When is Conversion Rate Optimization Necessary?

A number of people have asked me, "When does it make sense to worry about conversion rate optimization?"

If you are actively driving traffic to your website through Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, social marketing, email marketing, or any other marketing efforts, conversion rate optimization should be a part of your campaign.

CRO can help any marketing campaign, but you will see the most dramatic improvements if you have any of these issues:

• Inconsistent results - If your campaign is causing inconsistent results, ie. low conversion rates on random days, the landing page or conversion process may not be speaking to all your visitors.
• Not meeting your goals - All marketing campaigns have goals for Conversion or Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), at least to break even.  If you aren't meeting these goals, especially if you have already tried tweaking the campaign, CRO will be the push you need.
• Web metrics indicate issues - A high bounce rate and large amounts of traffic leaving the funnel are red flags that something is wrong.
• Marketing costs go up - If you are using highly competitive keywords or seasonal marketing is more expensive than your usual marketing, CRO will make sure you get the most out of your visitors.
• Your results are stagnant or diminishing - Sometimes good campaigns stop performing.  In this case CRO is the perfect solution to give a lift to your campaign.

CRO not only makes your marketing campaigns more successful but the insights gained can often be used in other parts of your website and marketing.  If your business depends on website conversions, you should consider making CRO a line item expense.  Just as you pay an accountant or a lawyer for your business, you should pay a CRO consultant for your website.