Even the absolute best marketing campaign can only do so much. Once people have clicked the ad or found your site through some of your great content pieces, you need to wow them on-site. This is where the science (or perhaps art) of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) plays a huge role.
It can be very expensive getting people to your site, so once they’re there you want to make sure they buy something and that they keep coming back. So last week on Optily Radio, we had Navah Hopkins of Justuno, along with Optily’s UX Designer Helen Grimes, in to talk all things CRO.
We discussed some of the ways companies have successfully improved their CRO, including:
- Ensuring check-out is frictionless
- Taking accessibility into account
- Leveraging the power of tools and analytics to constantly improve and iterate
Check out the episode teaser here:
Watch
Listen
Who are Navah and Helen?
Navah Hopkins, known as @Navahf on Twitter, is the Director of Paid Media at Justuno, a company that uses AI to optimize websites for high conversions. She’s been in the digital marketing field since 2008 and she loves sharing her experience at various public speaking engagements. She’s also a regular contributor to Search Engine Journal, SEMrush, WordStream, and PPC Chats on Twitter. Navah’s also been named among PPC Hero’s Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts.
Helen Grimes is Optily’s User Experience Designer with years of experience in the field. She’s currently working on the redesign project for the Optily app and dashboard. Before she joined our team, Helen interned as a User Experience Designer at Agilent Technologies in Germany. She is also a graduate of the Technological University Dublin, where she received a Master’s in Creative Digital Media and UX with a specialization in Interaction Design.
Make checking out easy
One of Navah’s top pet peeves and something that really “grinds her gears” is when companies make the checkout process more difficult than it should be. Consumers are on the go and many have Amazon One-click or Google Pay/Apple Wallet already set up and ready. When companies don’t accept any of these as payment options they require many extra steps to complete a purchase.
These extra steps are not optimal and result in many lost sales. 74% of carts are left abandoned and few payment options might be the culprits of many of these.
Beyond payment options, Navah stresses making it easy for people to checkout once and ship to multiple addresses on one order.
Say your whole marketing team is remote and you’re looking to get everyone a nice coffee mug so the whole team matches on Zoom calls. More often than not, you’ll have to place 5 separate orders for the same product to ship to each team member. This could definitely be made easier.
Invest in Accessibility
Screen reader tags, high contrast colors, and legible fonts are big-ticket items when it comes to creating websites that are usable by everyone. These can play a big factor in not only bumping up conversions but also your organic ranking. Accessibility isn’t just a “nice-to-have” anymore and your site traffic and conversions will definitely suffer if it isn’t a priority.
Navah points out something that might not be as well-known as having alt-tags: using sans serif fonts over serifs. There’s a reason big tech companies overwhelmingly use sans serif fonts in the text and logos–it’s a lot easier to read, especially for people with dyslexia.
Although “more serious” brands like financial institutions or law firms tend to gravitate towards serif fonts, it’s probably making reading their oftentimes already dense copy even more difficult for some people. Font choice is so important, not only for branding but also for accessibility.
Essential CRO tools
The actual programs that Helen and Navah use regularly to identify pain points (especially things like rage clicks) are really important. You can design a website that you and your team think is great, but if your average user isn’t consistently navigating to your main CTA button, then you’ve missed the mark.
Here are the main tools these two UX pros use regularly for the different steps of the CRO process:
- Logrocket: User journey, site errors, and rage clicks
- Adobe XD: Wireframing
- InVision: Usability testing
- FullStory: User journey and reactions
- Google Analytics: Free option
- HotJar: Heatmaps
Want more CRO tips?
For the whole conversation and many more amazing insights from Navah and Helen on improving your on-site conversions, check out the full episode.
