How to Run CRO Test Ideas for Your Business

CRO is a massively important factor in your online marketing. It not only improves profits and lead generation, but it also feeds into SEO practices and helps make your website work better, improves the image and reputation of your company or brand and helps make your website more user-friendly.

But how do you arrive at the start of a CRO campaign to the profitable end? The answer is simple, testing! Whenever you’re enacting a CRO campaign you have to know what approach you’re going to take and you can only get this if you know what elements you’re going to test.

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Today, Traffic Radius is going to arm you with five fool-proof CRO test ideas that will help your next CRO campaign drive your profits through the roof!

What is CRO?

If this is the first of our blogs that you’re reading we apologise for pulling the jargon out so early. CRO is difficult to implement but remarkably easy to understand. CRO stands for “Conversion Rate Optimisation,” and refers to the process of making improvements to a website in order to get more people within an existing audience to convert.

And as cultish as that might sound, it’s really quite harmless. To “convert” or a “conversion” is what marketers call it when a customer takes an action desired by a business. For example, if a young start-up company is looking to build awareness of its brand, they might strike out with an off-page marketing campaign, in which case the “conversion” for that campaign will be people clicking on the advertisements that they put on third-party websites.

This means that a “conversion” can be a range of things. It can be clicking an ad, making a purchase, signing up to a mailing list, sharing some content, clicking a certain button, and more!

Now that we’ve defined CRO, we can get on to these CRO test ideas that we were talking about earlier.

CRO Test Ideas

Testing is at the heart of everything in marketing. It’s a continual cycle of researching, gathering data, testing, releasing, responding to feedback, re-releasing and then doing it all over again. It’s a good idea to test just about everything to do with your website, but with that being said, here are 5 CRO test ideas that provide an effective baseline for what tests to run.

Getting Rid of Superfluous Form Fields:

Forms are a common internet feature, but there is such a thing as “less is more.” Did you know that every second a website spends loading there is a 17% loss in the chances a customer will convert? This can be translated to any time a customer spends on your website not getting anywhere.

People get frustrated when they want to do a thing but there are just constant distractions and diversions. Therefore when you have a form, it’s important to test how many fields are really necessary. Try to keep it to the bare necessities. Always test how few fields you can get away with in your forms, not how many.

Social Proof of your Services on your Landing Pages:

Your landing pages need to reflect the conversion that you’re pushing at the moment, but people will very rarely just blindly trust a company. In this information age, people are hyper aware of the data that they put on the internet and they want to know that they’re going to get what they pay for and that their information won’t be sold. Social proofs go a long way to helping add this feeling of security. “Social Proofs” may include the following:

Testimonials: Client verbatim is a precious resource, make sure that you offer an opportunity for buyers to leave feedback after every purchase. Whatever positive comments you get, stick them on your landing page in a rotating gallery for the world to see! Contrary to what people say there is such a thing as bad press, so make sure that when you get the good stuff, you’re capitalising on it!

Ratings and Reviews: Reviews are the backbone of your reputation. If you get good ones, show them off! If you get bad ones, respond with humility or viciousness depending on the situation and not only have you got social proof of your quality, but you’ve got some content as well!

Case Studies: It’s safe to say that if you’ve run a successful business then there’d be work that you’re proud of. Why keep it locked away? Don’t hide your achievements, display them! When people hit your landing page show them what they can expect from you. Remember your landing page is where the all-important first impression hits. Make it count.

Awards and Certifications: Even in this day and age of participation awards, people still respect rewards for achievements, especially in the areas of business. When people see awards or certificates displayed on a company website they are so much more likely to convert. Make sure you’re prominently displaying any relevant awards and certificates on your landing page, thus adding credence to your legitimacy in the eyes of the customer.

Secure Checkout Badge: These badges are well-known as conversion rate improvers. As we said before, security is a major factor in the thinking of all customers. They want to know that their money is safe and sound and that their transaction will be honoured. Secure checkout badges, combined with other awards and certifications all take you one step closer to assuring your customer that everything is okay.

Real-Time Popups Alerting to Purchases from Other Customers: This is a relatively recent development, but it’s no less useful. This feature creates a small, unobtrusive popup in a corner of your website that shows the person browsing the website that people are actively making purchases on it.

You may be browsing and suddenly a little rectangle in the top right saying “Such-and-such bought 11 whatevers.” And these kinds of popups, every time with different names and products, just keep popping up, never being intrusive but building one solid idea in your head – lots of people trust this company.

A/B Test Call-to-Action Buttons, Text, and Locations:

Call-to-Action (aka CTA) buttons are some of the most important design elements you can have on your page, as they allow the customer a smoother, easier transition into whatever conversion you have planned for them. There are a few things you can change with your CTA buttons, namely, colour, text, and shape. Experiment with a few variations of these, then release your favourites for A/B testing, implementing whichever one wins.

Not only this, but this kind of A/B testing may reveal that the wording of certain CTAs is more effective than some other wordings. The same is true of where the CTA button is situated on the web page. Make sure that you’re gathering data for all these variables so that you can make the most of your CTAs.

A/B Test Copy:

If you’re not sure what “copy” is, simply put, it’s any written word on your website that isn’t content such as blogs. Copy is the stuff that introduces websites to you, titles, descriptions, product descriptions, about us pages, etc. It’s always a good idea to use heatmaps to see how visitors interact with your page and the copy on it.

What are they ignoring, what are they reading? All of this data is important to improving your conversion rate. Take the copy through to your A/B tests and see what performs better.

Conduct Focus Groups and Online Tests:

The last of these CRO test ideas is very traditional and is one of the oldest forms of market research around. Focus Groups are tried and tested methods of getting audience opinions, and the reason it’s been around for so long is because it works.

Offering some small payment for people to test your products or website and directly tell you what does and doesn’t work is priceless. Add in the fact that these days focus groups can be put together, tested, and the data gathered all online and it gets even more appealing!

Traffic Radius, the Kings of Conversion Rates

Traffic Radius is a Melbourne-based marketing agency offering some truly wondrous CRO services. Not only do we have decades of experience in the industry, as well as an incredible team, and a gigantic roster of clients, but our CRO packages are custom tailored to every client, and our service is both professional and friendly! You won’t find service like us anywhere else! Contact us today at this page, or call us on 1300 870 901.