- What is conversion rate optimisation?
- Why is CRO difficult for low-traffic websites?
- Six top tips for optimising your website’s conversion rate
Website conversion rates average at around 2%, meaning for every 100 visitors that visit your website, only two of those people will purchase a product or service your brand offers.
Converting prospects into customers is even more challenging for low-traffic websites, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
Website traffic is essential for all eCommerce businesses for obvious reasons such as generating sales and improving data-driven practises, but it’s useless if traffic doesn’t convert into something valuable.
So, how do we improve our conversion rate and increase sales or sign-ups?
We’ve outlined six CRO tips and techniques proven to help boost conversion rates for websites, particularly low-traffic sites.
Why is CRO Difficult for Low-Traffic Websites?
Conversion rate optimisation is difficult for low-traffic websites for two primary reasons:
- To bear visitors, you need a reasonable conversion rate
- It’s challenging to improve your conversion rate if you generate little traffic
One way to generate more traffic is to improve your SEO, which is the process of refining your website to boost its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The better visibility your web pages have in SERPs, the more likely you are to attract quality traffic to your website and increase your chances of conversion.
You should also perform a site audit to identify whether your site has any technical issues. While this route can be expensive for startups, some platforms offer discounted subscriptions. Soar Online will give you a basic 10-minute SEO audit for free, just click here.
If you cannot wait for your website to rank organically, consider implementing CRO best practises. But keep in mind that using CRO to convert customers will also be a challenge if you own a low traffic site, which is why improving your search visibility is one of the most effective marketing strategies.
CRO relies on data, and as low traffic websites will have smaller sample sizes, it could take a considerable amount of time to achieve any statistical significance when performing tests.
Suppose you call a test before you’ve collected the appropriate data. In that case, you run the risk of generating a false positive, which could potentially ruin any progress you’ve made since launching your website.
Conversion Rate Optimisation Tips For Low Traffic Websites
If you Google CRO best practises, chances are you come across information that works well for high-traffic websites and struggle to find tips for low traffic sites.
But what about startup companies that also need eCommerce solutions to attract customers to their brand? We’ve got you covered at Soar Online – take a read of our top tips on CRO for small businesses and low traffic websites.
#1 Run Tests With Relatively Low Confidence Level
The confidence level is a crucial aspect of statistics and will indicate the truth of your test results for the population. Essentially, the confidence level will inform you of the reliability of your test and the chances of generating a false positive.
If your confidence level is high, chances are your test results will also be more accurate.
When performing a variation test, stick to A/B testing until you have sufficient traffic to test multiple variables. For example, suppose a test between samples A and B runs at 95% confidence; this demonstrates that representative A is better than B and has a higher chance of being more accurate.
How?
As sample A ran at 95% confidence, this means there is only a 5% chance of B producing more desirable results.
Setting confidence at 95% is the industry standard when performing CRO tests; however, it can be helpful to construct confidence intervals at different levels to explore the A/B test warrants more deeply.
Setting a 95% confidence level with a small sample group could also skew the accuracy of the results. Although lowering the confidence level could compromise the accuracy of your test results, there’s no harm in testing at 80-90% confidence.
You could also avoid skewing data by performing in-depth keyword analysis as aligning your content with your audience’s needs, pain points, and desires could help your website attract qualified traffic.
Reducing the confidence level will also speed up your test and help you achieve results quicker – beneficial if you’re under financial pressure or facing time constraints.
#2 Optimise for Micro Conversions
Key performance indicators (KPI) in Conversion Rate Optimisation are generally divided into two categories: micro and macro conversions.
Macro conversions are the primary goals of a website, with micro-conversions referring to the steps taken to reach that end goal.
Users that visit landing pages, sign-up for a service or engage with a piece of content are examples of micro conversions. While they do not contribute to your overall conversion rate, micro conversions are a strong indicator of your funnel’s effectiveness.
Micro conversions represent user interest in your brand, beneficial for optimising low-traffic websites as smaller conversion activity is likely to occur more frequently than macro activity.
For most eCommerce businesses, the ultimate goal is likely to have visitors make a purchase. Optimising for micro-conversions can help improve the user experience (UX) and attract more traffic to your website, increasing total conversion.
Tracking micro conversions will also give you a higher baseline sample to build your test around, thus increasing your chances of statistical accuracy and success.
You can use Google Analytics to track micro conversions and add these steps as an event or goal. Alternatively, add small conversions as trigger responses in Google Tag Manager. Still, Google Analytics might be a more valuable tool to use as you can compare each conversion against other metrics and see how they correlate with the customer buyer journey.
However, as micro-conversions might not contribute to your bottom line, optimising for these variables could produce misleading results.
To avoid wasting your time and efforts, focus on micro-conversions concerning the whole user journey to improve the UX across your website.
#3 Implement Major Changes in A/B Tests
Low-traffic websites don’t have the liberty of testing minute elements, and you can survive just fine without gaining insight into your user preferences, but that doesn’t mean you should rule out A/B testing.
Don’t be afraid to implement significant changes in your A/B tests, as this could make a meaningful impact on your variation and give your primary variable a big lift.
The conversion difference could be trivial if you limit yourself to testing minor changes between A/B samples. For example, sample A might have a conversion rate of 2%, while sample B could represent a 3% conversion.
As low traffic websites lack a large sample size, the 1% lift in conversion is relatively insignificant, as there is not a big enough gap to prove that sample B is, in fact, better than sample A.
Implementing major changes in your tests could produce a statistically significant difference between samples A and B and allow you to identify which test is more effective in converting website visitors.
#4 Use Personalization With Dynamic Data
The ever-growing reliance on digital has changed customer expectations, with consumers now expecting brands to acknowledge their preferences and provide a personalised shopping experience.
According to recent data from Epsilon, 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that provide personalised experiences. Separate data shows that 71% of consumers feel frustrated by an impersonal shopping experience.
Personalised marketing is seen as the key to success in the digital world, increasing the likelihood of valuable actions such as purchasing a product or service, irrespective of how much traffic your website affords.
Personalisation creates a better shopping experience and can be achieved by serving dynamic content to users, which changes based on user behaviour, preferences and interests.
To implement dynamic content, you’ll need a system that can pull real-time data retrieved from various sources, including:
- CRM data
- demographics
- geographical area
- online behaviour
- search history
- social interactions
- website interaction
One of the most compelling examples of personalisation is Amazon’s product recommendations feature, which is another way the tech giant empowers customers to make a purchase.
According to recent research, product recommendations can boost the average order value by 50%, increase revenue by 300% and drive conversion rates significantly higher.
Whether the product recommendations feature offers products that people have historically purchased or similar items at different price points, it’s a powerful tool that can encourage customers to buy more than one item.
When optimising for conversions, leverage the power of personalisation and offer an enhanced shopping experience on your website.
#5 Qualitative Research
Qualitative research, specifically user testing, is a powerful diagnostic tool for conversion rate optimisation.
User testing, also referred to as usability testing, can help you gather insight into your website’s friction points and improve the outcomes of your A/B testing by helping you run more informed tests.
Identifying areas of your website that need improvement will help you enhance the overall user experience, which is instrumental for generating traffic and improving conversions. We’ve written a really handy guide on how to organise your website structure to boost your SEO if you wish to understand more on building the perfect website for your specific users.
User testing is an invaluable tool for low-traffic websites as it only requires a small sample group to produce meaningful results. As a result, it should be a critical component of your conversion rate optimisation arsenal.
Websites tend to undermine and underutilise the power of qualitative data, but when done effectively, it has the potential to give you a competitive edge within your market. Read our guide on how to perform a competitive analysis for more information.
Still, it’s crucial that you carefully select the participants you want to form part of the test. If they fail to align with your target buyer persona or are unaware of your goal, this could compromise the data you collect.
#6 Encourage Feedback
The purpose of CRO is to optimise your website to improve the user experience and drive conversions.
To improve UX, understanding your audience is essential. How can you optimise your touch points if you don’t know your audience’s pain points and desires?
One way to gather information about how your audience feels about your website is to ask for feedback which you can achieve through feedback forms. You could also email your current database and ask them to complete a survey or interview your clients.
Using feedback forms and email surveys to learn more about your audience is a highly cost-effective method – perfect for startups and small businesses that may lack the financial capacity to explore other approaches.
It’s important to ask open questions so that you can gather as much information as possible to make smart business decisions and optimise your campaign effectively.
