Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is about refining the content, design, and every single display feature that tantamount to converting users into buyers and followers. CRO may include tweaking the sales copy or layout of a web page or PPC ad to maximize its outreach and yield a higher return on investment.
By Zeeshan Khalid
The online businesses need conversions in the shape of sales, revenue, signups, or subscribers to survive in the market. A news or magazine website may be looking after increasing traffic as they are concerned with page impressions to spread the word, but an eCommerce website may want users to take actions as well. So, online stores have to narrow down their outreach so that only those users visit the website who are more likely to convert.
Optimizing a website for high conversion is a continuous experience of improving the entire purchase process. It may start right from the website design and structure, and may lead to web presentation in search engines, either that is done organically or through PPC ads. But, it may also include a procedure for recovering lost sales. You may successfully optimize snippets for higher click-through rate, but fail to compel users in checking out for products.
The follow-up procedure is as important as the PPC campaigns. Suppose, you spend money on advertising, which brews some qualified leads, but they end with incomplete sales. The entire effort of dragging users from search engine goes in vain. One of the effective follow-up procedures includes setting up abandoned cart reminders. The WordPress users can get the benefit of WooCommerce Recover Abandoned cart plugin that reminds the users about their incomplete purchases. Merchants can configure settings and offer discounts to encourage users in finishing their abandoned carts. This may go parallel to your advertisement campaigns, because if you are driving relevant users, but they are not converting into customers, the entire campaign seems to be a failure.
Pay per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the effective marketing methodologies that allow merchants to target users according to what they search over the internet. It requires the sellers to promote landing pages against the primary keywords to show-up in search engines above the fold in sponsored area. Webshop managers, administrators, and marketers can set up PPC ad campaigns according to their conversion goals and brew desirable results. To help you successfully run PPC advertising campaigns, I am sharing some of the valuable CRO tips as follows.
Define the conversions you need to achieve
Every business is concerned about increasing sales and revenue, but most of them forget to track other conversions as well. Getting orders on a landing page is surely among the major conversions, but you also need to define either to evaluate the number of email sign-ups, user account creation, and the addition of products to wish-lists.
The conversion optimization is not limited to improving sales figure, but to evaluate other actions that are leading a user to become a customer. You can define various conversions that may allow you to refine them as well.
Configure remarketing strategies
Remarketing strategy is the charm of online advertisement. It retargets the users who are interested in your products or services, searching for them, but unable to make the purchase decisions. Converting the interested users is easier than reaching out to new ones and compelling them to do the purchases.
Google Adwords is powered by the technology that allows you to remarket products by creating segmented lists for the pages the users have visited. There are better ways to classify various landing pages by its users for better outreach.
Compose ads as a representative of landing pages
The PPC ads represent an entire landing page just above the search results. The users may find your ads against a keyword. If your ad is promoting product relevant to that specific keyword, but the ad is driving users to a category page, you may lose the customers. First of all, the users will get an impression as you are deceiving him or her by showing an ad of a product but loading an entire category. And, secondly, they will not bother to search for the exact product in the category list.
Managing PPC campaigns may require you to get maximum in return, but if the users are not landing on a desirable page, they may quit the website without giving it another thought.
Thoroughly test different aspects of ads
Carrying tests to report figures without taking actions is useless. A manager who is critical to increasing the conversion rate must adhere to the testing principles. There are plenty of factors that may need to be changed, removed, or modified for better results. So, thoroughly test different components of the ads and call to action, suggest actions, and follow up the process towards improvement.
Configure usability of the landing pages
An advertising campaign may be driving targeted users to the landing pages, but they will fail to convert is they unable to understand the checkout process. Usability of a landing page has an utmost importance in directing users to take an action. A landing page is designed to educate the user about a product or service and make the checkout process smooth and easy. The ads will not bring you fruitful results if the users are not getting where to place orders.
Invest in Special Offers
Promoting products without offering discount pricing and special offers is somewhat necessary for online shopping. The eCommerce websites that showcase unique and distinct products can continue selling without subsidizing pricing whereas, the stores dealing in routine products or services are considered to offer deals.
The online buyers are more interested to place orders when products are on sale. It has become a common user behavior to delay purchases until the store offer deals. So, your potential users may be waiting to avail the special offers to become loyal customers. Take into consideration the promotional advertising approach to communication special deals in PPC ads as well.
Identify and Add Negative Keywords to Ads
Pay per click advertising may cost you a lot of money if you are receiving traffic for the keywords that are not an exact match to the products you promote. Most of the managers add most of the keyword variation to bring in more traffic and have more conversions. They fail to achieve a speculated conversion rate because the traffic from matching but not relevant keywords does not convert.
For example, a PPC ad may include keywords like Denim Jeans, Women Jeans, etc. Now, the term ‘Denim Jeans’ may make the male users click the ad, they find it upon landing the page and quit the store. You spend the money; get the traffic, but not a conversion. To prevent such a waste of money, advertising managers can identify such terms and phrases to include them in the negative keyword list. It will help you narrow down the targeted audience and utilize the advertising budget in a decent way.
Make most out of the call to action button
Call to action is the core destination that every merchant want a user to click and proceed to purchases. Being the first step towards conversion, it is crucial to test, modify, and refine. Start with customizing the CTA button of your ads with the most proven phrases like ‘Buy Now’, ‘Avail Free Trial’, etc. the users have varying behavior towards different calls to action.
The effectiveness of each call to action depends on your business model and the community you need to reach. Keep testing the variation of text and evaluating the results to stay with the most effective one.
The CTA button is also crucial to personalize with text color, type, and size. There is a deep psychology behind the usage of colors for the calls to action. Select a color that is in line with the front end design and common user behavior. You can also test small to medium and large button sizes to make the calls more appealing and attention-grabbing.
PPC ads make a huge impact in driving your qualified leads rather than bringing inappropriate users to ponder over your eCommerce website and manipulate the bounce rate. By defining your conversion goals and optimizing the CTAs, you can bring in more revenue to your enterprise. The professional marketers do incorporate branding strategies into the paid search traffic. It helps the users to remember the business name regardless of either they do the purchases or not. Optimizing ads for high conversion is a continuous struggle. In addition to the tips I have shared above in this post, you can try and test new ones.
Zeeshan Khalid is a Web Architect, an eCommerce Specialist and an Entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of FME Addons, a leading e-commerce web design and development agency. Over the years, FME Addons has successfully delivered projects in WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla, Magento and other CMS/shopping cart platforms. You can find him on the LinkedIn.
CRO stock photo by Olivier Le Moal/Shutterstock
