A high conversion rate is an accomplishment for any business, regardless of its industry or size. However, many companies make the mistake of focusing solely on the numbers rather than thinking about their users.
In general, the conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action on your site. The completion of that action is called a conversion, and can range from subscribing to a newsletter to completing a purchase. If 10 out of 100 website visitors complete your desired action, then your conversion rate is 10%.
Now, Conversion Rate Optimization (or CRO) means boosting this percentage. It is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who perform a desired action on a site. The actions can include purchasing a product, clicking ‘add to cart’, signing up for a service, filling out a form, or clicking on a link.
The definition of CRO stated above highlights conversion percentages and focuses on the numbers. Although numbers are important, we know that each conversion is a result of a user's experience on your site - and the decision to follow through on the action is actually a personal decision.
In this guide we want to propose you a slightly different approach to CRO, a user-centric strategy that has become widespread in recent times.
As part of this approach, a more holistic and user-centric way of defining CRO seems necessary.
The Hotjar team defines CRO as the process of focusing on understanding what drives, stops, and persuades your users, so you can give them the best user experience possible—and that, in turn, is what makes them convert and ultimately improves your website conversion rate.
The difference between this and the first definition is that the former, by focusing only on the numerical aspect (conversions), ignores what happens BEFORE a conversion takes place, in particular these 3 elements:
When working to improve conversions, there are times when a problem is not quantifiable, backed by hard numbers. For example, if a bug is blocking 80% of your users from doing something, fixing that one bug will solve the problem and maybe save your entire business.
But it also happens that your website functions perfectly and yet people aren’t converting. When this happens, you’ll need to dig deeper to understand the why beyond the data - you’ll need to focus on your users first.
A common belief in digital marketing is that a particular optimization action (a “best practice”) will guarantee an increase in conversion rate. Some of the most discussed best practices are:
These elements are undoubtedly important to make the user experience enjoyable and they DO have a positive impact on conversions, but are they enough to bring your conversion rate at its optimum level? Probably not.
Blindly applying existing best practices could be the perfect solution only if your business was exactly the same as any other business in the world. Since this is not the case, if you want to improve your conversions in a sustainable way you need to spend time understanding your users and customers.
They are the people who matter to your business and have the answers you need to improve it. Learn as much as you can about their concerns and hesitations, focus on their needs and deliver solutions that address them directly.
When you approach conversion rate optimization from the user's point of view, your chances of success increase dramatically. Read our guide The best CRO tools to learn how to understand your users and improve your conversions.
Written by: Flavia Malvatani
