Every business starts with a goal in mind and a bottom line.  If your website is designed well, it should reflect your goals and steer visitors towards performing an action that benefits your business. Whether you want visitors to make a purchase, submit contact forms or visit a page with directions, any of these goals can be monitored and optimized. This is the world of Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO for short. Even the most basic CRO techniques can mean the difference between paying for your website and your website paying for itself.

Understanding CRO Basics

To start work with CRO, there are a few terms that you need to be learn:

1. A "Conversion" is simply the term used when someone completes a specific task. Making a purchase is an easy example of a conversion. When the customer finally pays for their item, they have officially made a conversion.


2. Conversion Rate refers to the percentage of visitors to your site that converted, compared to the amount of visitors who did not. So if one out of every 100 customers submits a contact form, then your website has a conversion rate of one percent.


3. Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of editing or testing your website in order to increase your conversion rate. This process ranges from testing new home pages to using different wording for a title.

How Can CRO Help My Business?

So why do companies spend hours on CRO? The answer is simple: CRO directly ties to your company's goals. Let's say you are a catering business and want to get more people to request quotes for your events. Here are a few CRO techniques that might be implemented:

1. Alternative Calls-to-Action and content could be tested to see if a specific phrase might trigger more visitors to request a quote


2. A shorter request form might be tested against the current one to see if fewer fields might lead to less visitors leaving before completing the contact form


3. Multiple variations of your home page could be tested to see if any new design might lead more visitors to stay on your site and fill out a request

If you are not tracking your website's conversions, then you are missing a huge opportunity to make your website work for you. Call Thoughtwire at (800) 367-2570 or contact Thoughtwire here to start optimizing your website.