Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) - The Definitive Explanation

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) - The Definitive Explanation

I read many articles and viewpoints each week on the latest buzz phrase, Conversion Rate Optimisation or CRO.

Opinions differ on this subject and many of those opinions are flawed from the very moment conceived, mainly from a lack of understanding and a reckless abandonment of commercial acumen.

Some agencies have started offering this service as an offshoot of search engine optimisation or paid search marketing management. The two disciplines are closely connected that much is certain, although there are pitfalls in allowing your search agency to measure their own performance.

Conversion Rate Optimisation is not a discipline but more a mindset. I have heard it mis-represented many times. Some agencies offer the ability to vary elements of content on your website to optimise for the best conversion. This sounds like CRO on face value, but what is being described is multi-variate testing (MVT) which is a tool that can assist in CRO, but does not solve your problems in their entirety.

CRO is a human discipline that utilises online tools such as web analytics and multi-variate testing to assist in making sensible business decisions.

In one such example an SEO agency was actively offering conversion rate optimisation services which purely consisted of multi-variate testing using Google Website Optimiser. My immediate thought here was "who is devising their tests and I wonder if they are really adding value?"

Conversion Rate Optimisation touches a lot of your business. My first point of CRO is usually to save money rather than make more. For example if you have a stream of paid search traffic coming into your website which consistently doesn't convert despite your best efforts are you not better off just not attracting this traffic in the first place? This would save you money and whilst you would not have made any more sales, the sales you had made would have cost you less. This is a good example of Conversion Rate Optimisation that happens in a business brain and not inside an MVT experiment or other piece of software.

Optimising performance of any type starts with a thorough understanding of the business objectives and current levels of performance.

CRO techniques can be used to accurately measure the activities of an SEO agency. Long gone are the days of wooly reports that claim to have done your business the power of good but for some reason you just don't seem to see this in your profit & loss account.

CRO and moreover some of the real world business techniques that make this the new power of selling online hand real insight and power back to the traditional measure of profit and loss.

For any agency out there that currently doesn't have accountability for their activities and doesn't have to find justification for their fees and has never had to demonstrate how their business can add value, then the day of reckoning approaches.

Conversion Rate Optimisation is here to stay. Welcome to the world of reviewing performance on a regular basis and being accountable.

If a service wasn't adding value to my business and it provider couldn't demonstrate how it affected my key performance indicators, I wouldn't subscribe to it, full stop.

Worse than that would be the company I asked to be accountable for their fees and they somehow tried to convince me that they didn't need to.

Sorry guys. You ALWAYS need to be.

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