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The competitive nature of digital marketing results in a few basic skills you need as a marketer. These skills have become the foundation of how online marketing works. You should know what they are and why they’ve developed.
Conversion rate optimization is among the list of skills you need to acquire.
There are three important pieces to this term, and each can be separated by the three words in CRO. Conversions are the actions taken by your leads.
We rate those actions based on a special ratio that you’ll discover here. Optimization is a broader term that covers the work you do to boost your web platform online.
These three forces create conversion rate optimization and bring online brands to the competitive grounds of marketing. Keep reading to learn how.
Table of Contents:
Intro to CRO
Let’s talk about what conversions are. Think of what it means to set a goal. We’re looking at this from the perspective of a good online business idea - businesses or agencies seeking to expand their online presence.
The goal we have in mind is something the consumer achieves. You have to set that goal, or it won’t get accomplished.
Examining the actions readers need to take is how you strategically put those actions into place. There are many things you can request from them. Bloggers, for example, look at the actions readers take like how long they were on a page, how many pages they visited, and if they clicked any links going out.
Here are a few more concepts that get achieved as online conversions:
Forms 
Filling out an online form requires an email address. That action being taken by your readers enables you to collect addresses. These forms are called opt-in forms.
JotForm
JotForm could help you with building up forms or surveys to better measure the number of visitors to your website and use it to shape it up.
With the collected data from your audience, you could create approval flows to use time efficiently. Let’s say the visitor rates your website below a certain point, you could send an automated email to ask how you could improve.
Shares
Social media accounts gain higher ranking when people, who’re active on social media, are engaged with your content. The share option is a strong indicator of rank. You can request your followers to share your content, and the more they do, the farther your message spreads.
Purchases
Of course, buying is a strong conversion option. The request to buy can be put into the form of a call-to-action. Being strategic about how you make that request and where you place it are factors that increase purchase conversions.
Opens
You might be sending emails or are guest blogging, and you want your readers to enter a page that they can’t without opening an email or following a link. This is an objective that’s also labeled as a conversion.
Here’s a Look at How to Calculate Conversions as a Rate
The rate of conversions is simple as long as you enjoy basic math. All conversion rates begin with a population. This population enables you to collect a specific number. Let’s say you have an email list of roughly 10,000 people. You earn points in your favor for everyone who opens an email from you.
How Many Favors Did You Earn?
You later find that 3,400 people opened the emails you sent from a total of 10,000 addresses. Your analytics then show that roughly 1,500 people followed the link you posted in your email message. This example gives us conversion rates.
The first conversion is calculated against the initial population of 10,000.
Out of 10,000, only 3,400 have opened the email to read it.
This is a conversion rate of 34 percent, and it’s considered a healthy, high ratio.
Your second ratio in this example is rated through 1,500 people who followed the link from the 3,400 people that opened the email. This ratio stands at 44 percent.
You calculate the rate by dividing the number of people that achieved a conversion versus the total number of people who were given the option to.
Why Conversions (CRO) are so Important
Understanding how conversions work is important to creating the right strategy. What doesn’t work in online marketing versus what does is based on strategy.
Some concepts go more in-depth than others. You need to be a couple if not a hundred steps ahead of the consumer.
The current generation of marketers faces the most advanced consumer ever. Understanding how they’re likely to behave enables you to place content and calls-to-action for the highest conversions.
Know how people are likely to see your content and why they benefit by taking the actions you set.
You Can Do a Lot With Free Tools
Getting conversions for your brand invites you into a competitive industry. It would help to begin with a few tools to make your work complete and to stand above the market noise. Take a look at the examples below for starters.
#1. HotJar
Hotjar is how you gain analytical feedback on your work. The objective of this software is to better understand who your mobile visitors are and what they’re doing. Your account will even come with infrared tools (heat mapping - see pic below) that enable you to see what on your pages people look at the most.
Additional tools include visual controls, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analysis, and feedback polls. These are helpful when you’re managing conversions that have costs associated with them. Those costs are often in the form of a payment for an ad. The more you learn with tools like HotJar, the more efficient your spending.
#2. Speed and Uploading Time
Speed is the rate at which your hosted website loads. This isn’t software within itself, but you should understand some interesting data that Google collected recently about top free web hosts and hosting in general.
The agency found that the threshold for successful e-commerce is about three seconds. If your website doesn’t upload within that time frame, visitors start to leave. Your mission begins by ensuring that your site is mobile friendly and that it’s clear of excess pages.
#3. Optimizely
This platform is about testing. Marketers often relate this to A/B testing where at least two forms of the same content class are tested to see which is more productive.
This also happens in order to see if the content you developed will draw an audience's attention. Optimizely uses funnel conversions, risk mitigation, and a “test and learns system” designed to send out experiments that cut down on your guesswork
Final Thoughts
Don’t let the world of online marketing overwhelm you. There are many tools and strategies to use. You need help in leveraging your brand and getting it known. Start by understanding conversions and using this guide. The CRO of any business is important and is a leading factor for success on the web.
