CRO, A/B and Other Marketing Terms You Need to Know

Sergiy

If you are reading this because you have no idea what CRO stands for, good, I will be able to teach you something new today. If you’re reading this and you do in fact know what CRO stands for, stick around, maybe you can learn something new or perhaps comment with something new for me to learn! Either way, I will try to get you to understand what another one of these tech-abbreviations stands for and why it’s important.

conversionoptimization

What is CRO?

CRO, you might have guessed, doesn’t stand for “Crazy Radio Omelette”. CRO stands for “Conversion Rate Optimization”. Within the past few years, with the rise of eCommerce platforms, and a mass change in the way people do any of their shopping, CRO has become very important. Companies are continuously working on making their eCommerce websites capable of generating more revenue by converting individuals who are browsing the site into purchasers (optimize their conversion). If you want to learn more, these guys have an amazing blog you can check out.

Implementing CRO

There are many techniques out there to help improve your site’s conversion, but I think the main technique in determining and testing your conversion is doing A/B testing. I know what you’re thinking, more abbreviations to try and confuse you to seem like I know what I’m talking about. No, this one is pretty simple. A/B testing simply means:

  • You have a conversion that you want to test on your site (a new product’s free-trial landing page)
  • You set up two copies of your landing page that have different styling, content, etc.
  • You direct traffic to either one of the pages at random and then check the results to see which one converted at a higher rate (more form submissions)
  • You have just done some conversion rate optimization, congratulations!

ABtest

HubSpot offers great services and materials to help you familiarize yourself with inbound marketing. There is also great software our there, like Convert, to help you do A/B testing.

With personal experience working in retail, I tend to look at CRO this way:

  • A sales associate’s goal is to sell to as many people as possible that walk into your business. So the more people who buy, the higher the conversion rate is.
  • Your landing page is your sales associate on the web. It has to convince the end user to want your products. The more people that submit a CTA (call to action), the higher your conversion rate.

User Interface/Experience

UI and UX are probably terms you’ve heard if you’re a developer or a designer, but they also play a big part in CRO. Let’s be honest, you don’t want to be shopping for new clothing on a site that looks like it’s from the 90s. However, you can have the most modern looking website, and you still might not convert. This is because the end user is having difficulties using your interface. This is where you check your analytics to see where the user dropped off on their conversion path. You can then inspect particular factors of that page and try to optimize it. Heatmaps are a good indicator to see what your users are actually clicking at on your site. CrazyEgg is great in creating those, as well as other features, to determine how users are interacting with your website.

heatmap

If you are running an eCommerce business and have spent a lot of money on optimizing your content and running online ads, but still aren’t seeing the numbers you’re looking for, CRO is what you most likely need to focus on.  If you have any questions about CRO or any other terms mentioned, please contact us or leave us a comment below!

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