Today I want to talk about something that is often misunderstood in online marketing: conversion rate optimization.
The goal of CRO is to increase the value per [whatever metric you are measuring]. For example, that could be the value per click, per subscriber, or per purchase.
You go about this process by testing different variations of your landing page. Things like the headline, images, layout, button color, call to action, social proof, and urgency have some of the biggest impact on the conversion rate.
And that’s where *most* people go wrong.
They assume that higher conversions just means “more” of something. (e.g. more clicks, more opt-ins, more views…)
And then randomly test anything that might increase those *vanity* metrics. This is as opposed to the correct way, where you optimize for key performance indicators like revenue/profit/value per subscriber.
So you end up with newbie marketers that take their original landing page — which converted decently — and make the language extremely confusing, make the value proposition unclear… but throws in a higher contrast button, and more powerful (but not-relevant) headline, and more compelling copy (but to the wrong audience). What happens? You get ‘higher’ conversions but less value from your traffic.
Optimizing for the highest opt-in percentage (or the amount of people that view/click on your sales page) is NOT the same thing as optimizing for KPIs. The former leads to lower profit, unless you get lucky, while the latter leads to more money in your pocket. You DO want more money, right?
