By Melanie Williams, CRO director of Resolution Digital
In today’s fiercely competitive digital landscape, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) has emerged as an essential strategy for marketers—not just as a performance enhancer but as a critical tool to maximise Return on Investment (ROI). The significance of CRO cannot be overstated, particularly when every click and digital interaction holds the power to shape business outcomes.
Melanie Williams, CRO director at Resolution Digital, explains why CRO is a crucial element of the marketing puzzle, how it aligns with overarching business objectives, and how avoiding common pitfalls can lead to substantial returns.
For context: A conversion rate is determined by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of website views. For instance, if you receive three conversions from 100 visitors, your conversion rate is 3%. Generally, a good website conversion rate falls between 2% and 5%, with anything above 5% considered strong by industry standards for conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
Aligning Objectives with Business Goals
The humble business website has dramatically evolved in the past decade, from a nice to have digital presence, to an essential lead generation powerhouse. Not so long ago, store presence was the leading sales platform for many businesses, whereas now, potential customers are willing to buy even a brand-new car online.
This makes the continuous refinement of your customer’s online experience a critical element in the marketing portfolio. The most impactful strategies are those directly aligned with the company’s broader business objectives. This alignment ensures that every test, adjustment, and optimisation effort contributes to overarching goals, such as increasing market share, enhancing customer lifetime value, or boosting profitability.
Ensuring the CRO strategy is closely aligned to business goals will mean that every optimisation initiative will contribute to improving business results.
The Importance of Clear Objectives
CRO involves continuously testing, refining, and optimising the user experience to boost conversions. Williams emphasises that the establishment of clear, measurable objectives is fundamental to a successful Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy. In their absence, initiatives may become fragmented and yield suboptimal outcomes.
A robust CRO strategy starts by identifying the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) most relevant to the business, whether that’s lead generation, sales, or customer retention. Once you understand the steps the user needs to take to increase these KPIs, you can then understand what metrics you need to improve to make this journey more effective.
“Too often we see clients focusing on the broad objectives – I want to increase sales – without understanding the importance of drilling down to examine the journey a user takes to get there. Yes, CRO aims to increase those end-point conversions, but more often than not, it is the fine tuning of the user journey that makes the biggest impact.”
Each test or optimisation initiative should simply the user journey, making it easier for them to complete the final transaction. Can you remove a form field to make it easier to complete a lead form? Do you get more sales from customers who visit the product information page before adding to cart? If so, how can we get more visitors to go to the product page first?
In alignment with Resolution Digital’s Evolution framework, effective CRO strategies embody the pillars of Maximise, Adapt, and Evolve. By maximising the impact of each optimisation through data-driven insights, adapting strategies to meet evolving user behaviours, and continuously evolving the approach based on real-time results, businesses can achieve sustained growth and exceptional ROI.
“We partnered with a leading university to transform their customer journey through a comprehensive CRO strategy. By leveraging our evolution model, we identified key areas for optimisation, implemented advanced analytics, and personalised user experiences. This strategic approach not only enhanced user engagement but also significantly improved conversion rates, aligning with our commitment to driving measurable business outcomes for our clients.”
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Despite its potential, CRO can be mishandled, leading to missed opportunities. Williams notes that a frequent mistake is treating CRO as an ad-hoc task, rather than part of an iterative, data-driven process. Certain organisations engage in Conversion Rate Optimisation as a series of sporadic, isolated experiments rather than embracing it as a comprehensive, structured process. This fragmented approach often yields minimal results and can lead these businesses to underappreciate the substantial benefits that effective CRO practices can offer over the long term.
Another common pitfall identified by Williams is the lack of adequate resources or expertise assigned to optimisation efforts. True optimisation success requires a multidisciplinary team, including UX designers, data analysts, developers, and digital strategists. Without the right talent and tools in place, organisations may struggle to see real results, those that come from, not only the “Winning” tests, but also extracting and utilising insights that come from so-called “failed” initiatives.
In Summary
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so too must the strategies employed by businesses. CRO is no longer a “nice to have” but a critical component of any effective digital marketing strategy. By setting clear objectives, aligning them with business goals, and avoiding common pitfalls, organisations can unlock the true potential of CRO to drive significant ROI.
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Top image: Melanie Williams