In the last few years, a new acronym has begun to take hold: CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization. But what does it mean? And how can it help your business? In short, it means more revenue by optimizing your customer experience. Learn more about this powerful, revenue generating tool for your business and Atypical Digital’s unique approach.
What is CRO?
CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization – is a process which uses A/B testing and data-driven methodology to increase the number of users who take a desired action on your site.
CRO is an ongoing process to optimize the user experience, and increase the percent – or rate – of users who convert.
Conversions are desired actions a user takes on your site: be it a sale, lead-form submission, initiating a sales chat, or picking up the phone. The examples are macro conversions, big actions that align closely with your business goals and Key Performance Indicators – or KPIs.
But more often, CRO is focused on micro conversions which are more closely aligned with the hypothesis for your A/B test. These micro conversions are actions like ‘add item to cart, ‘scroll depth’ or ‘bounce rate’.
So what exactly is an A/B test?
Marketers have been A/B testing for years – for example with a direct mail campaign, one might send half of their mailing list one version, and the other half another.
They’ll review the performance of each version to understand which led to more leads, and to inform how they communicate their message next time. Using tools such as Optimizely, AB Tasty, Google Optimize, or Convert, you can do the same thing on your site.
By making a specific change to an element of your site, such as the button color test, users will be evenly divided at random and placed into different experiences. Half of your site traffic will be shown the button color already present on your site – now called the ‘control’ – and the other half of users shown a different button color – now known as ‘v1’.
We then let the test run, monitor it, and review how v1 performed versus control, to understand how the button color affected site performance and user behavior.
The Atypical Approach
At Atypical, we believe ‘testing should do no harm’.
Making real changes to your live site is a big deal. The tools we use allow us to make changes to your site in real time, be it in an experiment, or bypassing the typical development cycle to make quick updates to your site. This is a big responsibility, so our Atypical Approach is guided by a series of precautions to ensure the changes are precise, and ‘do no harm’.
We dive deep into the data to understand results.
Diving deep into individual test results is a critical step to understanding the test we ran and how it performed. We work with our analytics team and your data to understand site performance before, during, and after an A/B test. Each test gives us an amazing amount of data, but that is only valuable when it turns into insights that move your brand forward.
‘Voice-of-user’ feedback is the best insight.
Understanding user thoughts and frame-of-mind allows us to see things from their perspective, the issues they’re facing, and hypothesize solutions to these problems. This is an important component of the Atypical Digital methodology.
Session replays from tools like FullStory allow us to anonymously see user behavior, while heat mapping and survey tools like HotJar allow us to get quantitative and qualitative data directly from the user. Other tools like BizRate Insights provide qualitative data such as post-purchase replies from real users, and have become a wealth of testing opportunities.
More is more – all ideas are welcome.
Lastly, the Atypical Digital approach is grounded in the belief that ‘More is More’ – the best ideas often come from unlikely sources. We’ll use various tools with clients, such as the Optimizely Program Management platform, or a simple Google Form to allow team members from every department to submit a potential test idea.
These pillars guide our CRO efforts, along with our mantras: ‘Organization is key’, ‘Updates are vital’, and ‘Results are real’ which have helped us to show that CRO pays for itself.
Let Us Help Design Your CRO Program
Atypical Digital has been providing amazing CRO programming for companies of all shapes and sizes around the globe. Our revenue-driven approach measures everything we do in real dollars. We can confidently say that our unique approach to CRO provides real revenue impact to your business. Contact Us today – we’d love to say hello and talk shop.