What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is a form of ecommerce marketing that uses data and best practices to increase the percentage of online visitors who complete a desired behavior. A conversion is often thought of in terms of an online purchase, but can refer to many desired outcomes, such as a website visitor signing up for an email newsletter or participating in a webinar. Conversions can be “micro” or “macro,” depending on the scale of the outcome.

With CRO, businesses leverage customer journey analytics and other insights to boost the ROI of their online marketing. In other words, a company will apply CRO practices to increase its revenue or improve other key performance metrics for its campaigns. CRO is also a go-to strategy for identifying and mitigating some of the major challenges faced by online retailers, such as abandoned shopping carts and low click-through rates.

CRO is a crucial strategy for boosting the ROI of ecommerce marketing investments. Consider an online marketing campaign that drives traffic to a landing page for a new product launch, which includes a “Buy Now” button. As the campaign rolls out, traffic to the page may increase, but the number of visitors who complete a purchase might lag below the company’s goal.

In this instance, marketers would use CRO to increase the number of visitors who complete the transaction. Effective CRO strategies include testing and revising inbound link copy and other marketing messages, leveraging landing page optimization (including A/B testing and usability improvements), and using ecommerce analytics to identify opportunities for streamlining the shopping cart experience.