Conversion rate optimization or CRO is one of the processes involved in digital marketing and it’s one of the many skills I have as a digital marketer. CRO simply refers to the process of optimizing your website to increase conversions or enable people to take certain actions when they visit your website. The whole point is to convert site visitors to customers or to increase the percentage of people who complete a web page’s goal. To be able to influence your site visitors’ behavior you need to understand them.
There are several steps in a CRO process with dozens of minute details that are easy to overlook. This makes it easy for digital marketers, especially beginners to make several mistakes while going through the process. These include:
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Failing to properly set up conversion tracking.
It’s crucial to set up conversion tracking properly so that you know how site visitors interact with your website. Failure to properly track conversions means you won’t have data on whether your marketing campaign is going well or not.
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Having an inadequate sample size.
You need a large enough sample size so that you can be sure your results are a good representation of your site visitors. An inadequate sample size might not give you meaningful results.
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Running tests at inopportune times of the year.
Running tests during low sales season or at the end of the year won’t give you accurate CRO data to go on. You want the test to be performed on the most qualified traffic possible in order to give an acute representation of your typical traffic so learn the right time of year to run the tests.
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Having a disorganized testing process.
As mentioned earlier, a CRO process has several steps that you need to stay on top of. Keeping everything well recorded and organized saves you a lot of time and energy. Also prioritizing and recording the hypotheses, ideas, and results in one place makes it easy to share such information with your clients.
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Treating all traffic the same.
Another common mistake is treating different types of traffic the same e.g. new vs. old traffic, mobile vs. desktop traffic, etc. Doing so might lead to lots of missed opportunities that might inform your hypotheses and tests.
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Failing to run tests long enough.
It’s advisable to run tests long enough to reach statistical significance i.e. the point where you can be very sure and confident that you’re making the right choice between two or more variables.
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Making basic statistical errors.
Not everyone is competent in statistics and if you’re a digital marketer, failing to grasp statistical basics, especially when it comes to CRO can leave you confused and unsure of how to interpret the test results.
CRO is just one among many processes involved in digital marketing that can help your business grow. Reach out for a consultation and let’s grow your bottom line now!