When you invest in advertising and marketing, are you seeing returns or do you feel as though you’re spending more money than you’re making?
Perhaps you’ve already nearly exhausted your marketing budget, or you’re losing faith in the efficacy of Google ads and social media activity. Whatever the reason, you might be thinking of trying to make more with what you have by streamlining your website and your marketing outreach.
This is where conversion rate optimisation comes in. Rather than spending even more money on marketing to try and solve your ROI problem, conversion rate optimisation helps you take a step back, evaluate what’s working and fix what isn’t.
But is a conversion rate optimisation - and a conversion rate optimisation agency - worth the money? Read on to find out.
Making more with what you have: conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
First, we need to understand what conversion rate optimisation can do for your brand.
In essence, conversion rate optimisation (or CR) helps you to:
- Get your website visitors to take the action you want
- Make it easier for your visitors to find the information they need
- Increase your sales
- Get better ROI from your marketing and advertising
It does this by taking data from your users’ behaviour, your SEO, your marketing results and more and figuring out the most effective way to get your visitors to do what you want. This can be any action, from buying a product to signing up for a service.
By evaluating user data, you’re able to see which users have the highest customer value and why. What drove them to buy? Was it an ad served at just the right time and place, or was it that you remarketing a product to them on a specific landing page? Is your homepage perfectly signposted, or were valuable customers won over by your third party reviews?
Armed with this information, you can adjust your website design and your marketing strategy to be more effective. Rather than pouring more money into a theory that isn’t working, conversion rate optimisation helps you to only take the actions that deliver ROI.
One port of call might be to find conversion rate optimisation experts, or a CRO specialist who can help you to figure out what’s blocking customers from making a purchase. However, you might be wondering if investing in a conversion rate optimisation agency is worth risking your budget, or whether you should just be spending more on marketing and ads.
Is a conversion rate optimisation agency worth the money?
The clear answer is yes. Companies that don’t focus on conversion rate optimisation often find that they’re throwing money into marketing with little return. For example, Proxima Group found that 60% of marketing budget is wasted. The average website conversion rate is only 2.35% - which means for every £100 you’re spending on your site, you’re only making about £3 back. In contrast, the top 10% of websites have a conversion rate of around 11% or more.
Companies spend only $1 on conversion rate optimisation for every $92 they spend on acquiring new customers. This means that brands are spending a small fortune on finding new business, but not even making sure that the customers they gain are worth the money.
There’s a 223% increase on ROI when you invest in conversion rate optimisation, meaning it’s more effective at getting you a good return than just spending more money on customer acquisition.
Though investing in a conversion rate optimisation agency might seem like an expensive outlay, it’s more than worth the money in the long run because it makes the budget you spend go further and return more. By consulting with conversion rate optimisation specialists, you're able to get the most out of the work you've already put in, without having to spend more precious time delving deep into your insights.
Obviously, we’re keen to prove that a conversion rate optimisation agency is worth the money. Get a free consultation now and watch us put our money where our mouth is.
How to get the most out of a conversion rate optimisation agency
There’s a lot of work that goes into conversion rate optimisation, and the thought of doing all the research and testing yourself can be a bit overwhelming. However, the beauty of operating a digital business is that you don’t need the help of a conversion rate optimisation company to get started on making more with what you have. Best of all, whatever work you start with can be built on with the help of your conversion rate optimisation specialists further down the line.
Here are our conversion rate optimisation tips for building a strong foundation of insights to help improve your website ROI. By starting with these actions, you might already begin to see what actions a conversion rate optimisation agency can help you to take for better business outcomes.
Collect as much data as you can
Key to getting the most out of your customers is to collect as much data as you can. This data can be in the form of:
- Financial data, i.e. customer lifetime value, average customer spend
- User demographic data, i.e. ideal customer profile
- User behaviour data, i.e. website dwell times, pages visited
- SEO data, i.e. Google ranking
- Social media data, i.e. ad spend and results
- Marketing data, i.e. email marketing results
The more you know, the better you can hone the customer journey and achieve your business goals. A conversion rate optimisation agency can help you gather in-depth data and build an easy-to-use dashboard to see all your insights in one place.
Understand what specific actions you want your audience to take
Often, customers are lost because they’re being asked to focus on too many actions at once. For example, on one web page, you might be asking customers to sign up to a newsletter, give their feedback, buy a product, submit their details for a profile and recommend your brand to others. Without clear signposting to the main action you want visitors to take - such as buying a product - customers can find there’s too much friction and abandon their purchase.
Knowing what the main outcome of each customer interaction should be will help you to streamline your website and improve your conversion rate. If you’re speaking to a conversion rate optimisation agency, you should make it clear what your aims are from the get-go to help drive your goals.
Get the larger customer journey picture
You might know the basics of the journey your customers take to their final action - but do you know where customers are most likely to be lost?
Getting the full customer journey picture will help you to understand what prevents your customers from making a purchase or signing up to a service. It will also help you see where to dedicate your marketing budget - it’s no good investing in Facebook advertising if most of your customers come from your email marketing, for example.
Ask for feedback from your audience
Your existing customers are the best people to consult to find out what made them choose your brand, products or service over all the others. Requesting feedback post-purchase, in your email marketing and across your social media can help you to build up a good understanding of what your customers think of you.
The promise of a discount or some other form of compensation for your customers’ time can help to encourage them to provide feedback. Ask about how they found your products and what can be improved with your service and make sure you implement appropriate feedback. Better yet, place great reviews on your site to build social trust and tell your customers when you’ve taken their insights on board.
Try our conversion rate optimisation services in London
We’re here to help you make more with the money you spend. Our conversion rate optimisation agency in London and Kent focuses on maximising the money you have already spent on your website and marketing by understanding what’s actually happening when you outreach to your customers. From technical optimisation to content strategy, we’re able to pinpoint your conversion paths and tailor them to your customers’ unique habits and preferences.
Get in touch now for a free 20 minute consultation and see how we can help you make the most with what you already have.