Do you have a CRO strategy for your B2B tech website?

Do you have a plan for improving the number of conversions on your B2B tech website, or are you still seeking a way to improve lead generation and sales? 

Without a defined CRO strategy, your business may be losing valuable revenue by spending time on website optimisation efforts that simply don’t work. Establishing a CRO strategy is essential for improving your overall profits and boosting your edge against competitors.

What is CRO?

Quite simply, conversion rate optimisation, or CRO, is the process of testing and making changes to your website with the goal of increasing the visitor to customer ratio.

While e-commerce sales are often referred to as “conversions,” this isn’t the only definition. A conversion goal can be any important or potentially revenue-generating activity that you define as important. 

The first step in any conversion rate optimisation process is to identify what your conversion goals are.

Types of conversions

You may have more than one type of conversion for which you’d like to optimise. Many businesses have both micro-conversions and macro-conversions, each of which are important for revenue. 

Micro-conversions

Examples of micro-conversions include: 

• Signing up for an email list
• Downloading a whitepaper
• Watching a marketing video
• Creating a free account
• Sharing content on social media
• Leaving a comment
• Spending a specific amount of time on the site
• Visiting a defined number of pages on the site
• Adding products to a shopping cart

These micro-conversions are often a first step into macro-conversions. 

Macro-conversions

Macro-conversions typically are more directly linked to revenue generation and may include:

• Signing up for a paid account or trial
• Purchasing a product
• Completing a lead generation form
• Booking a call with a sales representative

Throughout the course of your sales funnel, you may track several possible micro-conversions that lead toward a final macro-conversion.

How to calculate conversion rate

In order to increase conversions, you’ll need to calculate your current website conversion rate. Conversion rates are usually measured as a percentage,  you can find this number by:

1. Dividing the number of conversion actions by your total number of website visitors
2. Multiplying that number by 100

Let’s say we wanted to improve the number of people who watched a marketing video. Out of 1000 total visitors on our site, 23 watched the content. This equals a conversion rate of 2.3 per cent. 

If you aren’t a fan of maths, don’t worry—tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar (a heat-mapping program that shows how customers view your webpages) can take care of a lot of this for you.

What is a good conversion rate?

In a perfect world, your conversion rate would be above 10 per cent. The average real-world conversion rate, though, varies by industry. 

Many B2B companies see a conversion rate around 2.3 per cent, as in our example above. However, the highest-performing brands can have a conversion rate that is more than double this amount. As a result, it’s essential to invest in CRO as early as possible in your digital marketing process. This investment can help you pull ahead of the competition and capture a larger portion of conversions from your target audience.

How does CRO differ from SEO?

Conversion rate optimisation is not the same thing as search engine optimisation (SEO), but they are mutually beneficial. 

SEO involves bringing members of your target audience to a webpage through organic search. This strategy may involve updating website content, guest posting on other sites and optimising for specific keywords among other activities.

CRO is the process of encouraging those visitors to take a desired action once they’re on your site or in your app. Both types of optimisation efforts should be a part of your digital marketing strategy.

Conversion rate optimisation strategies

There are a variety of ways in which you can approach the conversion optimisation process. These can include tactics such as:

• Making usability changes that improve the user experience and encourage site visitors to stay on your site longer, or visit more pages
• Improving page load times on mobile devices 
• Moving from a single landing page to an optimised conversion funnel
• Implementing a more accessible website design 
• Changing website colours for better readability
• Increasing or changing the placement of customer testimonials and social proof
• Adding or removing pop-ups
• Implementing upsells or downsells on product pages

What does the CRO process involve?

While the ideal conversion rate optimisation strategy is different for every business, there is a consistent, testing-based methodology to it. A core part of the process is split testing, in which you compare one set of variables to another. This includes both A/B testing and multivariate testing. 

A/B testing

A/B testing is the process of comparing one change to another on an otherwise identical webpage. For example, if you aren’t pleased with the performance of a specific landing page, you may make a second version and do one of the following:

• Move the “book a demo” button
• Rewrite the CTA button copy
• Rewrite your H1 copy

You’d release each version of the page to a segment of your audience and compare the conversion rate differences. Depending on the resulting data, you may decide to implement the change, stick with the original, or try something different. 

Multivariate testing

Multivariate testing is similar to A/B testing, but involves changing more than one variable on a webpage. 

Let’s say your chosen A/B test involved simply moving the CTA button. In a multivariate test, you may move it and change the CTA copy.

The bottom line is that conversion rate optimisation is a multi-factor process. You’re unlikely to settle on the perfect way to get a higher conversion rate with just one test. It may take several attempts to begin to find a positive pattern in your conversion rate optimisation efforts. Working with a dedicated conversion rate optimisation agency is one way to speed this process up, as they’re skilled in running A/B tests and creating multivariate testing websites.

Useful CRO tools

There are a variety of useful CRO tools to help you in the process of conversion rate optimisation. 

User behaviour tools for CRO

User behaviour tools provide insight as to how website visitors navigate through your pages. You may utilise these metrics to make decisions about the placement of CTAs, ‘get in touch’ buttons, forms, and more. User behaviour tools for CRO include HotJar and Mouseflow, both of which show heat maps and click paths.

Analytics tools for CRO

Analytics tools allow you to measure and compare the percentage of visitors that carry out a particular action. They can also help you see if the real user flow through a funnel follows the path you anticipated or desired. These tools include free platforms like Google Analytics and Matomo Analytics.

CRO testing tools

CRO testing tools make it possible to execute website A/B testing and analyse the results. This group of tools includes services like Google Optimize and CrazyEgg.

Other useful CRO tools

There are also other tools that, while not broadly focused on CRO, may be utilised to improve the user experience or target visitors at just the right time. This can boost conversion rates as a result. These tools may include: 

• Forms and lead generation services like Typeform or ChiliPiper
• Online schedulers such as Calendly or ScheduleOnce
• Pop-up and banner tools like HelloBar or Popupsmart

Developing a conversion rate optimisation plan

CRO is not an overnight process. It can take at least a year to see notable gains in your conversion rate, however, each incremental percentage increase can have a huge impact on your sales and revenue.

When implementing a CRO strategy, It’s essential to accurately track data every step of the way. This data allows you to have confidence that you’re making the right choices to increase the micro- and macro-conversions carried out by your potential customers.

Because the CRO process requires a high level of specialised attention, it is typically a very good investment to work with a conversion rate optimisation agency. These teams have ample experience running conversion optimisation strategies and can bring your conversion rates to an all-time high. Conversion rate optimisation agencies also have the tools to run split testing without continually modifying the code on your website, so you won’t suffer any negative SEO implications.

Check out best practices for running A/B and multivariate testing for CRO with our digital marketing team, Clarity Performance.