There are over 1.7 billion websites hosted on the internet. With so many businesses relying on their online portal to stay afloat, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is vital.

Once you’ve nailed SEO, it’s critical to convert visitors to your website otherwise all the effort and money you spend getting them there is for nought.

That hurts!

To cheer you up, consider this: customers that don’t convert are your most important customers – they show you where CRO is needed.

Because the digital landscape evolves, marketers need to intermittently tweak web strategies and envision broader activities which encompass digital marketing activities across multiple touch points.

According to Google, today’s consumers are goal-orientated and don’t want to waste time looking for information. They’re already typing questions into search engines.

The onus for brands is to ensure consumer questions are answered swiftly. Then you have to convince visitors to purchase your products. This is where CRO strategies come to fruition.

Your brand should have a unique value proposition and demonstrate you are trustworthy. What’s more, your conversion optimisation strategy needs to tie-in with your brand objectives.

For example, if you’re looking to secure loyal customers, build a community that has a common interest. Keep your customers informed through content, newsletters, email, social media updates and events.

However, the important thing to remember about CRO is that your strategy should focus on the customer journey. CRO is not solely about optimising the pages on your website but delivering an overall user-experience (UX).

Combine CRO and UX Strategies

CRO and UX go hand-in-hand. CRO can be used to improve the usability of your website and great UX leads to more conversions.

It is important to remember that the priority of search engines is to deliver websites to end-users that not only provide the information or products they need, but also deliver an enjoyable shoppable experience.

Visitors should be able to navigate your website with ease – especially on mobile. They want to be able to find information they want easily and intuitively know how to take the next step.

CRO dictates UX. It enables you to glean a deeper understanding of how visitors use your website and shows you what is preventing them from pressing the buy button and checking out.

When you nail UX across your omni-channel platforms, you move customers deeper into your sales funnel.

The first place to start is by optimising your home page and landing pages. If you’re already getting traffic through your landing pages, you already know where your visitors are in the customer journey.

Ask yourself the following:

• Are you answering the right questions at the right stage in the customer journey?
• Are you showing visitors where to go next?
• Is there enough evidence on your website and social media networks to convince consumers you are trustworthy and sell quality products and services?
• Where are the obstacles on your website?

To eradicate sticking points, it’s important to understand what internet users want from a website. Or more importantly, what they don’t want.

This is what they don’t want:

Pop-ups: This is hardly surprising. Pop-up ads are disruptive and often irrelevant. 73% of consumers disapprove of intrusive ads. Google doesn’t like them either.

Slow speeds: Google insights indicate that 53% of websites are abandoned if they have not loaded in three seconds. On mobile, the most you get is five seconds. If your bounce rate is high, your SEO ranking will suffer.

Complicated checkout process: A study by Splitit reveals that 87% of online shoppers jump ship if the checkout procedure is too complicated. Consumers do not want long-winded checkouts so don’t ask for details other than the essentials.

Understand your audience

If the key to improving CRO is providing a good UX, it’s important to know what your customers need. What are their motivations, pain points, online behaviours and attitudes?

Whilst the wealth of web analytics can help you build a picture of your audience, they don’t lend much information to understanding your audience.

CRO and UX researchers confirm the best way to understand your audience is to interact with them directly. Give your visitors a platform and they are more likely to express their opinion.

Customers want a two-way conversation. Oftentimes, browsing a website can feel one-sided. A survey conducted by Salesforce reveals that 54% of customers say brands need to transform how they engage with customers.

Social media has played an important role in bridging the gap between brands and consumers. Invite consumers to complete a short survey in return for a reward.

Chatbots are also becoming more commonplace. Although consumers prefer to speak with humans rather than automated messages, chatbots are changing the expectations of consumers.

Remember that visitors want information fast. Now that artificial intelligence is improving, “conversational chatbots” are becoming more useful and less frustrating.

Gartner predicts that 85% of online interactions will take place without contact with another human. The company predicts automated live chat and self-service options will become the norm.

Installing a live chat encourages your customers to speak with you. These interactions are valuable sources of information and help you to understand exactly what your customers need.

You should be using this information to craft a content strategy and improve the UX of your website. As a result, you should expect to see a significant improvement in your CRO.

Optimise for Mobile-First

With Google taking a Mobile-First approach, brands have no choice other than to follow suit. Your entire website strategy has to be optimised for small screens.

According to Google, the majority of searches are conducted on mobile devices even when a desktop is probably nearby – such as in the home or at work.

When optimising your website for mobile devices, you need to identify with visitors from the first moment. The lack of landscape does not allow for long introductions.

The headline of the page should get straight to the point. What information can users expect to find on that page?

Whilst siders, banners and menus only take up a small section of a webpage on a desktop, these are the first things you see as a mobile user. Do they provide sufficient information?

To engage visitors from the first moment, sliders and banners should be optimised with relevant information.

UX experts also recommend adding tools and processes that make using mobile phones easier. Consider adding the following:

• Search filter: Consumers that want information quickly will typically use the search tool so position the search filter in a fixed menu bar at the top of the screen.

• Provide synchronised payment options: Not all customers feel security measures are good enough on mobile phones and prefer to input credit card details from their desktop. Give buyers the option to finish payment on another device without having to go through the entire payment process again.

• Add a zoom-in feature so buyers can examine images closely

• Enable vertical and horizontal orientation

The move to the Mobile-First index will also have a significant impact on your content strategy. Even if you have a responsive website that turns in a decent performance on mobile devices, you will probably need to tweak your existing content.

Make your content scannable

Content not only has to provide relevant information. It also has to be engaging. Whilst content should be well-written throughout, the most important aspect is that it’s scannable.

Statistics reveal that time-conscious internet users only spend an average of 15-seconds reading your content – especially consumers in the consideration stage. 

Ironically, this is the stage when brands typically offer the most information in order to cover all the points. The strategy to capture attention and provide sufficient information is to highlight the most relevant information so that it stands out on the screen.

The Mobile-First index has made content distribution something of a paradox. Long-form content continues to achieve the highest ranking in search engines, but people do not want to read a 2000-word feature on a mobile device.

Creating scannable content enables you to overcome this problem. Other than including relevant information in subheadings, also use images to tell a story, highlight key text in bold and include bullet points, pull-quotes and H3-tags. 

Crafting strong messages and effectively communicating your key selling points helps visitors to make a quick decision. Even if they are not ready to buy on earlier visits they should still feel as though they want to explore the next steps on your website.

With each step, your content should be trust and reinforce what consumers already know. When you connect with shoppers on an emotional level, they feel they have more control over their purchasing decisions and steer towards brands that resonate with them.

A fatal error with marketing content is to make it scream “BUY FROM ME”. Consumers are turned off by promotional copy because they don’t trust traditional advertising.

Whilst you will still get away with some marketing gimmicks such as FOMO (fear of missing out) – by creating scarcity and urgency – marketers have to be very subtle in the way you present sales content.

Provide social proofing

Consumer trust in brands is at an all-time low. The fact of the matter is that people trust what their peers have to say more than what brands tell them.

Whilst the most common forms of leveraging social proof is through testimonials, reviews and trust icons, too many brands have manipulated these trust factors to the point they are no longer reliable evidence.

In today’s climate, brands have to adapt testimonial strategies to earn social proof. The best methods of earning credibility are celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing because they also give you a path to a wider audience.

However, this path is an expensive one and often beyond the budget of small businesses. There are, however, cost-effective ways of earning social proof such as:

• User-generated content
• Offer your existing customers incentives to write reviews
• Publish reviews as content
• Create a survey and share the results
• Publish content on third-party websites
• Let people know how many people use your product
• Launch a referral program and encourage word-of-mouth advertising
• Encourage people to engage with you on social media
• Publish case studies
• B2B companies should advertise their customer logos

When consumers trust your brand, your conversion rates will improve organically. There is no need for aggressive advertising. All you really have to do is present the facts about how great your customers think you are.

Moving forward with CRO

Now you’ve reached the tipping-point in your digital marketing cycle and realised it’s time to move past the vanity metrics and start converting, you can see how you probably need to make tweaks to your website.

CRO is a process that needs to become intertwined with SEO and UX. It involves helping consumers feel as though they are in control when they visit your website.

When you analyse your website and fashion a buyer persona, you will probably find a number of easy fixes, even though executing them may be time-consuming.

On the other hand, if you are driving traffic, but nobody’s buying, investing the time to re-engineer your website and create a shoppable experience, will be time well spent.

Not so long ago, improving search engine optimisation (SEO) was intensely technical. Whilst data analysis, attribution and other technical signals are counted as a ranking factor, digital know-how is not the answer to your SEO dilemma in the current epoch.

The best way to improve SEO these days is to create a marketing strategy which encourages consumers to interact with your website, trust your products and respect you as a brand.

That’s not to say the technical performance of your website is not important. It is. A website has to be intuitive, responsive, enjoyable to navigate on mobile devices and provide high-value content.

However, the performance of your website in search engines is driven by how consumers interact with your brand across omni-channel platforms. So ask yourself this: are you of driving traffic to the buy button?

Search engines are a powerful tool and brands have to be SEO-astute to be a winner in the online game. However, business owners should not rely on search engines alone to influence consumer behaviour.

Whilst Google’s Rankbrain has learned how to answer questions and deliver the most relevant page content, purchasing decisions are based on user-experience, trust and emotional connections.

Power Shifts

The rise of digital platforms has shifted the balance of power from brands to consumers. Brands have an obligation to be sustainable, transparent and deliver on your promise.

Moreover, brands have a responsibility to be a leader in the community. Consumers want to make a difference to society, but they also want help doing it and look to brands to provide the solutions.

Research conducted by Edelman, for example, revealed 88% of consumers expect brands to help them live sustainable lifestyles and improve their environmental footprint.

The report concluded that “relationship strength is a form of brand equity that is of increasing importance.” Consequently, brands have to look beyond technical SEO and tap into consumer mindsets.

Optimising The “Shoppable” Experience

Today’s brands need to be customer-centric and develop a marketing strategy that ties into the customer journey. Creating a “shoppable” experience across every touchpoint is a trend consumers will come to expect.

Understanding how your audience uses various online platforms is central to driving traffic to your website. Pay attention to the user-experience and deliver the right content at the right stages of the customer journey.

What do consumers want?

Beyond an intuitive web design that responds promptly on desktop and mobile, consumers want brands that care about their wellbeing. They want to be treated like a human beings by a human being.

Today’s consumers are not satisfied with automated services, chatbots powered by artificial intelligence and soulless interactions with faceless online stores. Consumers are looking for brand relationships that are not robotic and distant.

Customer Service

The amount of content online businesses need to publish these days can actually hinder consumers finding the information they want to know about. This leaves marketers in a quandary.

On the one hand, search engines rank in-depth content higher than pages that are “thin” on information. However, consumers do not want to read through a 2000-word article to find an answer.

Chatbots received heavy criticism, so companies increasingly used human members of staff to manage online queries. Consumers prefer Live Chat functions, but oftentimes are left waiting for an assistant to become available.

The solution is to offer both options. Chatbots can address customers immediately but may not always be able to provide an answer. However, as the technology matures, chatbots are becoming better at seeming more human-like and can answer questions.

If your customers are averse to chatbots, give them the option to choose a live chat. A predictive search function and a detailed FAQ can also enhance customer support.

Social media networks like Facebook are also being used more often as a shopping platform. A key reason behind the success of social platforms is because the chat function enables customers to ask questions and receive an immediate answer.

Improving your customer support across multiple touchpoints builds consumer confidence in your brand and encourages customers to return. When customers can find whatever they are looking for on your website, they will also linger on the page for longer – which is great for SEO!

Remove Intrusive Ads

It’s time to face facts. Consumers hate intrusive ads. So ditch the pop-up ads – especially obstructive ads that interrupt visitors as soon as they arrive, whilst they are reading and when they appear to be leaving.

Internet users today are more savvy about the ads they want to see and the brands they want to associate with. If your website has intrusive ads, customers are less inclined to visit.

Furthermore, pop-up ads that appear when customers are leaving the page are annoying. They may actually be using the main menu to navigate to another page.

In essence, pop-ups erect barriers to the cheque out and interrupt the shopping experience. Discrete native advertising is a better solution. Also encourage visitors to sign up to a newsletter.

Voice Search

The longevity of your page content could be jeopardised by voice search. Pages that rank well against keyword search terms today, may lose their matchability when voice search becomes more prominent.

You may not have much time left to compile a voice search strategy. Reports suggest the number of searches conducted by a voice assistant will be as high as 50%.

The increase in smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod will accelerate the number of people that use voice assistants to search for content, products and services.

Voice searches are predicted to have a significant impact on SEO. However, nobody really knows how voice searches will affect how Google will match content to searches.

There is a possibility that search engines will bring up different results because people speak differently than they type. The query they provide will include more details.

To rank for voice searches, address long-tail keywords together with H2 and H3 headings in your content. Answer questions in your content that your customers are most likely to ask.

Content should also be finely tuned to a specific stage in the customer journey. Map out a timeline and the mindset of customers from the research stage to purchase intent to determine what your audience want to know at each stage of the purchasing process.

Publish High-Value Content Everywhere

It’s no secret that high-quality is the key to online success. Improving SEO involves showing up wherever people are using a search tool. It’s therefore imperative that you know how to engage readers and drive traffic from various platforms other than your website.

What do consumers want?

Today’s consumers typically start their shopping experience online. They want to know what their options are in terms of quality, price and the customer experience they can expect a brand to deliver.

Consumers of all ages today rely less on the information brands provide. Genuine peer reviews and the opinions of family, friends and colleagues carry far more weight.

As a result, brands should be building trust by encouraging customers to write reviews and publish user-generated content. The content consumers want to see is not only about what your product does but the experience and satisfaction they can expect if they buy the product from you.

Leverage Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials about your brand have to go beyond a few words published on your website. Nobody believes customer testimonials unless they can visually see the comments are authentic.

What your customers say about their overall experience carries a lot of weight. Whilst trusted review hubs are recommended, the most influential customer reviews are found on social media and videos.

Whenever possible, encourage customers to leave a review on your social media account. Also, consider making a video featuring customers that are willing to explain their experience with your brand and your products together with case studies with relevant images.

The more strength customers testimonials project in various pieces of content, the less uncertainty and doubt new customers feel.

Build A Community

Social media has democratised the marketplace and small businesses are in a great position to take advantage of online communities that are geared towards specific interests.

Brands that encourage online interaction, engage with customers and contribute to conversations are in a better position to leverage positive attitudes and increase trust.

Creating an online community and supporting customers empowers brands to help people find solutions that are not provided by government or state-run institutions such as healthcare, law and councils.

A survey conducted by Sprout Social identified consumers believe society is more divided now than ever before. Sixty-eight per cent of respondents accused political leaders and government institutions.

Meanwhile, 91% feel confident social media can successfully connect people and 78% want brands to take a leading role to fill the voids that are all too often ignored by political decision-makers.

Influencer Marketing

The rise of content-sharing platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, have given consumers a voice. In niche industries, consumers are the leading experts on products and brands. Consequently, influencers are priceless commodities to brand marketing campaigns.

Influencer marketing creates a buzz around products and brands. Word of mouth advertising is so effective, that influencers are fast becoming the go-to strategy.

Social influencers have built up a personal brand by engaging audiences with regular posts and organic content. Influencer marketing gives companies the opportunity to tap into a ready-made audience that comes from a trusted source.

However, influencers come in various packaging and it’s important to distinguish the differences. First of all, there are celebrity endorsements, then celebrity influencers, and finally micro-influencers.

Consumers are already wise to celebrity endorsements. Despite the adoration of celebrities, savvy consumers know these people are being paid to say whatever a brand wants them to say.

Celebrity influencers will soon be found out as well. These influencers are typically socialites, models and TV stars that have a huge Instagram following that idolises these celebrities.

Brands take advantage of celebrity influencers by showering them with free gifts or paying the organise special giveaway prices through their social media account.

It’s well documented that the likes of the Kardashians and their ilk are paid thousands of dollars to post a brand endorsement.

The issue with any type of celebrity endorsements is they are designed to manipulate consumers. Shoppers know this, but more importantly, Google and social media networks know this and will penalise brands for underhand marketing tactics.

Micro-influencers are the way to go. These are people that take a genuine interest in a niche interest and have a lot of knowledge about it. They have steadily grown an audience of followers that trust their opinions and are continuing to grow because they create high-value content.

Leveraging micro-influencers positions your products in front of an audience that are most interested in buying it. Furthermore, you have a reliable spokesperson that endorses your brand with an honest opinion.

Influencer marketing essentially boils down to trust. Reports indicate that micro-influencers with 1000 followers generated 85% higher engagement than influencers with 100,000 followers and 70% of teens trust micro-influencers over celebrities.

Winning Over Search Engine Users

Whilst most customers start their shopping experience with search engines, they want to know more about a brand before they are prepared to invest hard-earned money into a product.

SEO is important but improving online visibility means ramping up your online profile and interacting with end-users. The more consumers trust a brand, the more they will explore your website and social media channels.

Today’s businesses have to figure out how to win at the online game. With the majority of shoppers penetrating the market through the digital space, there is a growing importance for start-ups and other businesses to implement a structured online strategy.

Whilst there are various methods you can adopt to reach customers online, two of the most powerful techniques are search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

Here are some statistics to prove why:

• 93% of online experiences start with a search engine
• 57% of B2B marketers state SEO generates more leads than other marketing initiatives
• 88% of consumers perform some type of online research before making a large purchase
• 51% of website traffic comes from organic search results, 10% from paid
• 78% of location-based searches result in a purchase offline

SEO v PPC

Marketers are often divided between SEO and PPC. Whilst some believe paid advertising is the way to go, the majority of digital companies report organic search is their most lucrative channel.

We agree – to a point. There is no disputing that search engine marketing is a powerful technique. However, it has to be said that the process takes a long time to bring to fruition.

The drawback for start-ups and small businesses that have poor visibility in search engines is that your website is buried under a pile of higher ranking companies.

Realistically you’re looking at between 6-12 months to crank up your rank.

However, it should be noted that the majority of consumers today start the customer journey via a search engine. Needless to say, SEO is vitally important.

Paid ads in search engines such as Google Adwords and Bing Ads help businesses with poor online visibility reach customers that would not ordinarily find your website. 

Historically, search engine users showed a preference for organic results. These days, there has been an increase in the number of clicks for paid ads. According to 33% of people, paid ads tend to answer search queries better – which means publishers are nailing their content.

Furthermore, paid ads appear at the top of the screen. Ad placement is particularly crucial on mobile searches. Users have to scroll down to get to the organic results.

For start-ups to adopt an SEO strategy alone is risky – especially now the majority of searches are conducted on mobile and 88% of local searches are from a smartphone.

Immediate Results

The key difference between SEO and PPC is the former is a long-term strategy. Whilst it will deliver the best results in the long-run, you get very little to nothing for your initial investment.

Paid search, on the other hand, can drive immediate results. PPC ads appear at the top of search listings – above the fold. They are the first results end-users see on their screen.

Retailers that sell listed products can also add images which appear in a carousel – more commonly known as Google Shopping ads.

Not only that, but Google’s ‘Display Network’ provides unlimited platforms for your ads to appear on websites that publish content which is relevant to your ad. The key benefit of the Display Network is that paid ads are positioned in front of a relevant audience.

In case you not already aware, the Display Network is an extensive collection of third-party websites that have partnered with Google and accept ad placements on their websites.

The beauty is that these subset of web owners are not typically rival businesses. They are bloggers that are interested in niche markets and appeal to a niche audience. Ideally, you should also be reaching out to these people to act as influencers for your brand.

Not only does Adwords direct traffic to your website and improve your SERPS (search engine results pages), it enables you to identify the best keywords that drive traffic to your website.

Identify Valuable Keywords

With the right keywords, you can better optimise your entire website. Remember that search engines rank pages rather than entire websites.

Whereas you may want to rank your website for the most searched terms in your industry, the likelihood is the competition will be too intense for you to improve your visibility.

Optimising landing pages with niche keywords, however, is a fast-track technique to ranking in search engine listings. The analytics you can lift from PPC campaigns is valuable data that adds weight to your long-term SEO strategy.

What’s more, if you optimise your PPC campaigns for local searches, you build link juice to relevant web pages in local searches.

According to statistics, 72% of consumers that conduct a local search on a mobile device visit a store within five miles. You’ll be interested to note that 46% of all Google searches are local!

A top PPC manager will be able to spread relevant keywords across a range of sponsored ads and extract the keywords that turn in the best performance.

You will also need to know how to adjust targeting, analyse competitors, test keyword strategies and understand how adjustments to search engine algorithms might affect your page rank.

Gather Audience Data

SEO strategies are tied to search intent, location and consumer behaviour. Consumers that arrive at your website are either conducting product research, looking for relevant content, browsing or shopping.

Google Analytics provides several data points to help you identify these key metrics and develop a picture of your audience; demographics, interests, behaviour, geography, custom, mobile, users flow, page views, number of pages per session, session duration and bounce rate.

However, the PPC dashboard has a couple of additional tools you can use to modify your organic search strategy, adjust your PPC budget and influence strategies in other campaigns.

Access the “Audience Manager” and you will find a list of useful metrics including affinity audience, in-market, and custom intent. 

Understanding “Audience” metrics in Adwords provides insights into where search engine users are in the customer journey. This enables you to align content with relevant search terms in your paid ads.

One of the most useful data points is the “in-market audience” metric. This data reveals the percentage of search engine users that are actively researching and comparing products/brands.

If you add a positive bid modifier to the campaigns with the most relevant keywords, you can be more aggressive with your ad placements and increase your chances of capturing a higher share of the market.

Test Your Landing Pages

Despite the amount of data analysis available through Google Adwords and Analytics,the only real way to increaseconversions is by making sure you nail the content on your landing pages.

PPC landing pages are likely to be the first touchpoint you have with visitors. So make a good impression.

Your priority should be to address the user-experience. As you’re probably aware, how visitors interact with your website has a significant impact on how much kudos search engines rate your webpages.

Driving traffic through PPC campaigns can help you quantify the performance of your landing pages. Furthermore, you can apply these insights to the content across your entire website.

There are several UX tactics to treat as a priority. The main bugbears with visitors are:

Load Speed – According to Google, 53% of search engine users abandon websites if the page has not loaded within three seconds.

Mobile-Friendly – The majority of searches are performed on mobile devices. Check your data to determine how the majority of visitors access your website.

Provide relevant content – Consumers click on links for a reason. Make sure the information you provide in your content matches the search term the end-user typed into the search engine.

Declutter – Landing pages that have pop-up ads, native ads, autoplay videos and sidebars distract visitors from the main content and have a negative impact on the shopping experience.

Remarketing

PPC campaigns give you access to customers that have relevant search intent. Whilst prospects are in various stages of the journey, remarketing positions your ads in front of authentic customers that are ready to buy.

Remarketing essentially positions your ads in front of people that have already shown an interest in the product or services you provide – even if they haven’t visited your website.

Studies in consumer psychology reveal the average person needs to interact with a brand between 5-7 times before they recall your offer to memory. Repetition matters.

By incorporating Google’s Display Network into your paid advertising campaigns (we mentioned this earlier), your ads follow buyers around the internet.

This enables you to enhance exposure for your brand and drive relevant traffic to your website. If your landing pages provides a good shopping experience, you can expect to increase conversions.

The PPC-SEO Double Act

Whilst most businesses may only allocate their marketing budget to either SEO or PPC, the most effective approach for start-ups is to apply both. The more you feature in search engine results, the more clicks and conversions you achieve.

In the initial stages, paid ads increase your visibility and drive traffic – which ultimately improves your search engine metrics. Once you start ranking in organic results, you can move the bulk of your budget into SEO.

It’s worth noting, however, that new trends change data. The more analytics you collect as the landscape shifts, the better equipped you are to assess the market, consumer behaviours and the performance of your website.

With this in mind, rolling out PPC campaigns every once in a while gives you more touchpoints which can help to freshen up your data and the subsequent marketing strategies that are born from analytics.

Although the data in Adwords and Bing Ads is more measurable than the SEO metrics in Gogole Analytics, paid advertising is a very nuanced and complex procedure.

There are dozens of metrics to observe and understand, and it takes time to learn even the basics. If you crack the code, PCC is actually a cost-effective means of advertising. However, mistakes are costly and the longer it takes you to learn, the more money you are throwing into The Void.

Unless you can commit the time, and develop the patience, to learn how to make the most of pay-per-click advertising, the smart move is to outsource campaigns to experienced specialists.