Advanced Tips & Tactics for Conversion Rate Optimization

There are a lot of ways to conduct conversion rate optimization (CRO) testing. In this article I want to give you some advanced CRO tips and tricks to get the most out of your conversion testing to increase your revenue.

Optimize For Revenue Vs. Just Conversion

Increasing your conversion when conducting CRO is always a primary objective, but increasing revenue should be what you are after.

One paradigm shift you must be aware of is you can actually decrease conversion and as a result increase revenue.

How is that you ask?

This can happen when you increase your prices.

An example would be, say you are selling shoes online. When 100 people visit your website you are converting 5% of them into costumers. Your average shoe cost is $50, therefore every 100 people that visit your website you are making $250.

Related: 9 CRO Facts That Will Convince You to Use It [VIDEO]

If you were to raise your price point to $100 per pair of shoes and your conversion rate went down to 3% for every 100 website visitors, you would now make $300. As a result, you have increased revenue by 20% by raising the price.

Case and point, when optimizing for conversion, you always want to pay attention to revenue. Price testing for ecommerce is a great CRO test for your product webpages.

A/B Testing Vs. Multivariate

A lot of advanced users of conversion rate optimization platforms love to run multivariate tests.  I’ve heard reasoning, “…because they are more efficient” and “…you can test more elements of the page at once.”

Here are some reasons to consider A/B testing instead.

For one, A/B tests are less time intensive to set up and launch and can be more efficient for conducting multiple tests at once. For instance, A/B tests take less traffic to hit statistical relevance.

Also, when you are testing everything at once, how do you attribute increased conversion or even better increased revenue to an exact element you are testing? Basically how do you know what element in the multivariate test is moving the needle in the most effective manner? On the other hand, how do you know that while some of the elements are increasing conversion, which might be holding the conversion rate back from its full potential?

Related: Basic CRO – Page Elements & Testing Opportunities 

The short answer is you can’t. This is why A/B testing can lead to more measureable results in the long run and be easier to interpret as well and give attribution to the gains in conversion rate.

Dream Big With Your CRO Changes

I’ve often seen this misstep in the way CRO practitioners approach their CRO tests. Some CRO specialists tend to create more finite tests and collect only the low hanging fruit opportunities. In theory that sounds like a good strategy, but let’s examine this closer.

An example of this would be making small changes to title and sub-title copy to improve Calls-To-Action (CTAs). Strong messaging will improve conversion, maybe in the ballpark of 5%, 10%, 15%, and even 20%. These are big wins, right?

Well, define big wins…

What if you had the opportunity to increase conversion by 50% to 120%? This mindset in CRO testing means moving away from micro gains and taking big swings on drastic changes to your website.

A drastic change could be replacing your “how your service works” webpage copy with an easy to read infographic. I’ve seen a study where a SaaS company had increased their form sign-ups by 3X using this tactic.

The end result was this one drastic change made up for dozens of micro tests to hit a 300% increase on the sign-up form.

Never Stop Testing

While this might not sound like an advanced CRO tip, the vast majority who participate in CRO testing never test the same page twice after they have gotten a positive conversion rate increase.

CRO is a long-term commitment. If you use a systematic approach and test and measure the efficiencies from once page to the next in your funnel, you can consistently increase conversion.

Building the perfect mousetrap is an ongoing labor of love. It will never be perfect put it is the pursuit of perfection that makes you stronger as a CRO expert.

Remember That People Digest Content Differently

In the age of audio books, we are seeing many people switching to listening vs. reading. This is for many reasons, including convenience. However, we must not discount some people are visual learners and others are audio.

This goes for websites as well.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 

Some visitors enjoy different mediums to understand your offering. Whether it is a video, infographic, etc. consider other sources to convey your offering.

According to organizational housewares e-tailer stacksandstack.com reported visitors were 144% more likely to purchase after seeing a product video on their website.

Keep In Mind That Last Week’s Visitors Are NOT The Same As This Week’s Visitors

Looking closely at your data conversion is key, especially over a timeline.

Conversions can increase and decrease with seasonality or even days of the week.

Understanding the days, weeks, and months that convert the most for you is paramount to your CRO efforts.

It will be typical to see results that look like a 5% conversion one week, 2% conversion the next, and an 8% conversion the week after. Not in that same sequence but more the fluctuation week-over-week in conversion rate.

This phenomenon explains why you never want to “before and after test.”

Before and after testing is when you measure conversion rates for one week make strategic changes to the webpage then, run the test the week after and make more changes based on what you observed. Some CRO strategists think this aggressive approach moves the needle in conversion faster from the constant testing.

When in fact, these kinds of tests cannot be trusted due to the new visitors coming to the website and the variation of that traffic quality that is never constant.

Closing Thoughts

Here are five advanced techniques you can leverage to get more out of your CRO. I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of our advanced CRO tips series. For more advanced CRO tactics, checkout Part 2 here.

Also, join the conversation and leave your thoughts below.