How to Implement Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices

If digital marketing is part of your go-to-market strategy, adjusting digital platforms based on user preferences can lead to significantly more conversions, whether that looks like subscriptions, sign-ups, or sales.

Businesses aiming to maximize their online performance now focus on adopting conversion rate optimization best practices. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves systematically improving your website or mobile app to increase the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, requesting a demo, or engaging with content for a longer period of time. If you need to do more than attract visitors and want to use technology to guide them to convert, A/B testing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal.

And the benefits aren’t just speculation—companies that implement and run an A/B testing program can see significant improvements. About 60% of big companies have found A/B testing helps increase their growth and sales while reducing their website’s bounce rate. This impressive impact highlights the importance of doubling down on conversion rate optimization best practices to optimize your marketing efforts and achieve tangible results.

Ready to start using more conversion rate optimization best practices? Let’s go over the essentials.

Understanding User Behavior

Understanding user behavior is the foundation of effective CRO. It involves analyzing how users interact with your website, what they’re looking for, and where they encounter obstacles. These insights, gathered from multiple iterative rounds of experimentation, allow you to tailor digital experiences to better meet user needs and drive higher conversion rates.

Why It’s Important: By gaining a deeper understanding of your audience’s behavior, you can create a more intuitive and satisfying user experience. This might involve identifying common drop-off points, understanding which elements are most engaging, and discovering what frustrates or confuses visitors.

Example: Experimenting with the placement and imagery of product recommendations can provide valuable insights for future A/B tests. By altering where product recommendations appear on a page and the images used, you can observe changes in user engagement and conversion rates. For instance, you might find that placing product recommendations higher on the page or using more eye-catching visuals leads to increased clicks and purchases. This approach allows you to refine your layout and content to better anticipate user behavior and enhance their overall experience.

Optimizing Landing Pages

Landing pages are often the first point of contact between your website and potential customers. They play a crucial role in guiding visitors toward a conversion. Applying conversion rate optimization best practices to landing pages should be among your top priorities.

Strategies for Optimization: To optimize landing pages, focus on clear, compelling messaging and strong calls to action. The design should be clean and free of distractions, and the layout should guide the user naturally toward the desired action.

Example: To determine the most effective layout and elements for driving conversions, you might conduct a server-side A/B test that compares different versions of a landing page. For instance, you could test a page with a prominent promotional banner offering a limited-time discount against a page without the banner. This test would allow you to see if the addition of a promotional element increases conversions by providing an immediate incentive for visitors or perhaps creates a negative effect, causing the users that see it to bounce. If the data shows a significant increase in conversions on the page with the promotional banner, this insight can guide future design decisions and help you leverage promotional strategies more effectively.

Implementing Social Proof and Trust Signals

Social proof and trust signals are crucial elements in building credibility and trust with your audience, especially if you manage sensitive financial and health-related data. These elements reassure potential customers that your brand is reliable and that others have had positive experiences with your products or services. Trust signals can be easily overlooked, but they’re an important step to take when refreshing your conversion rate optimization best practices.

Importance of Social Proof: Including customer testimonials, reviews, case studies, and trust badges (such as security certifications) can significantly boost your website’s credibility. This is especially important for first-time visitors who may be unfamiliar with your brand.

Example: Featuring testimonials prominently on your landing pages can provide immediate reassurance to potential customers. A testimonial highlighting a customer’s positive experience with your product could be the deciding factor for a visitor considering a purchase. Additionally, displaying third-party endorsements or media mentions can further establish trust and authority.

Leveraging A/B Testing for Continuous Improvement

Organizations already running experiments understand A/B testing is essential for informing data-driven decisions and continuously improving your website’s performance. If you only have the opportunity to implement a few conversion rate optimization best practices, continuous rounds of experimentation should always be on the list to help your team make more valuable adjustments to your platforms.

For a more deliberate and effective approach, consider hybrid experimentation, an A/B testing technique that combines client-side and server-side testing. This allows multiple teams to test visual and back-end elements at the same time by adding client-side changes on top of server-side functionality. An example of this might be a marketing team iterating on layout and graphical changes for a server-side pricing model or a checkout flow change the product and development team rolled out.

By iteratively testing and refining based on past testing data, you can quickly adapt to long-term user preferences and more fleeting trends, enhancing your strategies for better conversion rates. This integrated testing approach streamlines the experimentation process and reduces development bottlenecks by enabling feature flags outside of code releases and cross-functional collaboration. That means faster implementation and more meaningful insights.

Final Thoughts

Implementing conversion rate optimization best practices is essential for any organization looking to optimize digital marketing efforts and increase conversions. By understanding user behavior, optimizing landing pages, leveraging social proof, and employing iterative, ongoing A/B testing, you can create a more effective and engaging online experience for your visitors.

To get started, check out SiteSpect’s list of website experimentation ideas. Can you A/B test them all? Download here.