“Should we move forward with conversion rate optimization services?”
We face this question often and of course, for me, being involved in post-click optimizations and analysis every day, it’s an easy yes. Investing in the post-click experience or conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a given. This refers to the page users land on or their experience after they’ve clicked on an ad or an email, for example. If you receive a ton of traffic (clicks) from your ads but no one decides to buy from you because your page isn’t functional, things aren’t organized, or they’re having a bad experience, that’s a BIG problem. That means you’re wasting money when you could be rolling in sales.
So, as I said, for me, it’s an easy yes. But during the decision-making process, there are 3 common reasons why we see clients say “no.”
- Budget / monetary constraints
- Time resources
- In-house teams
Notice it isn’t value. Most people understand the importance of CRO but they don’t realize how easy it can be to get started and these three resources are often to blame. Today I want to help offer guidance on why it’s important to give CRO time, money, and much-needed love and attention. My goal is to offer some clarity on why you should stop blaming these 3 things on not doing CRO and just do it already. It just makes sense!
Budget & Monetary Constraints
“We don’t have the budget.”
“We have pretty tight budgets and aggressive revenue goals we need to hit.”
We hear versions of these over and over again. Personally, I’m blown away when I hear things related to revenue goals. Our goal is to help you get MORE revenue. If you have aggressive revenue goals, CRO will help you identify and optimize areas in that post-click experience that will push users down the funnel, resulting in more revenue.
Some advertisers have very tight budgets that don’t allow for this additional spend on conversion rate optimization. However, I’d like to offer a tip that may put you ahead of your competition. Take a piece of this advertising or marketing budget and invest it into CRO. As a result, you’ll begin to see better conversion rates, thus freeing up more of that budget to spend on more traffic. This traffic will result in even more customers because of your conversion rate optimization efforts. Your investment should quickly pay off.
On the other hand, as the search landscape continues to grow, it’s likely we’re going to continue seeing CPCs increase. One very easy way we recommend combatting these rising costs is through conversion rate optimization in order to get even more return on money going in by increasing conversion rates. THIS is why you should be investing in CRO! CRO should mitigate the impacts of the rising cost in CPCs.
It’s Not Okay to Invest in More Traffic if your Traffic Doesn’t Convert
Lastly, there are some advertisers who might have the money but prefer to invest this money into more traffic as opposed to something like conversion rate optimization. However, I strongly encourage reconsideration on this decision. Doesn’t it seem like a better decision to optimize your existing traffic? This is where I’ll step in and tell you that just putting more money into traffic is not the right decision. It IS a better decision to optimize existing traffic. You WILL lose thousands of dollars if your users can’t make a purchase or fill out a lead form or they simply choose not to because your landing page is not set up in a way that makes it easy for them. There’s an opportunity here to invest in CRO to ensure top-notch performance from our existing traffic before investing even more dollars for brand new traffic.
Time Resources
“How much time will this require from my team?”
This question is often asked by clients interested in conversion rate optimization. The good news is, at the minimum, very little time is needed from the client, – though it’s completely up to the client how much involvement or engagement they want from their team.
At the onset of the relationship, we ask for the placement of a few third-party scripts. This is typically a one-time implementation in order for us to gather user behavior data and perform landing page testing. Once these scripts are placed, our team is able to set up the majority of our tests on our own. The testing platform allows us to manipulate sites and landing pages through that single script placement, which often brings relief to clients, learning that very little is required of them. They’re often surprised or impressed that we’re able to make the changes to their site and test them before pulling in their team.
Throughout the duration of the relationship, once winning tests are established, we’ll ask the client to implement these – making the optimizations permanent on the site or landing page that’s being tested. If you’re working with Hanapin, this is what you should expect to be asked the most about in relation to CRO.
With that being said, some clients may actually see a time-savings benefit. Our goal is to test optimizations to learn exactly what will result in more leads or revenue. Therefore, rather than putting in the time to make the changes to the site, whether it’s recommended by our team or it’s a change your team is wanting to see, our team can actually do the testing first to determine if will in fact benefit the user experience. No need spending time on changes that actually might decrease performance or changes you’re uncertain with.
Ultimately, the relationship can be as collaborative or as hands-off as the client wishes. Often the clients find a lot of value in the user research we deliver, bringing in other team members to collaborate and share these learnings. In many cases, these insights are shared with other internal teams for implementation across other channels of the business.
In-house Teams
“We already have a team in-house.”
A concern we discuss often is the existence of in-house teams diminishing the need for conversion rate optimization services. Our team finds it extremely valuable to work with these teams for a number of reasons:
- Fresh perspective
- Our team is consistently leaning on one another for a set of fresh eyes. After looking at the same site or the same landing page for so long, it’s very easy to overlook obvious opportunities.
- Outside perspective
- Working strictly with in-house teams makes it very easy to end up with a site or landing page full of jargon. Bringing in outsiders can help recreate the fresh perspective of customers who don’t live and breathe the brand the way internal teams do.
- An extra set of hands
- Often times in-house teams realize they just don’t have enough hands to do everything they wish they could and an additional resource can be that set of hands and eyes they need to keep things moving forward.
To give an example, we were able to work with a team to increase their demo request rates by 170%. By providing an in-depth analysis of their existing site and understanding how users were navigating and engaging with the site, we were able to make a simple suggestion that better-aligned user expectations and created more positive experiences. Not only did we see increased lead volume, we saw increased high-quality lead volume.
We work with internal teams in a variety of different ways. In some instances, clients don’t have the resources within their teams to devote to the research needed in order to truly understand how their users behave. Instead, they’re primarily focused on testing and design.
In some instances, clients are going through a redesign or a site refresh, which is the perfect time for us to not only provide analysis on the existing user behavior but also provide any and all feedback we can regarding the new site designs.
In other cases, these internal teams put their time and effort into research and design with no time left to execute any testing plans to ensure their designs are actually performing well. Though there are a variety of ways to work together, there are many benefits that can come from this type of partnership.
Final Thoughts
“Yes, you should do CRO!”
This is me. Every time.
Stop blaming the money. Stop blaming your time, or lack thereof. Stop blaming the existence of your internal teams. Every single one of these things can benefit from the investment in CRO and the post-click experience. I hope you’re able to see just how beneficial and impactful CRO can be to the overall business. Take a look at another example of a simple change that resulted in $21,135.27 more in revenue.
The next time you see yourself asking or you’re personally faced with the question, “Should we do CRO?” think about the extra resources this can give you long term as opposed to the resources it could take away in the short term.
Stop placing the blame & just do it already!
