Conversion Rate Optimization: What is it and why you need to learn about it

4 min readApr 9, 2017

Image courtesy of Vladimir Guerrero at Flickr.com

To understand what Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is, it is crucial to understand what is not in the first place. Performing an A / B test between two landings, changing the layout of the headers, or deleting a field from a form, is not CRO in any way. If you limit yourself to keep thinking that such changes are all that it takes to get better conversions, without any control, goals or method, you are only making superficial changes, not structural ones that can positively influence the performance of your business. While these may be important though, they will not necessarily improve conversion ratios.

Similarly, usability is not CRO. Usability is the ability to interact with a website in an easy, simple and intuitive way. Of course, usability helps to improve conversion ratios, but it is certainly not equivalent to CRO because no matter how useful a website is, if there is no persuasion there is no conversion. In any kind of marketing campaign, regardless of the chosen payment model, it is essential to achieve the objectives while keeping the costs within the limits. For this reason, CRO is a key procedure for success in terms of Performance Marketing, throughout the duration of the campaign.

First and foremost, CRO is about analyzing and improving the conversion ratio of a website on an ongoing basis. The main objective is to persuade as many users as possible to complete the target action of the marketing campaign, and exhausting the budget specifically designed for it. However, everything varies depending on each business and its particular characteristics. That, of course, will determine the objectives sought to achieve through CRO. A fast food business needs to sell its products and expand its clientele, while a tattoo studio or an oncology clinic needs many clients to make appointments. Other businesses, such as Netflix, will need more and more subscribers.

It is very important to never lose sight of the central idea when it comes to CRO: The ability of a website to achieve good conversion rates depends, above all, on its texts or images, its graphic interface, the products or services in its catalog and, as it was mentioned above, its usability. The latter, is perhaps the most important aspect, since it allows you to create the user experiences that potential customers are looking for (and sometimes do not know where and how to search.) Of course, to optimize a website’s performance, usability is just one factor of the checklist.

Image courtesy of kuldeep singh at Flickr.com

There are still many business owners whose ultimate goals are to make a good website, get more traffic or gain more visibility on Google. Obviously, without a website, visits or visibility you could hardly get economic results; however, it is also true that if these are your only goals, you are not going to see the money flowing either. You need conversion, profitable conversions. Keep in mind that if you get ten thousand visits, and if you only get five conversions, that does not mean that if you reach the twenty thousand visits you will reach ten conversions. This is not a mathematical rule you can predict. You could get seven conversions, for example, or even fewer. The traffic (especially the profitable and quality) depends on many factors, and some are out of your control, indeed.

Keep in mind that the profitability of a website is achieved through hard and constant work, and this means that you must study hard and implement new techniques and strategies. Websites are some sort of living organisms, constantly evolving (and, apparently, operating through a ‘natural selection.’) This is the best reason and motivation you can find to update your knowledge and adapt your website to new design and usability trends. Remember that the market is never static, that competition never rests, and your customers have different needs every day.

The elements in which you should always work are as follows. First off, you should always strive to have a correct campaign segmentation. To do this, you must define the different market niches and the optimal way to reach them each and every one. Secondly, you must plan while taking into account your budget and the characteristics of each project. In this way, you will be able to impact the different aspects of your target at the optimum time in the most efficient way. Third, building a landing page is vital. Check very well the contents you post (not only in terms of its novelty and usefulness, but in terms of online reputation,) as well as the navigability of it, in particular, in relation to visits from mobile devices. Never settle for the first creative options. Do not rest until you have the best landing page: This is your best presentation before the world and your competition.