it’s free. I also encourage users to sign up for the mailing list on the same page. In doing so, I offer them a further three white-label e-books that they can use for whatever purpose they wish. They can change the text, add a cover, add themselves as an author – even sell it.
Where does Social Media Fit in?
Social Media is another beast altogether (and is more deserving of an e-book that a brief passing paragraph). More often than not, your activity in the social media arena is designed to convert your presence (whenever or wherever that is) into traffic. If you’re like me, you’ll generally define a conversion in spheres such as Twitter and Google+ as establishing a ‘relationship’. I’m not fussed about promoting much of what I do in these areas. If people are interested enough in anything I do – they’ll find me.
Having said that, I do use automated (and unmonitored) Twitter accounts to generate traffic. I set aside 15 minutes a day to create a few Twitter accounts that I auto-populate with information relating to a certain niche. Based on the follower success of particular accounts, it’s easy to determine (in a rough and unscientific manner) where my marketing efforts are best spent.
In promoting a series of aviation websites and podcasts I’ve set up about 500 automated accounts. Those accounts generate over 30,000 click-throughs a day. This technique forms the basis of a product I’ll be releasing here soon.
Want to Convert for me?
Looking back through all the posts on this blog, I’ve never tried to sell anybody anything… and I’ve not once provided an affiliate link. This isn’t to say that I haven’t undertaken campaigns on other sites, because I have… extensively. However, I’ll be promoting my own products on this site commencing in a few months. Many of them free. If you would like to keep up to date on various product launches and free giveaways, please subscribe to the mailing list. If it’s your first time subscribing to the list, you’ll be given a free (white-label) 25-page e-book.
As I said, this is a basic introduction. It was important to write up a brief introduction on CRO for those that hadn’t given the subject consideration before. More to follow.
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About Marty
Marty has been involved with online application development for a number of years and has worked with large scale applications both as a coder and project manager. He is currently actively contributing to 7 blogs and maintains over 300 websites. 
Ken has been developing software solutions and managing IT projects for over 20 years. Ken has a computer science degree and, although his focus was previously on Windows based software, his focus is now on blogging and other online projects.
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