Why CRO is the Linchpin in Your Marketing (Part 2 of 6)
E-commerce store owners are scrambling. They’re doing everything they can think of to boost sales. They’ve thrown their money in every direction imaginable – marketing, technology, design, content, SEO, social – all to reach their target market and convert them into customers.
But here’s the problem. Even though sales are on the rise, they don’t know what’s working and what’s not!
Was it the updated homepage design? Their new marketing messaging? The addition of live chat? Their simplified checkout process?
They may have an idea. A hunch. An inkling.
But that’s no more concrete than a somewhat educated guess.
For all they know, some of their so-called “improvements” could even be working against them…
Consistent Guessing Doesn’t Translate to Consistent Success
Unless you’re doing conversion rate optimization (CRO) and advanced analytics, it’s almost impossible to know what’s working. And you definitely won’t know how to continue improving the things that are working for you.
You may know at a high level. You may notice that time on your site is high, bounce rate is low, and mobile traffic is up. But what do these things really mean?
What can you really do with those numbers?
You know the what, but you don’t know the why and the why is what brings massive success.
Data can be overwhelming, so most people take the basics, the high level data, and make guesses based on that. Those guesses might even pay off once. Maybe twice.
But they won’t pay off every time.
That’s the killer. You can’t have repeated success by guessing. You can only have consistent success by measuring and improving.
What a Small Improvement Could Mean for Your Bottom Line
CRO protects your bottom line. It stops a bad decision from snowballing into something truly awful that could kill your business.
CRO also safely and systematically improves your bottom line. It tells you exactly what worked so you can keep doing it and learn to do it even better.
With CRO, you are not just changing a bunch of random stuff. You have a controlled amount of variables, and you can directly attribute changes in your conversion rate to those variables.
How Website Owners Should Connect CRO with their Marketing
Pop Quiz:
Which of the following metaphors most accurately describes what CRO is to your marketing?
- A supplement, like a multivitamin or protein shake. Healthy and helpful, but not crucial.
- An add-on, like a roll bar and fog lights on a pickup truck. Something only the most souped-up trucks have.
- A modern fuel injection system that boosts a car’s engine performance, efficiency and reliability. A must have.
You guessed it – number 3’s the one!
CRO is an underlying discipline capable of improving your marketing by identifying and refining what works, and weeding out what doesn’t. This way, you know what activities to focus on moving forward to consistently improve your marketing, your website, and your business.
CRO Goes Deeper than Marketing
Still need more convincing? CRO isn’t just about learning how to better convert leads that come in to your website. It can help to drive or even redefine your company culture.
Ever heard of the HiPPO rule? When a decision needs to be made, everyone should bow down to the “highest paid person’s opinion,” regardless of how informed or uninformed that opinion – or person – may be.
If this is how marketing decisions are made in your company, think again.
Conversion Rate Optimization is the opinion equalizer. All opinions go into the proverbial hopper, where they’re proven or disproven in a controlled environment.
And who ultimately has the control? The customer.
Instead of blindly following the opinion of the marketing director, CMO, CEO or another suit who may be disconnected with what the customer wants, doesn’t it make sense to let the customer show you the best way to improve conversion rates?
CRO has nothing to do with titles, salaries or egos. CRO lets the customer take the wheel and tell you what works for them. With this data, you can make better decisions and make more money.
And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
