Ebook A Complete Guide To Conversion Rate Optimization

eBook
A Complete Guide to
Conversion Rate Optimization
Table of Contents
What is Conversion Rate Optimization? 03
6 Primary Elements of Conversion Rate Optimization 04
Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization: Why is it important? 11
Who is Conversion Rate Optimization Useful For? 13
Conversion Rate Optimization Steps: Understanding the Process 22
Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices 36
Conclusion 48
About VWO 49
A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 02

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Online traffic is highly inconsistent. If you’re unable to get visitors to enter your
conversion funnel in the first go, the chances of them coming back and performing the
desired action are quite low. This is nothing but an opportunity lost for your business.
The best way to improve your chances and get more conversions is by running an
effective CRO campaign.
A good CRO campaign not only means saving high on your time, money, and efforts but
also exploring new growth strategies which were unknown in the past. In other words,
CRO helps you in understanding your website’s usability better while giving customer
behavior insights and tips on how to make your UX better to meet your goals.
To fully understand the essence of conversion rate optimization, let’s start by first
understanding what exactly it is!
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing your site or landing
page experience based on website visitor behavior to help improve desired actions
(conversions) on the said page.
At a process level, conversion rate optimization can be effectively achieved by

following the below mentioned scientific process:
1
Research Phase
Tracking metrics and identifying what parts of conversion funnel needs fixing
2
Hypothesis Phase
Constructing educated hypothesis based on your research
3
Prioritization Phase
Planning and prioritizing your hypothesis
4
Testing Phase
Testing the hypotheses against the existing version of the website
5
Learning Phase
Deploying the winning hypothesis and/or gather learning for subsequent tests

At a strategic level, CRO is an ongoing process of learning and optimizing.
Unfortunately, the “ongoing” aspect often gets ignored while discussing conversion
rate optimization.
6 Primary Elements of Conversion Rate

Optimization
CRO is a comprehensive process that sprawls across a multitude of stages. A
successful CRO campaign is the one that uses in-depth data to analyze results, runs
multiple tests, tweaks content to make it more relevant to the visitors, and draws
necessary conclusions. Throughout the journey of a CRO process, a marketer will
encounter six primary elements which can be optimized.
Landing Page Design
Landing page design is the first and foremost element that defines the usability and
success of a website. The more aesthetically designed a site is, the more traction it will
get!
Let’s understand this using an example most of us maybe familiar with. Assuming that
most customers landing on any of Amazon’s product pages come with the pure
intention of buying its product(s), understanding the importance of design in driving
conversions (how it can make or break a deal for the e-commerce giant), is important.
The giant has strategically designed each of its product pages so as to make even the
minutest of details prominently visible to its customers. For instance, when on a
product page, customers can instantly add the product to their cart by conveniently
clicking on the “Add to Cart” button (in a color that’s prominently visible - Orange)
placed right next to product information column.

How does this help? Orange is an intense color that complements the website’s white
background making it easy for the visitors to identify and take the necessary action
instantly.
Furthermore, the effective use of the white space to highlight the product’s features
and smart use of large images on the left side of the page instills trust and quickly
captures the attention of the visitors.
Website Copy
While a well-designed and aesthetically pleasing website can get more traffic flowing
on your site, words can verbally hook your visitors and convert them into potential
leads. Writing relevant and engaging content that emphasizes on the product’s
persuasiveness can make the difference between visitors staying on your website and
taking the necessary actions and visitors leaving your site without taking any action.
Website copy can be further divided into two subsections:
1. Headline:
Headlines is the first and foremost thing a visitor sees on your landing page. It
typically defines their first impression about your business. If they do not like it, they’ll
not scroll down and check the rest of your page. To ensure you’re on the right track,
focus on the following things:

• Formatting: Typically focusing on the font type, font size and color to ensure it
captures your visitors’ attention and is easily readable.
• Writing Style: Keep the following things in mind:
• Ask a question - e.g. Do you know email marketing can add 30% more
revenue to your business?, How to find the products of your choice? etc.
• Split your content into two parts – e.g. Internet marketing: what lies in
store?
• Address directly – e.g. Can you rely on content marketing?
• Focus on the numbers – e.g. 10 ways to ensure email marketing adds to

your conversions!
In either case, one should keep the headline short and to the point ensuring it talks
exactly about what the product or service is about in a clear, concise manner.
2. Body Content:
A well-written body content is essential for a website. It must answer the basic
question - “what’s in store for me?” It must also be clear, concise, to-the-point, and
portray your brand’s persona in the most efficient manner. To draft good body
content, consider the following:
• Formatting:
• Cut content into relevant paragraphs for easy readability
• Use necessary subheadings to break down the content into glance-able

chunks
• Bullet points or numbered lists wherever necessary
• Font type, size and color which matches the overall design guidelines of the
brand
• Writing style:
• Right tonality as per the target audience (fun, professional, casual etc.)
• Stylistic elements such as metaphor, adjectives, etc. to highlight certain

points
• Address directly to the end user and what they are here for, answering their
questions
• Add key phrases to improve the overall usability and easy takeaways

As an example, Slack, a modern collaboration hub space that allows teams to stay
connected and work together, has a strong landing page headline followed by
subsequent content that focuses on its USPs.
A catchy headline accompanied by content that’s concise and answers all the
necessary questions makes any page look attractive, and does the desired work -
getting customers onboard.
Call-To-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is exactly what it sounds - a request or call for customers to take
a desired action. This action could be anything - from subscribing to a newsletter to
booking a slot in a webinar, making a purchase, availing a service, and so on. The
stronger and crispier the CTA, the more leads it can generate.
But, is it this simple? Take a look at some of industry’s best CTA strategies and you’ll
see that they all make use basic psychology to define their CTAs.
Quoting an example here, ADT, a Tyco International company, was able to increase its
conversion rate by 60% by simply changing the primary text of its CTA button - from
“Book a Free Survey” to “Get a Free Quote.”

Control C Control V1
Navigation and Site Structure
Your site’s structure must focus on building an experience that’s easy to navigate. Site
structure, at its core, is typically a graph of how different pages of your site interact
with each other.
Front-Page
Category Page Page
Post Sub-Category Front-Page Sub-Page
Post Post Post

Although every site is different and have different navigations, this hierarchy style is a
standard example.
You typically start navigating from the homepage, then explore its series of categories
and subcategories until you’ve found what you were actually looking for. If this entire
process is fluid, as explained in the graph above, then your users will not have an
issue navigating through your site. But, if it’s unstructured, they’ll be lost in the
process; ultimately abandoning your site.
To accomplish this, one must ensure users are easily and quickly able to move
between important sections of the website and are able to find whatever they need to
accomplish their goals in the fewest clicks possible.
In other words, creating a fluid, easy-to-navigate website is the key to increasing

conversions as well as your brand’s reputation.
Forms
Forms are crucial to most companies, especially if they’re a part of their sales funnel.
Optimizing these important customer touchpoints can extensively help in improving
conversions. While many theories follow on how to build an effective form for your
website, these may or may not work equally for all companies. In many cases, having a
comprehensive form has worked wonders for some organizations, while the shorter
form has worked with many others. It is always a balancing act between lead quality
and volume of leads that gets the best ROI.
Yet, four basic optimization tips to take your form from okay to outstanding are as
follows:
1. The fewer the fields, the better it is. True in most cases but not always,
especially when you want your sales team to focus on only the most serious
leads or in cases where it is paramount to get additional lead information like
the industry or the city if you have lead workflows dependent on this additional
fields.
2. Good looking forms often equate to a nice user experience. Good forms
constitute no flashing text, clear and consistent styling and tool tips and
validation build at the right places. Good forms typically also have the most
important fields are the top followed by less important fields. One can also
experiment with progressive forms in order to improve their conversion rates
without compromising on the depth of user information.

3. Easy password creation makes the entire form filling process an easy breeze. As
per internal VWO data, password is one of the fields which takes up most time
to fill. Needless to say, guiding users on creating strong yet easy to remember
passwords is the key to make this process more fulfilling for both the user as
well as the business.
4. Having one-click form submits using Facebook or Google SSO can also work
wonders for your conversion process. Most times users are already logged into
one of these sites and this helps them convert much more easily. It also
alleviates the pain of creating and remembering new passwords. This, however,
may not work in all cases, especially B2B contexts, where business work with
business email IDs of their prospects.
Page Speed
Page speed or page load time has a huge impact on the overall performance of your
site. In fact, it directly affects the experience of a user, conversion rate of the site, and
its ranking on search engine. As per blog published by Semrush,[¹] if a site loads in 1.7
seconds, it’s comparatively faster than 75% of the web. While, on the other hand, if it
loads in 0.8 seconds, it’s faster than nearly 94% of the web.
Load time delay of even one second can reduce your conversions by 7%.[²] For
instance, if your site is generating a revenue of $100,000 a day, then even a second’s
delay in its load can cost you about $7,000 per day or even more.
The same one second delay also means that you’re prone to losing about 11% of your
potential customers as they’ll simply close your page or back out without even
thinking twice.

Benefits of Conversion Rate
Optimization: Why is it important?
CRO enables you to optimize your website’s functionality, while helping you
understand the whys and hows of visitor behavior. The fact is, your site never reaches
its maximum potential until it’s rigorously experimented. Broadly the benefits of a CRO
program can be categorized into two:
Improving Marketing ROI
A well-structured and well-thought out CRO program based on strong analysis can go a
long way in improving return on almost all your marketing activities by:
1. Improving quality/speed of experiments run on your website: CRO allows you to

analyze the performance of your site by running tests and look for the best
possible variations which promise conversions. By experimenting with different
elements on your landing pages, you can not only check the areas which are
giving the best results, but also use the gathered data as fundamental
benchmark for your next round of tests/experiments.
2. Better revenue with same traffic/incremental business returns: One of the

prime benefits of running a CRO campaign is that every change you implement
on your site, which eventually increases your conversions, is an incremental win
for your business.

For instance, an online eCommerce company planning to enhance its customer
experience in a way that it makes purchasing products easy and convenient for
its customers can immensely benefit from CRO. How?
By running an A/B test, if it’s able to enhance its conversion rate even by 3%, it
means that it’s getting 3% extra revenue day in and day out. Meanwhile, if it has
a high volume of sales, 3% improvement can effectively translate its sales into
hundreds and thousands of extra dollars for its business.
Australian based eCommerce company ShowPo saw a 6.09% increase in its

revenue by running a series of A/B tests and introducing new improved variants
on its product pages!
Enhancing UX
Benefits of a CRO program spread well across just marketing ROI to give an improved
user experience across all lifecycle stages of a visitor whether they’re a first time
visitor or they’re a customer through:
1. Personalizing Site Experience for Your Visitors: In today’s time, visitors are too
impatient. Unless you’re offering them a site that’s easy to navigate with fewer
clicks and make the entire process an easy breeze, they won’t stick around and
will eventually look for alternative options. By helping personalize sections of
your site based on the visitors’ geography, device, local time or past browsing
history, you can make the website that much more relevant to them.
2. Better Insights into Your Visitor Behavior: CRO process begins with
understanding customer behavior through tools like heatmaps and clickmaps
which tell us which sections of the site, people spend more time on. Other tools
which help us understand the user experience in a qualitative fashion as user
session recording and session replay which help us understand the exact
journey a user took in order to accomplish a goal on the site. By looking at
enough of such sessions of users who didn’t complete the goal on the site, one
can get to understand the pitfalls in their user experience. Other tools which
can be used to improve UX can be form analysis and website surveys which can
help us optimize our form filling experience and help us understand the exact
answers to crucial questions (eg. were you able to accomplish your goal on this
website, was this website easy to navigate, would you recommend this site to a
friend etc.) respectively.

Who is Conversion Rate Optimization
Useful For?
Conversion rate optimization benefits businesses of all sorts, irrespective of their size
and industry. Here are some common business use cases for better CRO
understanding.
Conversion Rate Optimization for B2B/SaaS Companies
Lead generation is the initiation of grabbing the interest of your customers by

engaging them on your site, gathering their information through various means (forms,
sign-ups, surveys, etc.) and contacting them to convert them into loyal, recurring
customers. As a B2B/SaaS business, it becomes your duty to help your customers find
what they’re looking for, capture their interest and support their buying decision.
Case Study: Continuous Testing Helped POSist Improve their Demo

Requests by 52%!
POSist is one of the leading SaaS-based restaurant management platforms that

provide a complete range of online Point-Of-Sale (POS) solutions for all kinds of
restaurants. The company wanted to increase their demo requests and reduce drop-
offs on their homepage and Contact Us page. Evidently, these were two of the most
important pages which helped the company get maximum conversions
To achieve their goal, POSist decided to run a CRO campaign, which eventually helped
them to identify the gray areas. The company modified their homepage by adding
more relevant and conversion-centric content. This not only improved user
experience, but also generated conversions. POSist generated about 52% more leads
in a single month, which further lifted their website conversion rate to 3.4%, marking
an overall increase of 25%.

Control C
Variation V1

Conversion Rate Optimization for E-commerce Companies
Shopping cart abandonment serves as one of the major challenges to the E-commerce
companies, costing billions in sales revenue generation every year. According to an
analysis done by the Baymard Institute, nearly 69% of all E-commerce visitors
abandon their shopping carts due to innumerable reasons. Hence, building a user-
friendly E-commerce site with a great design, exclusive products, and nominal
shipping cost that not only solves cart abandonment problem but addresses other
drop off issues such as complex payment process, lack of basic information, and so
forth, is crucial.
Common reasons why people leave a site are as follows:
• Distractions: Too many pop-ups or forms to fill can distract your customers
• Difficulty of checkout: The site may not offer a friendly check-out option which
may complicate the purchasing efforts of the first time users.
• Hidden costs: Most visitors get intimidated by hidden costs such as additional
shipping charges, other taxes, and more.
Running a CRO campaign helps to identify and address such bottleneck issues and
significantly contribute to improve the site’s conversion rate.
Case Study: PearlsOnly Increased its Revenue by 12% by Making its Check-
Out Page more CTA Centric!
PearlsOnly is an online jewellery store based out of Houston that specializes in the
sale of pearls. Since its inception, the organization has been constantly testing its
website and making necessary amendments to stay abreast with the industrial trends
and offer the best of services to its clients. Yet, it wasn't able to get as many
conversions as it aimed. Running a CRO campaign, they concluded that their checkout
page was too cluttered and distracted its visitors, making them leave the page before
they took the desired action. PearlsOnly, with the help of VWO services, optimized its
checkout page while ensuring all its USPs were duly highlighted. They ran the
campaign for about a month and the results were outstanding. The test helped
PearlsOnly increase its revenue by 10%.

Control C (For checkout page before testing)
Variation V1 (New checkout page during the test)

Conversion Rate Optimization for Media/Publishing
Houses
For businesses like media agencies and publishing houses, reaching a larger audience
base and keeping them engaged on their platform is crucial for their growth. Here, CRO
can help them with this as well as test various site elements such as email sign-ups,
social sharing icons, recommended content, and other promotional options to capture
more attention.
Case Study: BluTV Increased its Mobile Conversion Rate by 42% by Simply
Making the Homepage more Service-Friendly!
Being a subscription-based, over-the-top (OTT) video-on-demand service provider,

BluTV’s success entirely depends on the number of active subscribers it has. Its
primary objective was to get as many visitors to sign up for its paid subscription trials
as possible. To start a trail, a visitor had to share their credit card information, and
they would be charged only after they’d completed their 7-day free trial period.
Conducting research into visitor behavior on BluTV’s site, Hype, a VWO Certified
Partner performance marketing agency, found that the conversion rate for mobile
visitors was quite low as compared to BluTV’s website average. The service provider’s
mobile home page emphasized more on serving its active customers rather than the
new visitors. Basis this, the two companies decided to completely revamp BluTV’s
mobile home page. They removed all the distractions in the header section, promoted
some of its most popular content, and added a FAQs section at the end. Running a
split URL test for a duration of 19 days, they saw the alternate variation increased their
conversion rate by over 42%.

Control C Variation V1
Conversion Rate Optimization for Travel Agencies
Compared to other industries, travel companies may face higher difficulty in getting
conversions. Consumers in the category tend to take longer than usual to decide
whether or not to make a purchase. They browse through various sites, compare deals,
interact with their peers and only then take a call. Further, complex booking behavior
also adds to the industry’s challenge. Running a CRO campaign can effectively help
travel companies analyze their potentials and drawbacks and enhance conversions.
Case Study: Bizztravel Wintersport Increased its Conversions by 21% by

Simply Decluttering its Home Page!
Bizztravel Wintersport is a Dutch travel company that improved its conversions by 21%
simplifying the way users searched for holiday destinations on their website. The
company decluttered their site’s homepage by keeping only the most relevant
information intact.

Control C (For bizztravel page before testing)
Variation V1 (bizztravel page during the test)

Conversion Rate Optimization for Agencies
Talking about various sectors that have benefited from CRO, agencies like digital
marketing, web development, and dedicated CRO consultancies are no exception.
Running conversion rate optimization campaigns for their own websites or for their
clients can significantly add to their conversions and uplift revenue which can lead to
better ROI for their work and help in retaining clients and giving an overall good
experience for their business.
Digital marketing agencies engaged in offering multiple services to its clients such as
social media promotion, web content development, brand building and so forth, can
pitch CRO services to their clients as a way to get more out of their existing traffic. This
can not only help them pitch more clients by offering an additional service besides
their usual services, but also enhance their overall business impact.
Case Study: Traffic4u helped its client Djoser Increase their Travel
Bookings by 33.1%!
Traffic4u is an online marketing agency which uses VWO to optimize the websites of its
clients and get them more conversions. In one such attempt, Traffic4u helped, Djoser,
one of the leading Dutch travel agencies, to optimize their site and increase their
number of online bookings.
Deeply studying Djoser site’s data, Traffic4u concluded that making an actual booking
was a significant step for the users. Giving them an alternate option with greater
flexibility to confirm their booking would encourage more users to book. Here, they
decided to create a variation that had an extra link attached called “Take an option.”
By clicking on the link, users were given an option to reserve their seat with an option
to cancel within 72 hours. If no action is taken within the defined time period, the seat
would be considered booked. Running the test for about 7 weeks, the variation
resulted in 33.1% increase in Djoser bookings.

Variation V1 (Djoser page during the test)

Conversion Rate Optimization Steps:
Understanding the Process
Multiple conversion rate optimization frameworks exist which can effectively help
conversion rate optimizers plan and execute optimization campaigns. At the simplest,
the CRO process can be divided into 5 steps.
Research Phase
Identifying the areas of improvement
Hypothesis Phase
Constructing a well-defined hypothesis.
Prioritization Phase
Prioritizing the testing ideas.
Testing Phase
Choosing the right testing methods and running experiments.
Learning Phase
Analyzing the test results.
Stage 1: Research Phase - Identifying the areas of

improvement
Only one in every seven A/B tests gives a winning result. Why? Research!
As a general practice, most marketers tend to copy CRO strategies that yielded results
for other firms thinking the same would work for them. But, they fail because every
orange button cannot convert and every long form page cannot falter.

Understanding What Users Do/Quantitative
The first and foremost thing to do is get familiarized with the basics.
1. Analyze what are your visitors doing: Analytics allows you to make decisions
based on facts and figures rather than pure instincts. In the CRO process, there
are multiple ways to derive data to understand your results. For instance, you
can fetch relevant information from your web analytics tools such as real-time
data tracking, bounce rate, incoming traffic sources, audience, demography, site
behavior, and much. Google Analytics is one of the best tools to obtain in-depth
quantitative data on what people are doing on your site.
2. How page features shape user behavior: By using visitor behavior analysis tools
such as heatmaps, session recordings, interview feedback, customer surveys,
analytics, net promoter score, and so forth, see how different features on a
page are influencing user behavior. For instance, you might find that the search
tool placed on your landing page is getting you more conversions than the
showcased product categories. Getting such insights can significantly help you
eliminate unwanted features and focus more on the ones that convert users
better.
100% 72.8% 42.6% 30.4% 12.4%

32.42K 23.32K 13.66K 9.64K 3.82K
70.3 82.6 89.4 52.8

% % % %
47.2 47.2 47.2 47.2
HOME % CATEGORY % PRODUCT % ADD TO % CHECKO

PAGE PAGE PAGE CART UT
Understanding User Behavior/Qualitative
Customer psychology typically lays down the fundamental ground rules for CRO
elements to follow.
Two essential elements that aid in understanding customer psychology are:

1. Principles of Persuasion: Human beings are highly susceptible to suggestions
and cognitive biases. To quote an example here, knowing that an item is
popular amid the masses becomes even more popular no matter it’s actual
worth. At the same time, the rarer and more exclusive an item is, the more
valuable it becomes. Understanding such human psychology is essential to
effectively define your goals and draft a CRO plan that adds to your company’s
profits.
Furthermore, adding social proofs in the form of reviews and testimonials on

your landing page or wherever relevant can add to your efforts. As most case
studies published over the internet report, social proofing aids in more
conversions.
2. Customer Behavior: A research carried out by NN Group[³] states that most

people browsing through the internet don’t read; they merely skim through the
posts. Another study reveals that younger people are more interested in
browsing through flat designs as they are more “trustworthy” than their older
counterparts.
Studying the behavior of your target audience gives an insight into “why they do
what they do” over the internet, and how you can use this information to build a
better-converting website.
There are two primary ways to study the behavior of your target audience:
• Conducting tests and taking in-person interviews: Closely watching your

customers interact with your website in real-time can give you significant
data and insights on a plethora of things. These can include, the pages they
most visit, the amount of time they spend on your website, the areas where
they’re facing maximum problems such as finding difficulty in filling a form,
unable to generate passwords, payment drop-off, and much more.
• Reading case studies and following guidelines on user behavior: Many

existing pieces of research and case studies can vastly aid in understanding
the collective psyche of your customers, which can, in turn, serve as an
excellent source for improving your website’s overall look and feel and
increase conversions.
Combining the two together, these can collectively give you a much better fundamental
understanding of how your customers are behaving on your website.

Understanding the Data Gathered
Data and customer psychology study can help you accurately pinpoint the actual
reasons why users do what they do on your site.
USER
BEHAVIOU
R
6.5 s
FORM ANALYSIS
VISITOR RECORDING
HEATMAPS
Use the gathered information as a benchmark study and decide the improvements
which could benefit your business in the long run. It is also important to arrive at a
quantified expected conversion rate as it gives your testing efforts a direction. Else,
you might end up improving the conversion rate on a page by 1% and sit cozily without
realizing its actual potential.
1. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data:
While quantitative data offers a good insight into your business’s performance, it
doesn’t paint the entire picture. For this reason, gathering qualitative data is utmost
important. Qualitative answers offer better insights on how your customers perceive
your brand, why they are or aren’t buying your product(s) and/or service(s), and other
breakthrough information.

Quantitative Data Qualitative Data
Subjective approach that offers in-depth

Objective approach that provides
narrative information, such as feedbacks,
numerical data to map actionable events.
etc.
Insight: Insight:
• Pages most and least visited by • Purchase journey of a customer.

the visitors. • Exact root cause of
• Amount of time spent by a visitor abandonment(s).
on a particular page. • Customer thoughts about your
• Entrance path taken by the product(s) and/or services(s)
visitors to land on the site. • Their fears, doubts or hesitations
• Pages they exit from. before and during the purchase.
• Number of incoming visitors who • Their feedback after they receive/
convert. use the product(s) and/or
• Site’s bounce rate. service(s)
• Links and pages least and most

ignored by visitors.
Precise Information Draws generalizations
Measurable data Descriptive Data
Conclusive Approach Exploratory Approach
2. Data Gathering Methods:
Some of the best methods of gathering data are as follows:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an integrated tool that offers numerical data about your website’s
overall performance, reports on visitor activities, engagement, traffic inflow sources,
content performance, and e-commerce sales.

Customer Surveys
Customer surveys reveal information about the actual psychological thinking of

customers - what convinced them to buy a product, what drew them away from the
site, and so forth. It’s one of the best ways to learning strategies for effective site
optimization.
Usability Tests
Usability testing is a smart way to evaluate the ease of using a website from a
customer’s point of view, their engagement rate on a particular page, stumble spots
and similar fall-off. It’s a powerful weapon that only aids in crafting a better user
experience but increasing conversions.
User Interviews
Interviews provide deep insights about your site, respective pages, and target
audience. They’re more about gathering qualitative data than its quantitative data.
Interviews can effectively lead to drafting campaign-changing test hypotheses.
-50 50
-100
69
100
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net promoter score (NPS) measures satisfaction in terms of customer loyalty. It

classifies customers into three categories known as the promoters, passives, and
detractors. While promoters are the ones who are most likely to turn into loyal
customers, detractors do the opposite. Passives fall in the middle - they’re still in the
evaluation phase (in terms of site likability).
Q How likely are you to recommend us to a Net Promoters

3 Score
friend?
D E TA I L S
0 DETRACTORS (0-6) PASSIVES (6-8) PROMOTERS (9-10)

79.50% 10.00% 10.50%
158 Responses 20 Responses 21 Responses
-50 5
0
How is it
-10
6 10
calculated ?
9
0 0
NET PROMOTERS
SCORE ™
NET PROMOTER SCORE = PROMOTERS (%) - DETRACTORS (%)

Heatmaps
Heatmaps, in simple words, are graphical representations of data that informs about
where visitors values are most contained, in the form of colors, within a matrix. The
areas that most attention is marked red while others are shaded in green. This is a
classic way to understand what users are doing on a single page.
Click Maps
Similar to Heatmaps, click maps provide data about user interaction on a page by way
of where they are clicking the most.

Scroll Maps
A type of heat map, scroll map analyzes the how a visitor scroll through the website. It
aids in examining their behavior on various website pages and analyzing areas of
concern.
The next step is to carefully draft your hypothesis!
Stage 2: The Hypothesis Phase - Construct an

Educated Hypothesis
Using the information gathered in the research phase, you can now draft your
hypothesis. At its core, a hypothesis is a proposed explanation of your research that
typically comprises of 3 parts.
• A particular change: based on insights derived from quantitative and qualitative

data
• A particular effect: a goal, a conversion metric or a similar element, which needs
improvement.
• A particular reason: the thinking behind why a specific change can bring about
the desired effect.
The best way to step forward is to run an actual test!
Form a Hypothesis
Here’s an example of a good hypothesis.
“I believe adding social proofs on product pages will result in 5% more add-to-carts
because it instills confidence about my purchasing decision.”
Based on this hypothesis, you make the necessary changes on your product pages.
These new pages are known as variations. The primary objective of the test will check
whether or not the new variation would get better conversions.
A well-structured hypothesis also paves the way to more optimization efforts. Even if
your path fails, you can use the case to understand what exactly went wrong and take
corrective measures. Without a structured process, optimization efforts can go in vain
and even lose purpose.

Here’s what an unstructured hypothesis looks like:
Let’s just combine the sorting and filter tool together because it worked for companies
A, B, and C.”
This is precisely the kind of hypothesis you should avoid building.
State Your Hypothesis
As a rule of thumb, always back your testing with a solid purpose and authentic proofs.
Make sure you have enough quantitative and qualitative data to support your testing
reason(s). State your hypothesis as comprehensively as possible and even make a note
of all the necessary information. CRO is an ongoing process. The more useful data you
have, the easier it becomes to optimize in the future.
Decide How to Change Your Page
Typically, there are two main ways to run a CRO test - test a completely different page
or change one or a few page elements. Choose the one that's most appropriate and
take a leap.
• Test a Completely Different Page: If you’ve identified several areas which could
be improved, consider starting from the very beginning. Identify the pages you
think (based on statistical data) would best convert and showcase positive
results. Remember, you may see similar or drastically different results. Use the
information as ground rules and start fine-tuning.
• Change One or a Few Page Elements: This is where A/B testing and Multivariate
Split testing serves handy. Identify one or a few problems on your page, which
(based on statistical data) may be the main areas of pain. Find their best
possible variations and run a test. Note that a multivariate split test involves
testing more than one element at once. This means that it will run for a longer
duration and take time to showcase actual results.
Once you’ve uncovered your optimization opportunities, plan and prioritize the
elements you want to test. In simple words, schedule your test strategy!

Stage 3: The Prioritization Phase - Choose an Order
Here, a number of frameworks can help you through the process. Of these, the P.I.E.
framework formulated by Chris Goward at WiderFunnel is what we most recommend:
Potential
Find out the pages that are performing worst and can improve greatly.
Importance
Then narrow down by selecting the ones that have the most valuable traffic. Traffic
is valuable when it’s either costly (paid) or super relevant to your product offering.
Ease
Even when you have a final list of pages, it’s important to realize that not all pages
are easily optimized. A page, such as an eCommerce product listings page, may be
technically complicated to start optimizing while another, such as your home page,
may have too many stakeholders to please. It’s important to go for the one that is
easily optimized first and then move up the list.
Each of these has its own importance attached which can effectively help in
prioritizing your testing elements and take you in the right direction.
Stage 4: The Testing Phase - A/B, Split, or Multivariate?
Before running a test, understand the basics:
• What is statistical significance, and why is it critical?

• How long do you need to run a test?
• What should I use—A/B, Split, or Multivariate test?

What Is Statistical Significance and Why Is It Critical?
One of the primary reasons to run a test is to understand if a particular change on our
site can help yield better conversions. For instance, you’ve decided to run a test on the
first 100 visitors visiting your site. You see that 40 of the 100 visitors converted on the
variation you’ve run against 20 on the original page. That’s a 20% conversion rate as
compared to a paltry 10% on the original page.
But does this mean you’ll get a guaranteed 20% conversion rate, consistently?
Probably not, because these 100 visitors may not be a good representation of the
10,000 visitors that pay a visit to your site every day. Here, statistical significance
comes into play!
Considering another example, you’ve run a test whose results showcase that your
implemented variation has outperformed the control (original version) with 93%
statistical significance. This means that there are 7% chances that your variation
outperformed purely by accident.
Concluding the example, the statistical significance of 93% states that it’s the right
time to stop the test, provided you’ve run the experiment long enough to derive
conclusions.
How Long Do You Need to Run an A/B Test for Dependable Results?
Before starting a test, define its run-time!
When you run a test on your site, visitors are constantly included in the test, and the
numbers keep changing. This further means that your conversion rate would
constantly rise, dip and even stagnate at different times throughout the testing phase.
As statistical significance is displayed all-through the test, it can further showcase
higher significance even before the test completes its intended duration. So,
depending on when you decide to check the results of your test, its statistical
significance could be high or low. This further paves the way to the problem of
“peeking.”
Peeking error
As the name says, peeking error means looking at the test results even before it has
completed it due course of action. The chances are that you’ll discover statistical

significance which is higher or lower than expected, and you may decide to stop the
test, basis the test has or hasn’t performed well. This can, in turn, result in deploying a
version which negatively affects your conversions.
Therefore, it is utmost essential to define test duration and declare a winner/loser

only after it has completed its run-time.
Note: A test’s duration majorly depends upon the number of visitors visiting your site
along with the expected conversion rate you’re looking for. You can use VWO’s free
test duration calculator to find an ideal period for which you must run a test.
Bayesian vs. Frequentist A/B Testing
Most conventional A/B testing engines make use of the Frequentist method to make
statistical computation and declare a winner. The method states that it’s essential to
define an A/B test duration based on sample size to draw the right test conclusions.
But the fact is, businesses looking to scale up rapidly do not have the time to get into
such nitty-gritty. So, an A/B test engine that bypasses the problem of waiting until a
test completes its due course while still enabling rational business decisions became a
necessity.
Bayesian method tells you “at any point, given that you have enough data at hand,
what is the probability that variation B has a lower conversion rate than variation A or
the control.” Neither does it have a defined time limit attached to it nor does it require
you to have an in-depth knowledge of statistics.
What Should You Use—A/B, Split, or Multivariate?
There are three primary ways to run a test.
1. A/B Testing
2. Split Testing
3. Multivariate Testing
Businesses often get confused amid the three - which kind of testing method would
best suit their needs and demands. To keep such confusion at bay, here are some
points to note:

1. A/B, Split, and Multivariate are three different testing methods, each of which
comes with its own set of pros and cons.
2. The decision to use one of these three methods should purely depend upon the
task at hand.
3. For reasons of simplicity, A/B testing seems best fit. It is majorly used in cases
when design changes aren’t complex.
4. Split testing, or otherwise known as split URL testing is used when:
• Design requires heavy modifications against its original version that

creating a new, separate page with an altogether different URL is easier.
• Back-end changes are needed, such as testing a pricing page which is

linked to multiple tables at the back end.
• To test pages which already exist on different URLs.
5. Multivariate testing is used when there are multiple changes suggested on a

page, and you want to separately test each combination.
Stage 5: The Learn Phase - How to Analyze A/B Test

Results
While this is the phase where you draw final conclusions about your tests, close the
loop for conversion rate optimization, and take a note of all the new information
gathered for future testing. Unfortunately, most optimizers only look at the test results
to see whether a variation was a winning one or if it has failed, they’d go back to
creating more hypotheses. However, as an optimizer, it is important to dig deeper.
Considering a testing scenario. There are two possible outcomes of a test you’ve
recently run.
When Your Variation Has Won the Test
Your efforts have paid off well. But, what next? It’s time to seek answers to the
following questions.
• What is the cost of deploying the change(s) in terms of engineering hours,

design hours and so forth.
• Is the expected increase in the revenue doing justice to the actual cost
involved?

Yes No
Talk to your engineering Hold on to deployment.

and design teams to get the
change implemented. Use post-test segmentation:
can the hypothesis be
Analyze the test data to see refined for more impact?
if there are further
opportunities to optimize. Reconstruct the hypothesis.
Use these learning Use these learning to fuel

outcomes to fuel further further optimization efforts.
optimization efforts.
When Your Variation Has Lost the Test
In such a case, make sure you:
• Analyze your research, check your hypothesis and look for loopholes.
• Study your test data. Segregate it further to examine the insights.
• Validate your research data with all the data gathering tools used.
• Go through all the relevant case studies. They could help you come across new
perspectives which you’d missed before.
• Reconstruct your hypothesis by accommodating new insights which you’d

missed in your initial research.
• Go back and test again.
Understand, CRO isn’t a once and done process. It is rather an ongoing process which
demands constant analysis. There’s always some room for improvement no matter
how tests you’ve run. Having a well-planned, well-designed CRO process effectively
helps in identifying areas of improvements and implement optimization efforts to get
better conversions, further drive more revenue.

Conversion Rate Optimization Best
Practices
9 Mistakes to Avoid When Running a CRO Campaign
Indeed, CRO is one of the best practices to optimize your site and increase
conversions. Most individuals/companies jumping into the pool are unaware of CRO’s
lengths and breadths and end up wasting a lot of time, money and efforts in the
process. Drafting a fool-proof strategy and effectively following it is the key to CRO.
Here are the top nine mistakes every CRO beginner must avoid:
Mistake #1: Making Changes Based on Opinion Than Statistical Data
Just because your site’s design looks cleaner, modish, and features better content than
its previous version doesn’t mean it will churn out better results. At the same time,
getting inspired from other businesses who ran a similar A/B test as yours on their
websites and saw an uplift in their conversions, doesn’t really mean that you’ll see the
same results on your site as well. This is because there’s no one-size-fits-all
conversion optimization strategy. What may work for one business will not necessarily
work for the other as well.
Resist the urge. Be patient. If you do intend to make changes or get inspired by A/B
tests run other businesses, make sure it’s backed by a reasonable hypothesis that
assures that your experiment will perform better.
A successful marketer isn’t the one who predicts which test will win basis opinion or
inspiration, instead the one who doesn’t let biasness win over statistical data.
Mistake #2: Writing Copy That Doesn’t Match Your Business Goals
Carefully drafted and SEO optimized content can do wonders. But, if it’s distorted and
doesn’t match your business’s goals, it becomes useless. Build unique content that
adds value to your site.

1. Focus on your brand’s USP.
2. Use simple language. Let it be crisp, precise, and to-the-point.
3. Write for scanners, not for readers.
4. Bullet points and ordered lists work better.
5. Write catchy headlines.
6. Add keywords that rank better.
Mistake #3: Going for Small Tests Before Big Ones

When it comes to CRO, most people believe that running small tests is better than big
ones. The fact is, small tests will only have a minor impact on conversion rate. Bigger
tests with significant chances, wherein more than two elements are optimized will
leave a lasting, noticeable impact off the table. These changes may include:
1. Redesigning the page above the fold
2. Redesigning the entire home page
3. Redesigning the navigation menu
4. Moving important elements to improve visibility
5. Changing headlines, which is catchier and more impactful than before.
Psychographic segmentation is a crucial element here. It can significantly help to

understand the needs and demands of your potential clients and make necessary
changes to lure them to enter your conversion funnel.
Mistake #4: Running Too Many Tests and Pop-Ups at the Same Time on the
Same Page
Running multiple tests at the same time can significantly affect the analysis accuracy
of each test. Every new element experimented may influence the test results others.
Furthermore, running numerous pop-ups and site designs in the same user session
disrupts their overall experience. In fact, it’s quite possible that such pop-ups may
annoy and confuse users, making them abandon the site, and never come back.
Running multiple tests with altered variable, known as the multivariate test, usually
works for high-traffic sites. Yet, not necessarily promising excellent results. Go step by
step. Analyze your results; make the necessary changes; observe; then run another
test.

Mistake #5: Not Paying Much Attention to Basic Design Elements
A. Giving More Importance to Automatic Image Sliders
For most marketers, adding automatic image sliders on their homepage may be one of the
best ways to showcase what’s new and / or upcoming on your website, but almost all
conversion experts suggest that these sliders can significantly reduce your conversion rate.
Image carousels do not allow users to explore the site at their own pace. Instead, they
hinder with a visitor’s experience and create banner blindness. Popular conversion experts,
like Peep Laja strongly recommend that businesses must give a deep thought to adding
automatic image sliders. [⁴] Here are some reasons to back this theory:
1. The human eye strongly reacts to movements. If images scroll faster than the
human eye can see or read, it will definitely miss out on the important stuff.
2. Too many messages means no message at all. Instead, focusing on adding on

the primary message on your banner images and the required action is always
more effective.
Therefore, it is always recommended to replace automatic sliders either with touch

carousels or static ones to get more engagement and conversions. However, it’s always
recommended to run an A/B test here to see what works best for your business. For a
reason that what did not work for a company may work wonders for your business.
B. Using Cheesy Stock Photos
Practically, there’s nothing right about using them on your website except their quality.
They may give your web page a good, heavy look, but they significantly reduce the
credibility of your brand. Remember that the purpose of a website is not to look pretty, but
to achieve certain objectives. And, of course, people like to deal with humans, not websites.
A case study by Market Experiments also demonstrates the same. A financial investment
consultation service providing company improved their signups by 35%[⁵] simply by
replacing a cheesy stock photo on their homepage with a picture of their Founder.
C. Not Giving Much Weightage to Videos
Show your product in action. Make instructional videos if you offer something complicated.
Believe it or not, but adding videos pays off well. And, there are a plethora of businesses
which have actually benefited a lot from this very addition.
Dr.Muscle is one such example to quote here. The website integrated a video on their sales

page, which significantly increased the number of visitors who clicked to their price/
guarantee page, by 46.15%.
Incorporating videos on your website and other connected platforms can help you
convince your users better, and, hence, boost conversions. Furthermore, video
marketing also helps you educate your visitors about your product(s) or service(s),
without forcing them to go through tons of text.
However, as a marketer, you must ensure that your videos contain a clear call-to-
action (CTA). With an absence of CTA, your visitors won’t know what step to take next.
In fact, when your visitors are already enjoying your video, they’ll be happy to follow
your CTA, and possibly convert into a customer.
Mistake #6: Undermining the Importance of Call-to-Action Buttons
As stated above, call-to-action buttons make for one of the most important page
elements which persuade your website visitors take a desired action and start the
conversion process. But often marketers do not give weightage to CTAs and lose out on
a lot of potential conversions. Below mentioned are some mistakes which you, as a
marketer or website designer, must avoid.
A. Using the Wrong Color Combinations
The internet is flooded with case studies which suggest that one particular color, for
instance red, converts better than another, say green and so on. But this doesn’t stand
true in all cases. Rather, it’s all about which color pops up better on the background of
your banner or web page. RIPT Apparel, a Chicago based online retail shop, increased
their conversion rate by 6.3% simply by changing their CTA color from black to green.
In addition to this, many optimizers also suggest that using a CTA color that hasn’t
been used anywhere on your web page can also help draw the necessary attention.
B. Not Using Power Words in Call-to-action Button Text
Instead of saying something like, ‘Submit’ or ‘Sign-up,’ use power words to grab the
attention of your users. Some popular CTA text copies are as follows:
• Save Your Seat. Book Now!
• Are You In? Let’s Get Started!
• Yes! Let’s Start My Free Trial.

• Grab Your Free Copy!
• Insights Delivered Daily to your Inbox!
• Where Should We Send Your Free Copy?
• Add this Summer Dress to Your Wardrobe!
ADT, a Tyco International company which provides safety solutions for commercial and
properties corrected its CTA copy - from ‘Book a Free Survey’ to ‘Get a Free Quote’ -
and saw a 60% increase in their conversion rate.
C. Placement of CTA Buttons
Besides color and text, the placement of your CTA button also plays an important role
in getting more conversions. While some marketers emphasise on placing your CTA
buttons in the first fold of your web page to make them prominently visible, many
others argue that placing the same below the fold can yield equally good results. The
reason being, it all depends upon how motivated your prospect is to click on your CTA
button. How desirable do they find your offering that they’re compelled to click on
your CTA wherever it’s placed. The more exclusive your offerings are, the more the
chances of your prospect clicking on your CTA button irrespective of your placement
on the web page.
D. A CTA Text Link or a CTA Button? Which One’s better
Text links are often lost amid the rest of the text, making them difficult to spot on the
web page. Meanwhile, button CTAs are more prominently visible to the eyes and
increase the changes of more clicks. Here’s an example to showcase the difference.

Mistake #7: Not Creating a Sense of Urgency
Not many marketers realize that creating a sense of urgency can actually increase
conversions manifold. When you offer your visitors a limited-time incentive and give
them a good reason to believe why they should bother to take the desired action now
rather than later, they will convert. And, a plethora of companies have actually
benefited from this - adopting the very ‘Principles of Persuasion.’
Here are some examples to back our claim:
1. Zappos creates a sense of urgency on its product pages by showing how many
items are left in a particular size and color combination for visitors to purchase
before they go out of stock.
2. Amazon uses the phenomenon as well. It showcases the exact number of

hours/minutes within which a visitor must complete their purchase process to
get the order delivered at their doorstep the very next day.
The ecommerce giant also dramatically uses a running countdown on its homepage to
show how long a particular sale will last.

Mistake #8: Not Establishing Business Trustworthiness Upfront
No matter how persuasive your call to action is or how simple your website is, if you
do not give the impression of trustworthiness to your visitors or give them confidence
in your website, you are not very likely to improve your website’s conversion rate. Your
visitors need to know that you are not fly-by-night operation and you are here to
remain. There are a plethora of ways to increase visitor confidence in your website and
products. These are as follows:
• Assure your visitors that you value their privacy and that you have a secured
site. Add HackerSafe (or similar) badges which showcase that your business
takes website security seriously.
• Add client testimonials. For these aren’t just pieces of content praising your
business offerings, they’re, in fact, an ideal means to establish your brand’s
credibility amid website visitors. They can also do much selling for you.
• Display your privacy policy wherever you ask personal information from the
visitor.
Mistake #9: Complicating Conversion Funnels
The conversion funnel is a set of pages (like the checkout process or registration form)
that leads to your conversion goal (like a product purchase or subscription). Most web
analytics tools (including some free ones) can be configured to allow you to visualize
where your visitors are leaking from your conversion funnel. You may be surprised to
know that most visitors abandon at Step 2 of your conversion funnel because your
entire process is too complicated for them to complete. A complicated conversion
funnel must be simplified in order to push the traffic through to the final conversion
page. Below mentioned are some tips and tricks to simplify your funnel and increase
conversions:
• Remove all extraneous links from pages within the conversion funnel
• Remove all unnecessary steps from the conversion funnel
• Don’t put too much focus on up-selling other offers
• Only ask for information that is completely necessary in completing the

conversion process. Visitors are hesitant to reveal their information if it
unjustified
• In the case of shopping carts, clearly let the visitor know about postage and
packaging costs, taxes and your returns policy as early in the process as
possible

• And make sure that you remind your visitors what they’ve added to their cart by
placing a link back to the product/service
Even though most marketers believe that using conventional conversion rate
optimization strategies still work wonders for their businesses, adopting new and
enhanced techniques such as website personalization is the need of the hour. And, a
report published by Exact Target also mentions that only 29% of marketers are
investing in website personalization.
Whether you have an eCommerce store, a SaaS website, or just a blog, offering
personalized content to your visitors will improve the user experience and, hence, the
conversions. Businesses offering website personalization report a 14% uplift in their
sales.
In order to offer website personalization effectively, you must be aware of all the types
of users that visit your website. For instance, the Hubspot Blog offers content
specifically catered to three major segments of its visitors: marketers, sales
professionals, and agencies.
The Sales Benchmark Index Blog takes website personalization a step further. It asks
its visitors to choose a persona that suits them the best, and then displays relevant
content to them.

Similarly, you can offer personalized content to your visitors based on the industries
they belong to, or where they lie in your conversion funnel.
Website personalization is especially effective for eCommerce websites, and Amazon is

one of the best examples of quote here. The company has inculcated the very essence
of personalization in a manner that its visitors are beguiled by its offering every time
they pay a visit to their website.
7 Conversion Rate Optimization Challenges to Address

CRO is one of the best ways to optimize your website and increase conversions. But it
comes with its own set of challenges and misconceptions, which must be addressed to
ensure smooth adoption and implementation.
Challenge #1: Politics and People
People and politics make for two main elements that define the culture of an
organization. While the former highlights skills and mindset, the latter speaks of
influential power. The real challenge surfaces when there’s no democracy amid
people. Moreover, when the influential individuals of the organization try to enforce
their thoughts over factual data.

Solution:
1. Educate people about the real benefits of CRO.
2. Present competitive analysis
3. Highlight the gaps in your current approach
4. Show the data.
Challenge #2: Structure to Support CRO
Putting together a structure to support CRO is a huge challenge for most enterprises. A
series of questions come up here. Is it worth hiring a dedicated conversion
optimization team; would it add to overall organizational expenditure; who will take
the responsibility in case of failures; and so on!
Solution:
Before getting into the depth of CRO, it’s important to draft a proper CRO process.
Create a dashboard or platform to plan, update and record all your conversion
activities. Share the statistics with your employees. Encourage them to contribute to
conversion optimization and make smart decisions based on factual data.
Challenge #3: Insufficient Budget Allocation
Budget plays an important role when it comes to planning and running a CRO
campaign. While companies back in 2013, spent as low of only 5% on CRO activities, the
trend has improved with organizations increasing their spend on optimization.
However, the problem lies in the correct budget allocation.
Solution:
Before zeroing upon an amount, organizations must analyze their ROI from CRO. They
must invest in conversion optimization tools after thoroughly examining their goals
and actual gains.

Challenge #4: Lack of Right Tools to Meet Business Goals
Marketers have a variety of tools to choose from to meet their business goals. For
example, when deciding on an A/B testing tool, they have to make a choice between a:
• Frequentist-based statistical engine

• Bayesian statistical engine
Moreover, there are multiple tools which help marketers accomplish specific
objectives. But using a combination of tools can make reporting a pain. So, how should
marketers proceed? How to choose the right conversation rate optimization tools?
Solution:
For selecting the correct tool, marketers must weigh the pros and cons of their actions.
They must evaluate the tool based on how effectively and efficiently it will solve their
specific business problems and meet their goals. For enterprises looking to invest in a
tool for business growth, here’s a post on what decision-makers need to know before
investing in CRO or A/B testing software.
Challenge #5: Ending an A/B Tests Too Early
Ending an experiment in between just because your variation isn’t yielding the results
as anticipated, doesn’t mean that it won’t stand a chance to win in the end. There are a
plethora of tests which take time to showcase necessary results due to a number of
factors.
Solution:
The first rule of running an A/B test is to let the experiment run its course until it
reaches its statistical significance. Give your test some time to breathe. If you still feel
your experiment is on the verge of failing, do a deep analysis of the experiment. Look
for errors or bugs in the process and check your hypothesis again. Fix these issues, if
any, and then run the test again for a significant amount of time to get to a concrete
conclusion.

Challenge #6: Giving Up Optimization After Failed Tests
When you’re optimizing a crucial page of your conversion funnel, you may develop a
hypothesis to improve its conversion rate, and run an A/B test. What do you do if the
test fails? It will be absurd to leave the page to its original state because the page is
crucial and requires optimization.
Solution:
The alternative is to learn what the losing variation lacked and why users didn’t find it
more appealing. Employ tools like heatmaps and clickmaps to observe user behavior.
Use this information to devise a new and better hypothesis and run more A/B tests,
incrementally improving chances for a high performing test.
The key here is to always expect the unexpected results. Many times, even the most
logical hypotheses fail. Keep testing!
Challenge #7:. Not Tracking Macro Conversions
So your A/B test result has come in. Your variation has outperformed the control. The
result is statistically significant and it has positively improved your conversion rate.
Now while you rejoice, did your variation only increase your micro conversions (e.g.
form-submits, blog signups, visits to the next page, etc.) or did it improve your macro
conversions (e.g. revenue) as well?
If the answer is “Yes! It increased only micro conversions,” it’s time to revisit your
testing strategy. While these small wins will surely add to your conversion goals, they
will not amount to anything in totality.
Solution:
The trick here is to carefully decide your A/B testing goals and tie your macro
conversion goals to micro conversions ones. Unless you do it, it’ll become a case of
not seeing the wood for the trees.
Note, any optimization is better than no optimization. Acknowledge all the website
optimization gains that you can get, no matter how small they are. Learn from your
pitfalls and relaunch a better, more data-backed test.

Conclusion
From mapping the importance of website optimisation to strategizing the means and
ways to improve site performance, conducting A/B tests and using the results to boost
marketing efforts, conversion rate optimisation has become a mainstream effort. It not
only enables companies to understand how customers think, use, and perceive their
brand and it’s offerings, but also exposes to an incredible range of data to shape their
future business strategies. CRO is not just another tool to enhance your brand’s online
performance, it’s ‘the’ tool to make you stand out!
Resources
1. https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-fast-is-fast-enough-page-load-time-and-
your-bottom-line/
2. https://skilled.co/resources/speed-affects-website-infographic/
3. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/
4. https://cxl.com/blog/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-carousels/'
5. http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/general/stock-images-tested.html

About VWO
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through effective engagement- all via a single connected platform. Embrace the power
of the VWO Connected Platform to see your core conversion & growth metrics go up
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What is Conversion Rate Optimization? 03

6 Primary Elements of Conversion Rate Optimization 04

Beneﬁts of Conversion Rate Optimization: Why is it important? 11

Who is Conversion Rate Optimization Useful For? 13

Conversion Rate Optimization Steps: Understanding the Process 22

Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices 36

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 02

At a process level, conversion rate optimization can be effectively achieved by

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 03

6 Primary Elements of Conversion Rate

Landing Page Design

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 04

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 05

• Writing Style: Keep the following things in mind:

• Address directly – e.g. Can you rely on content marketing?

• Focus on the numbers – e.g. 10 ways to ensure email marketing adds to

• Cut content into relevant paragraphs for easy readability

• Use necessary subheadings to break down the content into glance-able

• Bullet points or numbered lists wherever necessary

• Stylistic elements such as metaphor, adjectives, etc. to highlight certain

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A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 07

Navigation and Site Structure

Category Page Page

Post Sub-Category Front-Page Sub-Page

Post Post Post

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In other words, creating a fluid, easy-to-navigate website is the key to increasing

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A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 10

Improving Marketing ROI

1. Improving quality/speed of experiments run on your website: CRO allows you to

2. Better revenue with same traffic/incremental business returns: One of the

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 11

Australian based eCommerce company ShowPo saw a 6.09% increase in its

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 12

Conversion Rate Optimization for B2B/SaaS Companies

Lead generation is the initiation of grabbing the interest of your customers by

Case Study: Continuous Testing Helped POSist Improve their Demo

POSist is one of the leading SaaS-based restaurant management platforms that

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A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 14

Common reasons why people leave a site are as follows:

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Variation V1 (New checkout page during the test)

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Being a subscription-based, over-the-top (OTT) video-on-demand service provider,

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 17

Conversion Rate Optimization for Travel Agencies

Case Study: Bizztravel Wintersport Increased its Conversions by 21% by

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 18

Variation V1 (bizztravel page during the test)

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A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 21

Stage 1: Research Phase - Identifying the areas of

A Complete Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization 22

100% 72.8% 42.6% 30.4% 12.4%

70.3 82.6 89.4 52.8

47.2 47.2 47.2 47.2

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