Boosting Ecommerce Conversion Rates With Five Simple Elements
Conversion Optimization 6 min read
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Home Blog Conversion Optimization4 Steps to Success: A Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist for 2022
Conversion Optimization 6 min read
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Conversion Optimization 5 min read
Old digital marketing strategies won’t cut it in 2022 to increase conversion rates and widen the gap between you and your competitors.
To-that-end and for working closer towards truly understanding your online audiences, you will need a conversion optimization checklist to guide your strategies.
But talking about conversion rate optimization (CRO) and achieving those goals is much easier compared to getting it done. Even for the most seasoned CRO expert, understanding the online audience thoroughly can be quite the elusive chase. This leads to beginners in the craft doubting if they even have a chance to build towards that on their own.
To that, we answer: Yes, you definitely can. Apart from lengthy readings and modeling after conversion rate optimization experts, one way you can do it is simply arming yourself with a trusty conversion optimization checklist. That, we provide in the content below; a conversion optimization process checklist developed and refined by a digital marketing company in the Philippines specializing in the craft.
Study it well and apply it step-by-step so you can see more growth in your online conversions.
“Conversion optimization” sounds straightforward enough. Isn’t it essentially just increasing conversions for businesses? And yes, the elite conversion optimizers at CXL will agree with that.
In fact, the exact definition of conversion optimization on their website says:
Conversion optimization – when done right – is a systematic way to convert browsers into action takers (leads, buyers). It’s about making more money and growing the business without investing additional resources into acquisition.
Peep Laja, Conversion Optimization Expert and Founder of CXL
However, if you look into what drives those “browsers” to convert into “action takers”, as Peep describes, you’ll realize that it goes beyond that. Ultimately, to be able to convert someone from becoming a casual viewer to actually taking relevant action is an understanding of what makes them tick and compels them to act.
That said, you can also define CRO in this way:
Conversion optimization is a process of marketing to audiences that aims to:
Sounds complex, we know. But let’s take that definition and add further context by now tackling what conversion optimization isn’t.
What conversion optimization isn’t
On the other hand, you’ll have to note that conversion optimation isn’t a templatable practice.
So while we are providing you with a checklist, the extent and scope of its application will have to be tailored to fit your audiences’ and business’ current needs. Because one-size-fits-all strategies are not something you can expect in conversion optimization and digital marketing, in general.
Remember that the only constant thing is change and alongside the shifts in online trends, will come evolving audience needs and desires. And it’s important that your CRO strategies and processes remain systematic, adaptable, and scalable so that they remain effective.
Below are the main milestones you should accomplish to conduct some basic conversion optimizations for your websites. Along with descriptions, you’ll find high-level processes that you should conduct, should you wish to bolster your conversion optimization efforts:
You’ll hear us say again and again that you will need to be a data-driven digital marketer so you can guarantee the efficiency of your online efforts. This especially applies when seeking to increase conversions with CO.
So you shouldn’t be surprised if the first step we advise you to take in optimizing for conversions is research. Conducting a thorough investigation into the various factors affecting your business is one of the fundamental elements of conversion optimization.
This is where your audits come into play. And being as thorough as possible will be critical to developing a conversion optimization strategy that’s guaranteed to work.
To make sure that you’re not overlooking anything, here are the key areas you’ll need to inspect:
These are audits done on your own infrastructure, strategies, executions, or other dimensions of your digital marketing framework that’s relevant to your conversion optimization goals. And then, accordingly, review your performance with respect to your targets.
This assessment will allow you to identify loopholes you will need to fill in during the optimization. Here, you’ll have to perform the hard job of becoming your own devil’s advocate and ask yourself hard questions, like:
This is a fundamental skill for any marketer – beginner or seasoned practitioner. As marketers, you are expected to make customer research a habit. And it’s done mainly to gain insight on how you can nudge them closer to converting – be it from audience to customer, or customer to a brand advocate.
But since this is a regular routine, the best question you should be asking right now is: How can you conduct better customer research?
There are a ton of methods for market research you can use for this, and whichever you choose to go with will depend once again on how it makes sense for your business and customers.
For instance, here in the Philipines where we still outrank the rest of the world in terms of social media usage, market research is best done through those platforms. To get the best feel of the market in the Philippines, you can explore techniques such as social monitoring or social listening.
Finally, one thing to add to your customer research arsenal is the ability to do a conversion funnel review which you can achieve with the help of analytics and other digital marketing tools.
A conversion funnel review is a look specifically into the customer journey – the steps they take online and offline prior to taking actions relevant to the goals you establish.
Understanding your unique customer journey will allow you to communicate to your audiences more effectively, in the context of forwarding your conversion optimization prospects.
Following your customer research is a look into your competitors’ strategies and executions.
A thorough inspection into how they’re marketing to their unique audiences and the audiences you share will help you form an opinion on:
With those in mind, you’ll have to be careful and mind what you’re dismissing based on your own biases, versus what you’re acknowledging. Keeping your head level, and your views objective and impartial will help you craft logical strategies to overtake them.
By the time you’ve wrapped up your research, you should already have the information you need to develop an educated guess at what you’re doing right versus what you’re doing wrong. This educated guess, or your hypothesis, is a prediction that forms the basis of the solutions you’ll be proposing, implementing, and testing.
In the CO process, a hypothesis consists of three parts:
This is a clear statement that describes the exact nature of the problem you’re faced with. In digital marketing where customer touchpoints are endless, these problems can come in overwhelming quantities.
Faced with a handful of problems at a time, how do you determine which ones to prioritize? At Propelrr we do this by plotting it in a hypothesis prioritization framework you’ll see below.
After defining the problem, a proposed solution naturally follows. This proposed solution clearly describes the change you want to achieve and how you can work towards achieving it.
Let’s look back on the hypothesis prioritization framework above. In the first hypothesis regarding a problem with content, the proposed solution to declining SERP performance is “publishing regular and relevant content on [the] Propelrr blog.”
With your expertise and of the digital marketing landscape, it should be easy for you to formulate proposed solutions you can test and prove (or disprove) the effectiveness.
Expected results are the results your solution hopes to bring about. In the case of our previous example, the expected result is of course the phrase “will increase SERP performance.”
A complete and clear hypothesis statement will prove to be very helpful not just in identifying the actions you need to take, but also in how you can prioritize with respect to the needs of your business. More importantly, it also directs how you are going to assess the effectiveness of the solutions you put in place.
You can learn how the prioritization goes in the images below.
After identifying the issues you need to address in order to optimize for boosted conversions, it’s now time to build your strategies and solutions.
We would like to reiterate at this point that there’s no cookie-cutter strategy that exists for conversion optimization strategy. And if you do happen to be marketed one, then you’ll have to question if it’s really effective for your business and customers.
In that regard, instead of giving you a step-by-step guide on optimization, here are some best practices we mix and combine as the situation necessitates.
It’s not a little-known fact that an optimized UX design benefits conversion-driving efforts immensely.
In fact, it’s for this reason that, whenever there is a problem in conversions, it’s almost always the first aspect of your website you’ll look into. It’s also the reason why there is an entire conversion on conversion-centered design where specific principles should be followed.
These principles you should take note of and implement completely are:
Create websites that help lead you closer to your conversion goals. Learn about conversion-centered design techniques.
Product messaging is the “description, meaning, relevance, and value of a product or service.” And while it’s true that a good product will sell itself, weak product messaging can end up watering down how great it is.
Do justice to your products and services by refining your messaging on your website. Doing so will augment your frictionless user experience, and persuade your customers to convert. You can optimize your product messaging by making sure it appropriately fulfill the following criteria:
Your brand customers don’t exist in a bubble in the digital space. It’s far from it, in fact.
With their numerous touchpoints online, optimizing your user experience and product messaging might not always be enough to win you those conversions. If that’s the case, you’ll have to look into optimizing your other online channels.
These channels in an all-around digital marketing framework can include but are not limited to social media, mobile apps, and email.
To optimize these channels to bolster your website conversions, can follow these quick tips when conducting communications campaigns:
Conversion optimization doesn’t end at simply sending out an optimized website to the online world. Once again, we emphasize that the true goal of your conversion optimization efforts is to understand the true identity of your audiences – current, or yet to be reached.
But to get closer to that true understanding we’re talking about, you will have to continually test and evaluate your efforts. Why? Because whether the efforts work to your greatest advantage or flop, those are both clues that help you develop that understanding.
If you insist on looking at it from a revenue-driven perspective, then the same argument still applies (if not assert fully its overarching nature). It is only through this rigorous testing and evaluation process that you will be able to identify which execution is more ideal for bringing in revenue while cutting your costs.
In testing and evaluating your efforts, you’ll have to: first, arm yourself with the right tools for conversion optimization, and; second, know exactly what clues to look for.
The clues we’re referring to in this context are the relevant conversion optimization metrics. With the handful of metrics you can look at on Google Analytics alone, keeping in mind these metrics will help you stay focused and zero in on the metrics that really matter in increasing conversions:
Ensuring that you tick off the four elements of this checklist will get you started in a basic structure for making use of conversion optimization for your business. The structure this checklist provides, combined with these important takeaways, will help you sky-rocket your conversions as much as it did for the clients we’ve helped:
Did this checklist help you flesh out a conversion optimization approach for your business or do you have your own list of must-haves for your CO?
Leave a comment, or reach out to the Propelrr team for more tips on how to boost your CO efforts.
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