Whats is Conversion Rate Optimization?

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Any user who visits your website or app and completes the “end goal” – purchases something from your online store, fills in your contact form, or the like – is a conversion. While there are countless ways to get more users to visit your site, none of them matter if your users aren’t converting.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) works to increase the number of users that convert, getting you more value from the visitors you already have. By increasing the revenue per visitor, you’re decreasing your cost per acquisition, which will ultimately allow you to attract more customers and grow your business.

How Does Conversion Rate Optimization Work?

Imagine that your landing page received 5,000 visitors per month, and 500 of them convert. That would make your conversion rate 10%. CRO works to optimize different elements on your page (and throughout your website) to increase the number of people that convert, to drive that percentage up.

CRO generally works using experimental processes – trial and error.  A CRO professional will work with you to come up with ideas to improve certain elements on your site and then will put those ideas to the test using A/B and multivariate testing.

The best companies are constantly testing and improving their apps and sites to create an optimal experience for their users and improve conversion rates. There is practically an infinite number of improvements that you could make on any website, so you’ll need to establish your conversion metrics and set specific goals before determining the best CRO strategy for your business at any given time.

Establishing Metrics

Conversion rate optimization starts with knowing what your conversion goals are. These success metrics depend heavily on what type of business you run. For instance, if you run an online shop, then a conversion for you probably means a user makes a purchase, however, you might also measure conversions based on how many users add a specific item to their shopping cart, or how many enter in contact with your company.

Service-based businesses might measure conversions based on the number of leads your site produces, or on the number of informative downloads, while a media company might count newsletter subscriptions or pageviews as conversions.

How to Optimize

Once you know what your conversion metrics are, the next step is to identify areas in which you can improve your “conversion funnel” – or the process through which you get conversions via your site or app – to increase the total number of conversions achieved.

Begin by focusing on the part of your website that receives the most amount of traffic, or that historically has generated the largest number of conversions. These are the pages where you’ll generally see better results quicker, making them higher value areas to focus on.

Alternatively, if your site is already high performing, you might want to focus your CRO efforts on any areas of your website that are underperforming in comparison – such as a page that receives a relatively high amount of traffic, but a relatively low number of conversions. Here you’ll find the greatest room for improvement.

How to start Conversion Rate Optimization

Have you ever been on a newspaper’s website and see the same article posted twice (probably in two different sections) under two different headlines? That’s an example of A/B testing. The website is giving the user two different ways to get to the same content, to see which headline garners more clicks.

CRO works the same way. After determining which pages to optimize, you need to come up with optimization ideas and begin A/B testing. For example, if you think one photo, or one headline, will drive more clicks over another, then put your idea to the test.

If you’re at a loss, consider working with a CRO professional to get your website up to par, and improve the number of conversions – and thus the success of your business – quickly and easily.

Greg Grdodian, CEO at Reach Marketing said, “We’re very pleased to add UnReal Web Marketing to our corporate family. They’ve quickly become a respected provider, earning a stellar reputation as a leading specialist in local and national search solutions, including Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media, Web Design and E-Commerce marketing.”

“Marketers’ singular pressing need today is for profitable growth using optimal technologies. We’re excited to offer clients our combined resources and value-added technologies backed by the strong management team we’ve built together,” says Wayne Roberts, Reach Marketing’s President.

Roberts added “Working with UnReal as it becomes part of Reach Marketing’s performance marketing agency will expand our mission critical services and help us deliver key search expertise and technologies to our customers worldwide.”

David Montalvo, UnReal Web Marketing’s original founder will continue as the company’s VP, Web Marketing Services to lead its next stage of growth. He stated, “I’m very impressed with Reach Marketing’s deep technology and management bench, and the deliberate steps it has taken to become a leader in enterprise-scale technology solutions. Our position in the marketplace coupled with massive growth within search and social provides a quick path to expand the business. I’m looking forward to working with their talented team to provide innovative search solutions to its customers and help them achieve greater success.”

The new company will be known as UnReal Web Marketing, a Reach Marketing Company.

For more information about Reach Marketing and the company’s full range of data enrichment, lead generation, email marketing, database architecture, SEO/PPC, web design and sales and marketing automation solutions, contact Greg Grdodian Greg.Grdodian@reachmarketing.com or call 1.855.TO-REACH.

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About Reach Marketing

Based in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, Reach Marketing ranks among the largest independent providers of customer data platforms, full-service email marketing, and search automation solutions helping to drive web and mobile traffic and engagement for leading brands worldwide.

Reach Marketing is a customer-driven, omni-channel marketing firm fueled by best-in-class technology supported by its proprietary MARKETING AI®. Reach Customer Data Platform solutions enable marketers to acquire and retain customers using effective digital marketing channels, improving user experience through web design and full-service email marketing, data enrichment assets, CRM, marketing automation and ROI analytics. Reach customers include leading brands in the E-Commerce, Health Care, Financial Services, Wholesale, High Tech, Training, and Media industries.

Reach Marketing and MARKETING AI are registered trademarks of Reach Marketing, LLC.

However, getting penalized by Google for obvious mistakes and consequently dropping in search engine optimization (SEO) rankings could be detrimental to any given website. But in some cases, such problems occur as a result of ever changing or evolving Google algorithms. In this regard, you need to take drastic measures immediately you find out that your SEO rankings have taken a sudden tumble, or else your site will be at the risk of losing organic search obscurity. And this crucial step entails fixing the following listed six cardinal SEO mistakes:

1. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

SEO & Keyword Stuffing

Do you have the habit of using the same keywords over and over again? If so, it is time you changed your style to have your content make sense. But if you are looking to optimize your work by repeating keywords then you are in for a rude shock.

Besides discouraging visitors from reading and understanding your content, it also gives a signal to the search engine that you are trying to outsmart the algorithms. As such, Google does not really go down well with keyword stuffing.

To overcome such issues, just make good use of some online tools such as Live Keyword Analysis or rather, you can use Addme.com to establish the keyword density in your content. In this way, you can reduce the excess number of keywords to a density of about 1.5%. You can mention the keywords in the main title (if necessary), in the description, the opening paragraph and at least twice in the main body of your content. Also, ensure that the words used, sound more natural to make sense to the reader and Google in particular. This move aims at helping you in regaining the lost SEO rankings on Google.

2. Check the Speed of your Website

Website Speed Tips SEO Factors

According to the survey carried out by Gomez.com and Akamai, a good number of online users are always expecting the web page to load their work within the shortest time possible. But if it doesn’t go their way, they eventually abandon your site and move to the next. If this is one of the reasons that make your SEO ranking to go down, then it is prudent that you find the solution as soon as possible. Therefore, the only way out is to make sure that the loading time is a little bit faster through optimization of images, leveraging browser caching, activating resource compression and minifying codes.

You can, however, achieve your goal by using the free online tool such as PageSpeed Insights to determine the speed of your webpage. On the other hand, you can have a look at actionable recommendations as directed by the online tool to improve the load time speed of your website.

3. You should Never Buy Links

Website Links

It takes time for your site to achieve decent rankings in Google, Yahoo & Bing. Unfortunately, many people resort to shortcuts which lead them into problems. As a matter of fact, buying of links is one of the short-cuts that individuals turn to in a bid to make their websites successful. This is a bad idea especially if the links are coming from unreliable sources. When Google finds out, your ranking drops drastically thus taking you back to square one.

To avoid falling into such traps, never get lured into an SEO ad that is promising a lot of links with a first-page ranking at a lower price. Just ignore it to stay out of trouble. Most importantly, you need to know that links from spammy, untrustworthy websites and social media networking are likely to hurt your site as well. In fact, a number of such companies will always give you enticing stories that claim to give you protection through the creation of the link wheel or link pyramid pointing to the intermediary pages.

Even though these links might work for a while, Google evolves continuously and within no time, it might become stricter with any spam content. Likely it will lead to the closure of your webpage.

4. Become Mobile Friendly

Mobile Website

It is important to ensure that your website is mobile friendly due to Google’s idea of prioritizing mobile use. Apparently, 85% of web pages in the mobile search results follow the mobile-friendly approach. And that is why you need to join the trend in order to have a good flow of traffic.

At some point where your web pages are not responsive, most of those trying to view your content will experience difficulties. As a result, your rankings will equally be affected and the visitor inquiries and conversations will also be affected in the same way. Eventually, users will be compelled to look elsewhere once they realize your website is of no help to them when using handheld devices such as mobile phones or tablets.

5. Reduce the number of Ads on your Website

Avoid Website Ads

According to the recent changes to AdSense rules, more stringent measures are going to be in place to check on those sites which have more ads rather than the publisher provided content. So, if you feel this new rules will affect you, this is the right time to change your strategy or risk your SEO rankings to go down.

Ads seem to make a good number of users to leave your site and this causes the user experience metrics to drop. For Google, it means that your site no longer holds any value to the visitors and you are likely to get demoted. In addition to that, Ads are the main cause of ad blocking as indicated by the report published by PageFair and Adobe. Therefore, you need to minimize the number of ads on your webpage to avoid being penalized with no payoff.

6. Handle Technical Issues as soon as Possible

Website IT Issues

Problems such as poor hosting, network outages, server downtown, and slow connectivity can have a negative impact on your SEO rankings. It gets more severe if the problem is persistence whereby Google will be forced to abandon attempted crawls on the webpage within a stipulated time frame. In such a case, you need to identify the main problem and try to fix it. It may not be easy for you to establish the real cause of this issue but you need to find a way out if you want to stay in the competition. Otherwise, you can solve the problem using online tools such as Downforeveryoneorjustme or use any of the web hostings like the Liquidweb.

Let us demonstrate the real importance of social media marketing and the type of online marketing services we provide to make sure you stay ahead of the pack

Why is Social Media Important?

Let us start at the basics. AMA (American Marketing Association) describes marketing as a process or activity that has to do with the creation, communication and delivery of offerings that are valuable to customers.

Social media marketing, on the other hand, aims at building a brand and increasing its visibility by building interrelationships and communicating with potential clients. Therefore the two concepts appear to be closely related to each other.

It is undeniable that social networks are one of the world’s fastest growing sectors. But with an estimated annual growth rate of 25 percent in the next 5 years, this is certainly the right time to invest in social media in case you have not done it by now.

Examples of Social Media Networking Sites

Because of the exponential growth of the internet marketing industry, numerous social and digital media networking sites have sprung up, with each one of them having unique objectives and characteristics. Here is a brief description of a few of them:

Other social network sites of note include YouTube, Pinterest, Foursquare , Google + and Snapchat. 

Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you have a social media presence but you lack the right strategy and plan, this can have adverse effects on your business. We have developed a checklist that can help to strengthen your social media marketing strategy and streamline your internet marketing activities:

• Set your goals – Start by thinking big and then narrow it down. Ask yourself if you need to enhance customer loyalty.
• Understand your target customers. Use demographics and then look at psychographics.
• Select the digital media you will use to relate with your audience. This can be a video, podcast, blog and so on.
• Choose a Social Network Strategy. Concentrate on a network that will add value. A social network may have over one hundred million users, but it may not contribute to the objectives of your brand.
• Conduct Assessment and Testing. Determine what constitutes success for you. You must continually review your social media strategy in order to understand its effectiveness. Engaging with your audience will reveal what is effective and what is not.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

Some people might have recognized that social media marketing is what they need to connect to customers. But if you are still thinking about going into social media marketing, consider the facts below:

Social media marketing raises awareness about your brand.78 percent of small enterprises use social media to draw in new customers. Moreover, 1 out of every 3 customers has stated they use social media to find new products and services.

Social media helps in brand validation. A well structured social media presence tells customers that their brand is dynamic and focused on consumer interaction.63 percent of people who search for business on the internet are more inclined to go for the ones with a helpful social media presence.

Social media marketing can enhance customer loyalty. 71 percent of consumers who got a quick response to queries on social media platforms would endorse the brand to others.

Instagram has proven to be extremely innovative

Over time, Instagram has proved itself to be quite adaptable and innovative. For example it copied and mainstreamed the Snapchat stories’ concept, and in the process increased the number of its users by over 300 million. The platform has also been quick to adopt other functionalities, including live video and Snapchat-themed selfie filters. In addition, in the past few years, it has adopted an algorithm-based news feed just like Facebook. This gives advertisers and developers more control over what users are able to view. For businesses, Instagram’s knack for continuous reinvention will potentially pay off due to the projected steady growth of its users in future.

Whereas Facebook enjoys more reach because it has more users, Instagram is peerless when it comes to engagement a more important metric. Engagement is the extent of how the user interacts with the posted content, for example how much they share, like and comment. Research indicates that Instagram’s engagement rate is three times that of Facebook. To put these numbers in better perspective, the engagement rate of Twitter is one thirtieth that of Instagram.

The difference in engagement rates is attributable to Instagram’s visual DNA. The human brain can process visual content more efficiently, and the content is retained for longer periods when compared to text content. Even better, most of the engagements is positive because Instagram does not have a dislike’ button.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram is welcoming brand content

Facebook’s decision to control brand content came about because people complained about excessive commercialization by businesses. But on Instagram, branded content does not feel as intrusive. Basically, a beautiful image remains that way, whether it is from a company or from a friend.

From recent indications, Instagram is intensifying its support for brands. Using the explore’ tab, companies and people can connect outside their circle, and this presents limitless marketing opportunities. Instagram has also ventured into the inn-app shopping arena where businesses are able to tag products in the posts they put up on the platform.

Instagram ad tools have improved tremendously

Businesses on Instagram are now able target customers with the same precision and simplicity that made Facebook the king of targeted ads. As a result the number of advertisers, who mainly comprised of small and medium-sized businesses, increased by 100 percent last year to stand at 2 million. It is projected that Instagram’s advertising revenues will triple by the year 2019 to stand at $11 billion, which means business that get in now will be ahead of their competitors and are likely to stand out.

More advanced Instagram business tools are on the way

Recently, Instagram updated its Application Programming Interface (API), which essentially means new Instagram tools, especially those made by third parties, are on the way. Businesses will then have the capacity to post and measure results more efficiently.

A similar update in earlier times helped to turn Twitter and Facebook into critical marketing channels for businesses. User-friendly tools allowed companies to program multiple posts and measure the resultant engagement without needing to scroll through and analyze individual feeds. The new Instagram API will also be a game changer in the same manner.

However it is important to remember Facebook owns Instagram, and it still remains an important platform for companies to connect with their target audiences. Almost a third of the human race use Facebook ,and the ad revenue of Instagram is still far less than that of Facebook. But for any business that is seeking to enhance connections with its customers, it is increasingly important to adopt a complementary approach. Instagram has come of age, and its capacity to innovate and enhanced user engagement means it will continue to be an important platform in the days ahead.