The Definitive Guide To Conversion Optimization.
Written by Neil Patel & Joseph Putman.
Why Did We Write This Guide?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) provides a significant opportunity for businesses of any size. It takes a scientific approach to optimizing websites and enables businesses (and organizations) to convert more visitors into subscribers or customers. We wrote this guide to help anyone interested in conversion rate optimization learn how to get started and how to get the best possible results with their testing program.
This guide is for entrepreneurs, founders, marketers, bloggers, and anyone else who would like to improve conversion rates on their website. You’ll find the guide useful for many different types of organizations, including eCommerce stores, SaaS businesses, non-profit organizations, political campaigns, and more.
How Should You Use This Guide?
Each chapter can be read individually, but to get the most out of the guide, you should read it from start to finish, take notes, and apply what you’re learning as you go. You can also bookmark the guide and come back to it for reference as needed.
Chapter One An Introduction To Conversion Rate Optimization:
What It Is & Why It’s So Valuable.
In this chapter you’ll learn exactly what conversion rate optimization is and why it’s so valuable to organizations. You’ll also learn how the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign generated 2,880,000 million additional e-mail supporters, 288,000 more volunteers, and $60 million in additional revenue with a 40.6% increase in conversions.
Chapter Two Getting Started: Why You Should Begin By Gathering Data.
Chapter two explains why gathering data should be the first step for any conversion rate optimization project because without it, you can end up wasting time and losing money. The chapter continues by presenting some of the best ways to gather data and concludes with a case study about how Switch Video increased conversions 221% with a one-word-button-copy change.
Chapter Three How To Mine Your Data For Actionable Conversion Insights.
Once you gather data, you need to know what to do with it. This chapter discusses how to mine your data for actionable conversion insights. You’ll learn how to evaluate customer surveys and user tests to learn more about your site visitors and customers.
Chapter Four How To.
Run Your First A/B Test To Find A Winning Variation.
The next step after gathering data is to come up with a hypothesis and to run your first A/B test. This chapter walks you through step by step how to set up your first test in order to find a winning variation and to improve your sites conversion rates.
Chapter Five How To Interpret Your A/B Test Results.
The final step for A/B testing is to interpret the results and select a winning variation. This chapter discusses how to do so and presents the key factors you need to consider when choosing a winner.
Chapter Six What Should You Be Testing?
Now that you have a better idea of what conversion rate optimization is and how to carry about an A/B test, it’s time to talk about what you should be testing. The final answer will depend on what you learn from the data gathering stage, but this chapter provides 20 ideas as a starting point for your testing plan.
Chapter Seven 30 Expert Tips.
For Better Conversion Rate Optimization Results.
This chapter provides 30 expert tips to provide you with better CRO results. You’ll learn why you should run A/B tests instead of multivariate tests (especially in the beginning) , why you need to optimize for revenue not just conversions, and much, much more.
Chapter Eight A/B Testing Mistakes Even The Experts Make.
The guide concludes with a list of common A/B testing mistakes even the experts make. Reading this chapter will help you avoid some of the common pitfalls that can sabotage results for beginners and pros alike.

Conversion rate optimisation : a 9 step process.
An interview covering the process, tools and skills needed to increase conversion, leads and sales.
Karl and Ben at the Googleplex.
Many web consultants have relevant-but-similar backgrounds. They're experts at design, or pay-per-click advertising, or another specialty.
But when I recently met Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks from Conversion Rate Experts their background didn't fit the norm. Their company was founded when a real-life rocket scientist teamed up with a internet marketing specialist to look at websites through unconventional eyes.
This unusual perspective has turned out to be highly profitable for their clientele, which includes firms like Google, Vodafone, and Sony.
In this interview we explore how Conversion Rate Experts approaches optimisation since I think companies, agencies and consultants can learn a lot to their approach to returning the commercial returns from websites of all types.
I've asked them about the process they use to increase leads or sales from an online business and we've included links to a lot of the tools they use.
When I completed the original interview with Ben and Karl back in 2010, I asked whether they had a summary of their process to share. We did cover this in Question 3, but recently Karl has been in touch to say they now have an infographic to show this process. I thought I'd share it so you can review your processes against it. You can read more about their process on their blog where they expand upon each step.
What is Conversion rate optimisation?
Q1. We're seeing a lot more companies working now on CRO. What is it? Is it more than landing page optimisation?
Yes, it should be. Landing page optimisation focuses on one page. We coined the term Conversion Rate Optimisation ("CRO") in 2007 to describe the process of optimizing the business itself. It's really commercial optimization.
A proper job of CRO includes the review of the entire process from the initial lead-generation ad, all the way through to the post-sale follow-up. The real goal is to identify which parts of the sales funnel will yield the greatest wins with the least work.
That means it's necessary to bring a lot of disciplines to the party, including understanding traffic sources, visitor psychology, and the company's position in the marketplace, including its core strengths and weaknesses. On top of that there's usability testing, copywriting, and web design factors to look at.
All these elements go into creating hypotheses for testing. We're maniacal about testing, because we've seen too many businesses merely throw a series of "best practices" against the wall to see if anything sticks. Best practices should not be the answer to optimizing a website, but merely one starting point for formulating a test strategy.
Once we determine what truly works for a particular website, then we examine how our findings might be used in other media channels. For instance a better series of benefit statements might be transferrable to direct mail or autoresponder campaigns"”subject to testing in those media, of course.
The business case.
Q2. How do you help companies persuade colleagues of the returns from CRO, the business case?
It's easy; we explain that CRO allows companies to generate more revenue without spending more on advertising. It's about getting a higher return from the existing ad spend.
Unlike certain industries like public relations, the entire foundation of CRO is based on data, measurement, and testing. You don't need to present arguments when the data can do the talking for you. Once you measure the value of visitors, conversions, and sales, then it's simple arithmetic to show how, say, a 10% boost in conversions would help the bottom line.
Here's another powerful side-benefit: When you optimise your funnel and bring in more revenues, you then have earned a luxury: You get to decide whether to pocket those profits or plough them back into even more advertising, thus distancing yourself even further from your competitors. It's a nice problem to have.
Identifying the biggest opportunities.
Q3. What approaches do you use to decide which part of a site needs most urgent attention?
FORTUNE magazine called what we do "a combination of multivariate statistical analysis and good old-fashioned detective work" and that pretty well describes our approach.
It's often very useful to map out your entire sales/conversion funnel and make sure it's being comprehensively measured in whatever web analytics package you prefer.
Then you should look for the biggest drop-offs from one step to the next. We like to say that we look for the "blocked arteries" (that is, pages"”or page elements"”that get loads of visitors but are underperforming). How do you know if something is underperforming? Clues come from a range of feedback mechanisms: the analytics data, usability tests, surveys, customer support feedback "¦ and, of course, gut feel. Of course, we have the advantage of having been engaged by companies on several continents and in many industries, so we have a good knowledgebase of what's good and what's bad. See our list of effective tactics and strategies.
What mistakes limit conversion?
Q4. Give some examples of the most common "conversion rate killers" you see.
Killer #1: Not split testing. Many people think they're done if they take action to make changes to their site. In reality they're only "done" when tests show that the changes in fact improved conversions. Installing a "best practice" magic button that another site swears by might actually lower conversions. Despite the popularity of video, Google once discovered through tests that video reduced conversions on one of its pages. You simply must test to find out.
Not long ago, multivariate testing software cost more than £5,000 per month. Now you can use Google Website Optimizer and other software packages for free, so there's really no excuse. We created a tool, called Which Multivariate, which helps you to select the best software for multivariate testing.
Killer #2 is "meek tweaking""”in other words, making changes that are never likely to have a significant effect.
Killer #3 is asking for the sale on the first visit. It's often a good idea to test the creation of a multi-step conversion funnel, in which you provide great value before you ask for the order. Comparison charts, forums, special reports, and marketing are examples of elements that allow you to provide good information, ask for names, cultivate a relationship and thereby improve the chances of a sale.
What are the latest approaches?
Q5. Are you seeing any innovative design techniques that are helping conversions?
Excellent design is a prerequisite for conversion, but the biggest breakthroughs tend to be the new tools and techniques for gathering insights into the visitor's mindset.
For determining how visitors interact with a site we often use both Clicktale and CrazyEgg .
KISSInsights and Ethnio are both good for asking your visitors to give you immediate feedback on your site. GazeHawk enables you to conduct an eye-tracking study on your site for a tiny fraction of the traditional cost.
Many of your readers will already know about how wireframing is important in order to get agreement on functional aspects before you take the time to make a site look good. We like Balsamiq for that purpose. [Editor - I use that too - a great simple wireframing tool for consultants and agencies]
Finally, your readers may want to get our free newsletter to see what a million-dollar landing page looks like , along with a graphical analysis. We call it that because it generated over a million dollars for one of our clients.
If you want even more examples of what's possible with conversion improvement, watch the video in the header of our website.
By Dave Chaffey.
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the 100+ templates, ebooks and courses in the digital marketing resource library created by our team of 25+ Digital Marketing experts. Our resources are used by our Premium members in more than 100 countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing. Free members can access our sample templates here.
Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice . In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing.
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Why Conversion Optimization Strategy Trumps Tactics Every Time.
I’m willing to bet you’ve come across a lot of opinions about how to do conversion optimization.
You’ve probably formed some of your own ideas, too.
Unfortunately, in our work testing the so-called “best practices” over the past five years, my testing team and I have disproven many common recommendations for how to maximize website conversions and revenue.
That’s what this post is about — to tell you about one of the most important distinctions between successful and mediocre conversion optimization testing programs. It’s about strategy.
There are two kinds of people doing conversion optimization: tacticians and strategists . Tacticians focus on following “best practices” and improving metrics like conversion rate. Conversion strategists, on the other hand, focus on building a repeatable strategic process that creates powerful hypotheses and insights in order to fulfill business goals.
The business results can be astounding.
For example, in today’s case study, Iron Mountain, the conversion optimization strategy led to a 45% lift in the first test, then a 404% boost (!), then another 44%, then an additional 38%, followed by a 49% conversion rate increase. And that was just on a few of the landing pages.
I’ll give you details on one of those A/B/n tests in a moment; but first, let’s review conversion optimization at a high level.
A Quick Primer on Conversion Optimization.
Your website has two kinds of conversions:
On-page actions (a type of micro-conversion) Revenue-driving conversions (the ones that support your business goals).
On-page actions are things like add-to-cart’s and form submissions. Revenue-driving conversions are things like e-commerce sales and quote-request leads for your sales team.
For both types of conversions, your conversion rate hinges on six factors:
Value proposition – This is the sum of all the costs and benefits of taking action. What is the overall perceived benefit in your customer’s mind? Those perceived costs and benefits make up your value proposition. Relevance – How closely does the content on your page match what your visitors are expecting to see? How closely does your value proposition match their needs? Clarity – How clear is your value proposition, main message, and call-to-action? Anxiety – Are there elements on your page (or missing from your page) that create uncertainty in your customer’s mind? Distraction – What is the first thing you see on the page? Does it help or hurt your main purpose? What does the page offer that is conflicting or off-target? Urgency – Why should your visitors take action now? What incentives, offers, tone, and presentation will move them to action immediately?
These are the six elements that both tacticians and strategists should understand to be able to make conversion rate and revenue improvements.
The main difference between tacticians and strategists is how they plan and interpret their tests.
Where Tacticians Shine.
Conversion tacticians shine in the places where details are happening. They think about button color and size. These are the people who have arguments over whether a Big Orange Button (I call him BOB) will solve the problem. Tacticians have a tool kit that includes a wide array of tested elements that can be applied to a problem quickly.
Tacticians are great for getting started with testing, but they rapidly hit a limit on the benefit they achieve from tweaking elements, rather than enhancing customer satisfaction and business goals.
Tactical conversion optimizers rarely create hypotheses that describe customer behavior. They are focused on elemental, on-page concerns like form fields, pop-up windows, or maximizing your testing tool’s capabilities. Elements like these are the quick and easy areas to attack first, but they rarely result in big gains for your business, and they don’t generate marketing insights that lead to the next great hypothesis .
Why Strategy Is Better.
A strategic approach aims for more fundamental and ongoing improvements. They aim for a mix of big wins and incremental improvements that give marketing insights.
Conversion strategists know three important things:
The only conversion rates that matter are relative. Conversion rate improvement is a means to an end—and that end is profit. Learning from hypotheses is more important than winning with every test.
That is why good strategists create documentation about why they are running tests and what customer needs they are trying to address. Making hypothesis-based testing part of your organizational culture is far more important than making a button the right color ( hint: there is no right color). Strategists know that an ongoing, structured process of continuous learning and improvement delivers the best results over time.
The strategist knows from experience to look for meaning behind the numbers rather than simply taking test results at face value.
Take a look at this test result report:
At the point when a new traffic source was added to the test page, the conversion rates for all of the test variations dropped.
A tactician would see this conversion rate trend and say, “Oh no! Our conversion rate plummeted. We have to fix this!” They would run to the design department to order new buttons and images or turn off the new source of traffic.
A conversion strategist, however, would look deeper at sales and profit numbers to find out about order volume and order value. They might create a hypothesis for whether there’s a different customer need specific to the new traffic source and plan a new round of testing based on that hypothesis. The strategist may discover that our green combination is the best for the new traffic source, even though it isn’t the winner for the other traffic sources.
There could be many other insights and hypotheses the strategist would gain from the results analysis, too.
That’s why, in my 7-step testing process, the 7 th step is often the most important. That’s where the strategist solidifies the insights that can be fed into the next tests.
A Conversion Optimization Strategy Looks at the Big Picture.
With a conversion optimization strategy, every test leads to insights that lead to more hypotheses to test . The learning from each test leads to greater lift in the following tests.
Let’s look at the Iron Mountain example again. For the past three years, my team has been testing and optimizing the conversion rates for Iron Mountain’s most important marketing touch points. In that time, we’ve run many A/B/n tests on various areas of the website, including landing pages and site-wide elements on ironmountain.
This partnership had unique challenges that emphasized the need for a strategy:
How do you implement a conversion optimization strategy for a website that has over 17,000 pages, plus landing pages and campaign microsites? How do you make sure your website experiences are maximizing conversion rates and that the learning is applied across the organization?
Your conversion optimization system needs good planning and great execution. Individual tests should feed learning back into an evolving understanding of your customers.
Here’s an example of one of the landing page analyses we performed as part of a testing strategy for Iron Mountain:
Notice that a strategist is not looking to specific tactical changes when planning for the test. Each one of the called out points are conversion problems that can be turned into a hypothesis. Overall, there are also themes that emerge. Readability and distraction seem to be the major issues to address. This analysis contains 10 points of action that can be tested.
There is a rich pool of possible changes for each point of action. Any test that is performed in this structure, even the losing tests (because not every test will win), can offer marketing insight that can be taken to every portion of your site and business.
Strategy Turns Weakness into Strength.
Take the worst thing on your page and hypothesize its opposite. This doesn’t mean changing everything that is orange to blue. It means making everything that is vague, clear. It means making everything that is distracting or frightening disappear.
The Results of Strategy: Big Wins plus Insights.
This winning page design for this particular test gave Iron Mountain a 404% lead generation conversion rate lift!
I won’t promise that every test gives results like that. And they don’t have to.
This result was built on the backs of previous tests because of the strategic approach we took.
Plus, the learning from this test gave insights that led to wins in other areas. The marketing team learned the type of offers that work best. That’s an insight that continues to pay dividends over and over again.
Strategy Wins Because It Offers New Ideas.
eConsultancy reports that companies which take a structured approach in their conversion optimization are 2x as likely to report large increases in sales than those that don’t. Conversion strategy leads to structure and a continuous stream of new ideas, while conversion tactics alone lead to guessing and a constant hunger for more advice.
Conversion tactics by themselves are dead-end streets . If you’re overly attached to one technique or answer to a problem, you will always find the place where they fail. When tactical tests fail, they are simply over. When strategic hypothesis-based tests fail, you get insights that can be taken to a new understanding of your conversion problems.
Because conversion strategy puts emphasis on customer needs and creating a vision for solving problems related to the business action, not the page action, it leaves fewer moments where you have to ask “ What’s next ?” This means that if you keep testing, you keep getting new insights. With new insights, you get new ideas. And then you have a continuous cycle of improvement.
Within a strategic framework, each time you start a new round of hypotheses, you will find new success for your business.
About the Author: Chris Goward is Co-Founder and CEO of WiderFunnel, the conversion optimization agency, and author of “You Should Test That!” He developed conversion optimization strategies for clients like Electronic Arts, Google, SAP, Shutterfly, and Salesforce.
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I’m assuming that you would have indivdually tested the changes you listed above that resulted in 404% increase in conversion rate?
I think is pretty easy to imagine that at least one of those changes could have hurt conversions depending on your customers.
– Headline doesn’t say backup? Maybe your customers use different terminology….
– Reducing size of header graphic to push more text above the fold? Maybe your customers are worse off by some confusion/distraction produced by too much content….
Although it’s entirely possible that all of these changes were a plus, I really hope you tested them individually.
Don’t understand why you think they should all be tested individually. I think if you asked the CEO of Iron Mountain whether they’d prefer an immediate 404% uplift in one shot or over a series of 10 tests and a number of months then they’d plump fo the former every time. The point of CRO is to grow the bottom line as quickly as possible not help the tester learn every minute detail of why.
Always slightly sceptical about big conversion results though without context. 404% uplift on a conversion rate that was already sitting at 10% is great (although it still depends on how much traffic the page was getting). A 404% uplift on a rate of 0.2% isn’t so hot.
Now if you’d quoted how much you grew their bottom line by, that would be a different story.
Totally agree with your perspective on the goal of conversion optimization, John.
And I hear your point about conversion rate lift being more impressive with already well-performing pages. This was, but I actually disagree about absolute conversion rates. For some businesses, a 0.2% conversion would be very successful and for others 10% would be a disaster! For one client of ours, they’d be disappointed with anything less than a 50% conversion rate, now that we’ve got them up to that point.
There are many reasons that I believe conversion rates are actually meaningless if they’re not evaluated from a *relative* perspective. I explain why I think that here: widerfunnel/conversion-rate-optimization/why-your-conversion-rate-doesnt-matter-aka-conversion-rates-are-relative.
As John pointed out, the goal is conversion rate and revenue lift over learning.
But, we also *always* plan tests to include isolations to learn as well.
The tradeoff for more variations is longer tests or more tests needed to achieve the same result. A good optimization strategy strikes a balance and aims for learning that creates customer insights, which lead to greater lift in the future or on different pages.
It’s a good point, Brandon, and a question we often get about how to plan tests. Thanks.
As I said in the article, “This result was built on the backs of previous tests…”
So basically you are saying, you were able to do these broader test because previously you had done individual test that supported your theory. I too would prefer a 400% increase in one test vs. 40 test for 10% increase each time. My only concern would be that, I would believe there was a correlation that isn’t true because my test wasn’t isolated enough. You know that old saying “correlation does not imply causation”
Why wouldn’t you include the revised copy of the landing page? What kind of traffic was that landing page getting? It’s hard to say your 404% increase was much of anything without some traffic stats behind it. I do like the six factors you mention, this is something newbies overlook when they’re trigger happy on which color to change and which button shape to adjust.
Thanks, Gene. The test did have enough traffic and conversions to achieve statistical significance at the 95% confidence level.
This article wasn’t meant to be an in-depth case study with all the details. The full case study with the winning screenshot is posted on the widerfunnel website under “What You Get”. Or, just click on my name, above.
I’m not questioning the numbers, we all know CRO works.
My take? The point of the article was to provide an introduction into how real strategists think (or should be thinking). I’ve been doing CRO for a while now, but I really appreciate how you’ve described it in this blog.
I like how you look at pages at first and only intend to identify problems, instead of looking at each problem and coming up with a solution in that minute. Then you stand back and decide which problem(s) is your biggest. Only after that do you start to list out the many ways to fix it. I think this is a crucial step for many strategists and provides an opportunity to work with their designers or even better a good developer and a designer. Sometimes as a strategist you can find yourself quickly stepping on toes if you try to come up with all of the solutions for problems you see instead of relying on the people who are experts at those things.
Thanks, Gregg! Good summary of our approach. Cheers.
thanks a lot for this post. Great work. While one can disagree on the details (tactics) to the implementation in the examples – the real value is in the process. You can do it over and over again – and teach it to other people.
My process is similar but more tailored to bigger teams.
3. Create a vision or hypotheses.
4. Convince (the stakeholders)
If there you are interested I will tranlate it for you.
I like your point – “conversion rate hinges on six factors.” These six tips are simple yet so important enough that complacency in a anyone will affect your site in a wrong way. Way to go.
Thanks. Those six factors are part of the LIFT Model, which is a conversion optimization framework WiderFunnel uses. You can read more about it here: widerfunnel/conversion-rate-optimization/the-six-landing-page-conversion-rate-factors.
This is such a great article on so many levels. First of all, the combination of creativity and process is something u believe is necessary fir long term success and quality over time. Secondly, this is so clearly written that our team can apply it to our website redesign and conversion strategy. Thanks fir the information.
Darren Fisher Consulting.
Your IDEA is realistic.
Thanks for the valuable tips and links.
As you point out tactics are there to get people off the ground. They help the little guy make a start and in many cases tactics are probably all that is required for successful CRO.
Tactics are the first-aid kits before you can see the doctor. Sometimes all you need is a band-aid.
The difference between tactics and strategy is probably more blurry than you present here. Strategy in my mind is merely tactics applied by someone with experience and reason.
I don’t particularly agree that there isn’t a ‘right colour’ for a CTA button (though I think your statement was just to emphasis your point). The right colour for a button depends on a variety of factors, not least the surrounding colours.
Great stuff. I think every CRO guy is a tactician at first, and strategy is learned. The best way to put it is – when have you ever decided NOT to buy a product or fill out a form because of the color of the button? Focusing too much on these kinds of changes makes your testing plateau. CRO is about testing hypotheses.
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Conversion rate optimisation strategy

The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization.
12 Chapters, A Step-by-Step Guide.
The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is an in-depth tutorial designed to help you convert more passive website visitors into active users that engage with your content or purchase your products.
This guide will walk you through the basics of CRO—from why it matters in the first place to how you can go about building your own testing and optimization plan. You’ll find information that will help you improve the performance of your website, including: optimizing your landing pages and user experience, as well as the tools you’ll need to be successful.
First, a quick definition…
CRO is the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website. CRO can be used to improve any metric on your website that’s important to your business–often called key performance indicators (KPIs)–that you’re trying to improve, but it’s often associated with acquiring new customers, registrations, downloads, etc. Put another way, it increases the percentage of website visitors who experience the “aha moment” (or the must-have user experience) that turns passive browsers into valuable conversions.
At its most fundamental, CRO means figuring out what users are looking for when they arrive at your site and then giving that to them. CRO takes many different forms, based on the KPI you’re trying to improve. Sometimes this involves making your call-to-action more apparent or placing it on a traffic-heavy (but under-optimized) page. At other times this means removing or relocating unnecessarily complicated or time-consuming steps from your conversion funnel, as the added friction can prevent a conversion from ever happening.
It’s important to understand, however, that optimization is about getting more of the right kind of customers—not just blindly optimizing the conversion rate of a given page or campaign. It won’t do you any good if the people you’re acquiring are the wrong fit for your business. It’s important to keep the focus on optimizing to find more customers who will love your product and help you grow by spreading the word. Everything else is a waste of your time and resources.
You should care about CRO for a few reasons. First, you are most likely paying for traffic to your site in one way or another, and a high conversion rate means a better return on that investment (ROI). It’s also much more cost-effective to convert a higher percentage of the visitors you already have than to attract more visitors. In addition to improving your ROI, optimization helps to defend against the limited attention span of your average visitor by giving them what they want before they tire of looking for it and move on.[1]
Why should you care?
CRO is important!
Higher conversion rate = better ROI.
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Actionable is the key word here. Collecting data for data’s sake is not the end goal of user surveys. Rather, it’s the ability to analyze the responses and find new areas of opportunity to improve the performance of your business that counts. Collection without action is a cardinal sin.
The next chapter is devoted exclusively to the importance of surveys, so we won’t delve too deeply into that here. Instead, let’s review the distinct types of online user surveys.
When it comes to constructing a Conversion Rate Optimization Plan, people typically take one of two approaches: applying popular Conversion Rate Optimization tactics or building a Conversion Rate Optimization plan.
Many people choose to use Unique Visitors when determining their Conversion Rate. But whatever metric you ultimately decide on, consistency is key. Read on to learn the basics of Conversion Rate Optimization.
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When we talk about user experience (UX), there’s more to it than just looks. We are referring to the totality of visitors’ experience with your site.
In the introduction, CRO is defined as the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website. In Chapter 1, we’ll discuss CRO in simpler terms and what it may look like for you.
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You might find yourself in a situation where you can’t immediately dive in to tackle what you know to be your biggest optimization issue without first making a case for CRO.
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Chances are, if there’s an under-optimized page on your site, your landing page is it. Yet many users’ first impressions are based predominantly on this page.
If you’re looking for a basic explanation of which tool does what and how, you’ll find that here. If you want recommendations, you’ll find those as well. To say there is a tool for every job is an understatement.
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How do you know which tests are improvements and which ones aren’t moving the needle? And more importantly, what will you do once you’ve called the winners and optimized your first set of tests?
Despite the depths of the Internet and the billions of pages offered, users are arriving at your website, and then without any explanation—they’re leaving. Why?
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In this guide we’ve touched on the many Conversion Rate Optimization myths. In this chapter, however, we’re going to discuss them in a bit more detail.
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Now that you’re a CRO pro, what’s next?
Here is a composite list of additional hacks and tips that we have collected to keep you on top of the game.
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We’ll use a lot of terms to describe conversions and the people that visit your online property. They are meant to provide an example in each instance, and are not meant to be definitive. For instance, if we say “improve the performance of your website” that could also be applied to improving the performance of your: website, landing page, web application, registration form, etc.
Likewise, when we talk about a visitor or user, we use them interchangeably (unless otherwise noted) to denote a person who is using your online property.
We’ve taken these liberties to improve the readability of the document and maintain flow. Please know that when the authors land on a word like users they routinely say in their head, “or visitors, or registered users, or…” Thank you for obliging us in this liberty.