Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is an internet marketing term that describes the rate at which visitors to a website become clients or customers. CRO statistics are calculated by working out the percentage of unique visitors that make up a site’s total web traffic who actually go on to purchase a product or service.
Example: If you have 100 visitors and 3 of them end up buying a product from you, your CRO is calculated at 3%.
Here are some reasons why increasing CRO is so critical to the success of online retail companies.
Increase in Digital Marketing Costs
It is not a secret that digital marketing costs are on the rise. Consequently, it is becoming more and more important to get bang for your buck with regard to what you are spending. There is little point in investing heavily in increasing web traffic when only a small percentage of visitors end up becoming customers. If you already have a healthy click-through rate, concentrate on cashing in on the successful marketing strategies that are already bringing a number of people to the site. If you are unsure how to do this, there are a whole host of conversion rate optimisation services available to guide you through the process.
Hikes in Costs of Pay-per-Click
Services like Google Adwords calculate the costs to be paid for their advertising based on the number of times a link is clicked. In recent times, the incredible demand for Google’s services has allowed the company to slowly but surely raise the amount it charges for every click. For online retailer who use the Adwords service, this means the CRO is becoming a crucial means of counteracting the increasing costs of pay-per-click advertising that they are facing.
Fierce Competition
The exponential growth rate of online shopping shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. The world of online retail can be brutally competitive, with some of the big industry names doing all that they can to squeeze out the competition and eliminate the smaller retailers. The websites of retail giants like Amazon and Alibaba attract consumers to their sites in their droves through smart advertising campaigns and then keep them there with sophisticated CRO strategies. With such an intense battle being fought for consumer dollars, it is imperative your website looks good and is intuitive to use in order to keep the attention of your hard-earned visitors long enough for them to buy something from you. It might not make a lot of sense at first, but having a product finder on your website will turn the dynamics of navigation into a pleasant process of going through. Right there is when customers are stolen, which is why optimizing your online shop or website is such an important phase of the entire system of marketing and business growth.
Falling Consumer Attention Span
The proliferation of social media has had an enormous effect on the way that most people use the internet in the last few years. In spite of the many marketing opportunities it has brought to the table for businesses, the average individual has been drastically reduced due to the vast amounts of information that they are forced to sift through while browsing social media sites. In the event that a visitor lands on your page, you are probably only going to have a few seconds before they lose interest or attention before they move on. CRO can help you keep them in one place just long enough to decide to buy a product or contract one of your services.
The specific elements of a website that make people decide part with their hard-earned cash are complicated. As a result, CRO is quickly becoming recognised as a crucial tool in online retail. Done correctly, it can save you a lot of money on your marketing budget and could be the difference between the success and failure of your retail business in the long term.
