Use these CRO marketing tips to boost your conversion rates fast.
A small bump to your conversion rate can have a serious long-term impact on your bottom line. Say you have a conversion rate of 3% that yields $100k per month and you boost it to 3.5%. Assuming you sell the same average value to each customer, that will yield an additional $16.7k—or a revenue boost of nearly 17% on an ongoing basis.
Considering this, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is arguably your most important marketing task. It’ll help you maximize returns on your marketing campaigns, enhance the customer experience, grow lifetime value, and ultimately ensure the long-term sustainability of your business.
But how do you do it? Read a quick-and-dirty recap of conversion rate optimization, then learn 17 high-impact CRO tips real brands use to lift your conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimization is the strategic process of increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. That could be any number of activities that are important to your business, such as:
The key to understanding CRO is to recognize that it’s about making the most of the traffic you bring to your site. You do this by evaluating how users navigate your website and what keeps them from converting.
Knowing this information, you can improve your website’s user experience, content, and design to guide more visitors toward taking the actions you want them to take.
It’s important to note that conversion rate optimization is not about tricking users into converting. Instead, it’s about removing barriers, addressing concerns, and providing value that aligns with user needs and business goals. Effective CRO leads to enhanced visitor experience, making it easier and more enticing for visitors to convert.
Conversion rate optimization consists of five key components:
By sticking to this process, you can prioritize effectively and ensure the CRO techniques you deploy are making a meaningful impact—rather than following generic trends and best practices that may or may not work for your specific business.
🛑 Worried you’re wasting spend in Google Ads? Find out with a free, instant audit >> Google Ads Performance Grader
Conversion rate optimization is essential to any digital marketing strategy for several compelling reasons:
By focusing on CRO, you’re creating a more efficient marketing machine and a better customer experience, which ultimately makes your business more profitable overall and drives sustainable growth.
Now boost your conversion rates with 17 tried-and-true CRO marketing techniques. These tips cover a wide range of optimization techniques, from foundational website improvements to specific tactics for engaging and converting visitors.
But remember: While these tips are generally effective for many businesses, the key to successful CRO is testing and iterating based on your specific audience and business. Use these strategies as inspiration, but always measure their impact on your unique business.
A well-organized, intuitive navigation structure keeps visitors engaged and guides them toward conversion. The easier it is for users to find what they need, the more likely they are to convert.
Start by simplifying your menu, using clear and descriptive labels for each category. And implement a logical hierarchy by grouping related items together. This can look different depending on your vertical, so take a peek at other brands in your niche for inspiration.
For example, apparel brand FRAME has a simple top menu highlighting the overarching categories site visitors might be interested in (new arrivals, women, men, and stores):
When a shopper hovers over a category, it expands to reveal subcategories they might be interested in shopping.
Meanwhile, Husteads Auto Body focuses its menu on the services it offers, locations, and essential information for car owners:
In addition to an easy-to-navigate menu, include a search function to help users find what they’re looking for more quickly, and consider using breadcrumbs to show users their current location within your site structure.
Regularly analyze user behavior data to identify any navigation pain points and make improvements accordingly.
🚀 Free guide >> 10 Tangible & Free Ways to Get on the First Page of Google
According to Bidnamic, conversion rate improves by 17% for every second a website loads faster. Slow-to-load pages frustrate visitors and can lead to high bounce rates. Use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your current load times and identify areas for improvement.
Some basic ways to speed up load times include lazy loading for images and videos below the fold, reducing image file size, enabling caching, and reducing redirects.
A smooth mobile experience can boost your conversion rates as more users are navigating the web on their smartphones. In January 2024, mobile devices accounted for almost 60% of web page views worldwide. So optimizing your website for mobile is no longer optional.
Make sure your site is fully responsive and adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes. Focus on creating a thumb-friendly design, placing key elements within easy reach of users’ thumbs. And use large, easy-to-tap buttons and ensure adequate spacing between clickable elements to prevent accidental taps.
Test your site on multiple devices and browsers to ensure consistency.
Content that’s “above the fold” means it’s visible without scrolling. It’s the first thing visitors see and impacts their decision to stay or leave.
Prioritize placing key elements above the fold, such as:
But don’t overcrowd this space. Maintain a clean, focused design that guides the user’s eye to the most important information. Provide enough engaging content that some would be willing to take action without additional information or entice visitors to scroll if they want to learn more.
Your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are critical conversion elements on any webpage or marketing campaign. They should be immediately noticeable and compelling enough to encourage clicks.
To make click-worthy CTAs:
Home Chef’s home page has a distraction-free design and a bold, action-oriented CTA that says “Pick Your Meals.”
A/B test different CTA designs, placements, and copy on each page to find what drives the highest conversion rates. Fun fact: Rounded CTA buttons receive anywhere from 17 to 55% more clicks than buttons with sharp angles.
📚 Free guide download >> The 42 Best Call to Action Phrases Ever (& Why They Work)
According to recent data from Hyken, 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience. Personalization boosts conversion rates by making your site more relevant to each visitor. Use data like a customer’s browsing history, past purchases, geographic location, and referral source to tailor the user experience.
You can implement personalization strategies such as:
These strategies streamline your site visitors’ experience, helping them find a product or service they want faster and increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Many brands direct ads to their regular product or service pages. But this is a mistake. These pages often contain an overload of information and distractions—and are focused on selling right away, which can be a deterrent.
DTC marketing expert Nik Sharma explained in his newsletter, “You also wouldn’t show up to a date and immediately say, “Should we just skip all this and go back to my place?” So, why are you doing that with your potential customers? […] Instead, with a landing page, you can curate the information someone sees, depending on the traffic source they are coming from.”
Product and service pages don’t let you continue the narrative you established in your ad—for instance if you’re targeting a specific subset of your audience or are tying your campaign to a current event or seasonal trends. This disconnect can lead to lost opportunities.
Instead of linking to the product page from their Facebook ad, Magic Molecule sends ad clickers to a dedicated listicle landing page:
This landing page design educates customers and succinctly highlights the benefits of their products without all the extra information on the product page.
Dedicated landing pages maximize the effectiveness of your paid advertising campaigns by creating a seamless experience for site visitors.
🛠️ Get the tools and tips you need to build the perfect landing page in our free guide >> How to Make Great Landing Pages (with Crazy-High Conversion)
Questions not answered on your website will undoubtedly come up as people browse your site. Getting quick answers is crucial to removing obstacles and moving the purchase journey along.
Implement multiple support channels to cater to different customer preferences:
Consider offering proactive support by triggering chat invitations based on customer behavior, such as lingering on a page or showing signs of exit intent. This approach can help address concerns before they lead to abandonment.
High-quality visuals are crucial to online shopping decisions, where customers can’t physically interact with products. Clear, detailed images can significantly boost conversion rates by giving customers confidence in what they’re buying.
Consider these strategies for compelling product imagery:
For service-based businesses, illustrate the benefits or results of your services, like before-and-after photos, infographics explaining your process, or images of your team in action to build trust.
Social proof is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools to build trust with potential customers and turn more visitors into customers.
Why?
Social proof can come from a variety of sources, including your existing customers, industry experts, media outlets, and influencers in your field.
Effective ways to incorporate social proof include:
Travel backpack brand Tortuga leverages social proof throughout its website, including on the home page where they advertise that they’ve earned over 3,000 five-star reviews:
As you gather and display social proof, keep in mind that the more relevant and relatable it is to your target market, the more effective it will be in driving conversions.
Trust signals are elements on your website that help build confidence in your brand, products, or services. They reassure potential customers that your business is legitimate, reliable, and secure, which can significantly boost conversion rates. Some of these may overlap with social proof, but they take other forms as well.
Key trust signals to consider beyond social proof include:
Place these trust signals strategically throughout your site, especially on pages where users are making decisions or entering sensitive information. For example, you can include contact information in your footer and a money-back guarantee on your checkout page.
Your shipping and returns policies play a crucial role in a customer’s purchase decision. Customers want to ensure they know all the costs associated with buying from you—especially if they decide to return the product.
The most conversion-friendly policy is free shipping and returns. But that policy doesn’t make sense for every business. Consider offering free shipping above a certain order value to make the cost worth it for your business.
Highlight your policies clearly to ensure shoppers don’t have to dig for this information. Ecommerce brands, in particular, benefit from including this information in the cart and checkout page. Create a dedicated page for shipping and returns information, too, and link to it in your site’s footer.
Allowing customers to use a variety of payment methods can increase your conversion rates by catering to different customer preferences and reducing friction at the checkout stage.
Consider offering options like:
Abandonment popups, also known as exit-intent popups, can be an effective tool for reducing site abandonment and increasing conversions. These popups are triggered when a user shows signs of leaving your site without purchasing.
Consider these strategies for effective abandonment popups:
Abandonment popups can take different forms depending on the page the shopper is exiting from—whether that’s a product/service page, shopping cart, checkout, or a general page. So experiment with different messages and offers to find what works best in each scenario.
For example, skincare brand Stratia shows a quiz when shoppers are about to leave their skincare collection page:
This is a smart choice because shoppers exiting a page with all the products are likely overwhelmed with options. This popup helps them make a choice.
Providing a special offer or incentive for first-time customers can be an effective way to encourage initial purchases and start building customer loyalty. This strategy can help overcome new customers’ hesitation when considering a purchase from an unfamiliar brand.
There are tons of incentives to play with, including:
These offers are commonly paired with an email or SMS signup, which enables you to remarket them later. While the initial discount might reduce your margin on the first sale, it’s your first step to repeat purchases and ongoing value from that customer.
Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be a powerful motivator for conversions, encouraging visitors to take action rather than delay their decision.
You can create urgency through:
For example, Obvi adds a “limited stock” notice to products that are about to sell out:
While FOMO marketing is effective, you’ve got to be careful not to cross a line that will lead to distrust. So be honest—never create false scarcity or misleading deadlines. You don’t want to make your customer skeptical.
Interactive quizzes effectively guide customers toward the most suitable products or services, especially if you offer a wide range of options. This personalized approach improves the customer experience and streamlines their purchase decision, ultimately boosting conversion rates.
For example, Haus Labs’ shade finder helps shoppers key in to their perfect makeup shade in an easy five-question quiz:
Then, customers are presented with the one product that’s perfect for their skin tone and skincare concerns:
This simplifies the shopping process and increases customer confidence that they’re making the right choice, ultimately making a purchase conversion more likely.
Now that you’ve explored these 17 techniques, it’s time to put them into action. You have a lot of ideas, so here’s how to prioritize and get started with your conversion rate optimization process:
Remember: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to conversion optimization. What works for one business may not work for yours. The key is to understand your unique audience, test different strategies, and continuously optimize based on the results. With consistent effort and data-driven decisions, you can significantly improve your website’s conversion rates and drive business growth.
Here’s a recap of the best CRO marketing tips:
Want to learn more about optimizing for conversions? Check out these resources next:
