These 3 CRO Misconceptions Are Hurting Your Business’ Bottom Line

Conversion rate optimization is tricky. It involves a lot of moving parts and there’s a lot to track and test. Plus, some businesses don’t view conversion rate optimization as necessary even though CRO practices are crucial for increasing traffic and converting more leads into customers.

Also, since CRO is challenging and sometimes undervalued, a number of misconceptions exist about what CRO is, what it involves, and what it can do for a company’s bottom line. And while some of these misconceptions aren’t a big deal, others can cost your company time, money, and important resources. So it’s important to understand what these misconceptions are so you can better equip your business.

That said, here are three of the top misconceptions about conversion rate optimization.

Myth #1: To succeed at CRO, just follow the “best practices.”

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With a quick Google search, you can find tons of resources with the “best” tips and advice for how to increase your conversion rates. And while much of this information is worth reading, CRO is a more of an art than a science.

“There are no one-size-fits-all ‘best practices’ you can apply to your industry that will be guaranteed to work,” says Khalid Saleh of Invesp.

So instead of modeling your CRO strategies after what worked well for someone else, you should assess what the specific friction points are in your own business and then go from there.

There are three steps to accomplish this:

  1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of your target market and what your customers really want.
  2. Audit your website to see where most of your visitors are dropping off.
  3. Using this information, make tweaks to your site and sales funnel and then split-test.

Myth #2: CRO is basically just split-testing.

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Split-testing web elements is an important component of conversion rate optimization—yes, this is totally true. Split-testing, however, is not the main event of CRO.

The primary focus of conversion rate optimization is to identify what causes people to take action and convert, whether that means making a purchase, signing up to learn more, or giving you their contact information. Then, it’s the CRO specialist’s job to identify and fix any barriers that are preventing your visitors from converting, which is where split-testing does come into play.

But the heart of conversion rate optimization involves getting inside your visitors’ heads. Are their basic needs being met? What’s standing in their way from taking action? Understanding the psychology behind your visitors’ actions (and inaction) is key.

And when it comes to surpassing visitor roadblocks, here’s what you should concentrate on:

  • Functionality (e.g. does your site work well on all devices?)
  • Accessibility (your site should be accessible to visitors with limited tech abilities and from varying locations)
  • Usability (e.g. can visitors use your website without needing assistance?)
  • Intuitiveness (visitors should be able to naturally figure out your site’s navigation and access its content)
  • Persuasiveness (e.g. how convincing is your site at getting people to hand over their email address or credit card information?)

Myth #3: Small changes yield big rewards.

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While this sometimes can be the case, it’s the exception, not the rule. Of course, there are low-hanging-fruit optimization tweaks that can produce positive results. For example, swapping the word “your” for “my” in your CTA button copy.

On their own, however, these types of changes rarely yield “silver bullet” results, like doubling your conversion rates. And any case study that claims otherwise is probably misleading, as case studies often omit important information, such as the length of time a test ran and whether or not any other changes were made.

So take their “unbelievable” results with a grain of salt and understand that in order to get truly “big” results, you need to test all of the possible friction points on your site and make more major changes to your site’s layout and design.

What do you think about these misunderstandings about conversion rate optimization? Did it help clear anything up for you? Have any of these misconceptions been hurting your business? Get in touch and let us know!

Header Photo Credit: Edubirdie.com