Sounds Complicated? 

It really isn’t. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of your website visitors who are likely to take action by modifying certain aspects that result in them converting before they leave. Converting depends on the type of business you operate, so it could be signing up for a free trial, leaving their contact information for the sales to get in contact with them or buying a product off of your ecommerce website. 

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So how exactly does it work? 

A/B testing is the name of the game. You no longer need to work based on a hunch or a personal taste. A/B testing, also known as split testing is the process of dividing your audience into 2 categories to determine which variable performs better under the same conditions such as same budget, same amount of traffic and same duration. 

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Here’s an example, you want to know if the color of your (add to cart) call to action should be changed or not. You start off by creating a different landing page with the new version and then drive traffic to both pages with the same piece of content and then measure the results. 

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Here are a few things to consider that might influence the buying behaviour: 

○ Headlines 

○ Home page video vs no video 

○ Sub categories breakdown 

○ Call to action color and copy 

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How is it calculated? 

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Case 1:

Imagine you own an ecommerce website where users can make a purchase every time they visit, this is normally how the user’s journey would go: 

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Session 1:

No purchases are made, the user is just checking out the website 

Session 2:

The user make his first purchase 

Session 3:

The user comes back and buys 2 new items but while he bought 2 times it’s still counted as one unique order. 

Number of orders / Sessions 

(2 ) x 100 66% ÷ 3 = 

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Case 2:

If you have a B2B website, where the user can perform the micro conversion only once: 

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Session 1:

User checks out the website - no action taken 

Session 2:

The user signs up or leaves his contact information for the sales department 

Session 3:

Comes back later to check the blog or to know more information 

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Since the customer can’t sign up more than once, it needs to be calculated according to the number of visitors not purchases. 

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In the example above there was one user who visited the website 3 times but signed up only once. 1 sign up 1 user = 100% conversion rate ÷ 

Conversion rate Optimization isn’t rocket science, in most cases it’s simply plain logic accompanied by a set of trials. 

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When you think about increasing your revenue, most probably you think about increasing your marketing budget and in turn increasing the number of people who convert and buy your product but this approach is called the leaky bucket, pouring more water won’t fix the problem, you’ll simply waste valuable resources. So the better approach of course is to increase the effectiveness of your website to maximize profit from the existing audience.