CRO (Conversion rate optimization) is the process of improving your landing pages, sponsored ads, and website design to increase your conversion rate. It’s the most vital part of your PPC campaigns because it helps convert traffic into sales or leads.
Instead of increasing search engine rankings and click through rates from the SERPs to increase website traffic, CRO is an important pillar of digital marketing that focuses on converting as much of that traffic as possible. Simply put, if SEO is about web presence and visibility, CRO is about getting people to take action.
This article will explore CRO and how it can help your company.
Identification of Macro and Micro Conversions
To start a successful CRO campaign, define your KPIs. Macro (or primary) conversions and micro (or secondary) conversions are the two main categories of CRO KPIs.
Relationship between UX and CRO
In some cases, the terms CRO and UX are used interchangeably. The goal of successful UX design is to make the website experience intuitive, enjoyable, and seamless. Every possible call to action (CTA) on a landing page should be obvious, appealing, and easily completed.
Both UX and CRO use A/B testing, customer feedback, and user testing to optimize landing pages, and good UX tends to correlate with higher conversion rates. Both seek to improve the performance of your landing pages and rely on testing and data to do so.
Why is CRO Important for Google Ads?
Paid advertising is a great way to increase traffic and revenue, but it can quickly become costly if not monitored and optimised. CRO improves PPC performance by lowering cost per acquisition (CPA). As a result, you save money while getting more conversions.
It also improves your Ads Quality Score by making your search ads more relevant to the landing pages. This reduces CPC and increases spend efficiency by getting the same number of clicks for less money.
These ads will not convert if they land on a poorly constructed landing page with no clear CTA.
How to create a Good Landing Page Design
Good landing pages make a big difference in the success of your ad campaigns and thus your conversion rates. ‘Relevance’ is the key. If a potential client or customer finds your page through a search engine, they expect it to be relevant to their search query. If it isn’t, they’ll bounce and go elsewhere (and the money you paid for their click is wasted).
Unsatisfactory landing pages hurt your Google Ads Quality Score, increasing your CPC and decreasing your ad rank, making it harder to sell your ads to Google.
Things that make up a good landing page
- A catchy headline related to your PPC keyword. To keep users on the page and take the desired action.
- Targeted copy The page’s content must convey what you’re offering and include the ad’s keywords. Keep the copy short and sweet.
- A clickable CTA. Make responding to your call to action as simple and appealing as possible.
- Design. Landing pages should be simple and relevant, with a clear call to action.
- Selected images. People are visual creatures, so a landing page devoid of images will be odd. Images of products and people using them are obvious choices.
Test
However, the key message here is to keep measuring and testing. CRO, like all digital marketing, is a never-ending process.
A/B testing allows you to isolate one variable, like a call to action, and create A and B versions (split variants). Next, test them to see which works best. Only one variable is changed, allowing you to confidently attribute the change to an increase or decrease in conversions.
Testing CTAs on both your ads and landing pages allows you to refine and test until you get the results you want and your conversion rates are maximized.
This type of split testing works better for PPC campaigns than organic SEO because optimizing two pages that do the same thing is more complex. There are methods and tools like Google’s Optimize that allow you to split test pages for organic SEO.
Heatmapping is an investigative technique that analyzes the user’s journey around a landing page to see how the UX can be improved. The page can be optimised and improved by testing and capturing data on where users click and how they reach your CTAs. The changes will improve the UX and encourage conversions.
Your PPC campaigns are a shot in the dark without a CRO strategy. Creating useful, relevant, and intuitive landing pages will increase your business opportunities and revenue.