Do you run an online business?
Ever wondered how you could grow your profits without increasing ad spend?
That's exactly what Conversion Optimization can do for you.
Imagine having 10 to 30% more conversions!
Read on for a guide on how to find and work with the best conversion rate optimization consultants to guarantee actual results for your business.
Why is Conversion Rate Optimization Important?
Conversion rate optimization consulting can help your business improve conversion rates that dramatically impact your bottom-line month-to-month.
It's the holy grail of online marketing.
Every online business wants immediately measurable, consistent, and high-reward conversions on every page or product they offer. That means landing leads and ideally converting them into your loyal customer base.
The problem is that even with the best of intentions and a great marketing plan, your website might currently be having trouble getting those visitors to take action on an offered product or service.
That's where the magic of conversion rate optimization comes in.
In short, it's an online marketing strategy that involves finding your visitors' preferences among many options (the value proposition). Then, using a proven conversion rate optimization process, to optimize your offers and website copy to maximize conversions and profits. And using the fewest resources.
On an average, less than 2.5% of visitors to a website convert, whether that's subscribe, download or buy anything from it. Conversion rate optimization consulting can help you make the most out of your website's traffic, so you can double or even triple the revenue for the same amount of traffic.
Why Choose a Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant?
A conversion rate optimization consultant can help grow your business by optimizing your conversion rate. This makes it easier for your business to boost sales. Here are several ways that an expert can make your investment in optimization well worthwhile:
- Understand the client’s business; outline their goals and objectives and understand the industry they are in
- Analysis of the website and/or funnel
Find your current conversion rates - and use these to benchmark any future improvements. Then identify problem areas with your current website design and shopping cart (if you have one). Your current website may be causing problems for customers on both a design level and in the back end, i.e., finding any problems in functionality.
- Create a strategy for implementing CRO for web design solutions, development, etc.
What is a Conversion Consultation?
This conversion consultation may involve:
a) A Conversion Audit
Optimize everything on the pages that could be interfering with a solid conversion rate, but keep in mind what will make users don't want to convert (e.g., too many clicks)
Review the design of your website and provide suggestions for how to make it more user-friendly for customers. The expert will also check out your shopping cart process (if you have one) and have a clear understanding of how the overall user experience can be improved.
b) Technical Issues/Failure Analysis
Sometimes, people just don’t convert on an e-commerce website, or they leave the shopping cart without buying anything - even with sufficient traffic. Many errors can be fixed once they are identified, but if they aren't rectified, potential customers will probably become frustrated and leave your website. An expert can analyze why a particular page is not converting for certain users and recommend solutions to improve them.
c) Track your goals
Track the goal directly related to the page that you want to optimize for a conversion rate increase.
Provide results for the client to measure the success of the CRO in improving business metrics, for example an increase in business revenue.
d) Recommendations
CRO is an on-going process. A conversion consultation may provide ongoing recommendations for optimizing websites for best performance.
Types of Conversion Rate Optimization Tests
- Split Testing
A/B testing of the entire website and sales funnel is the best method to find out how you can increase conversions. You can conduct split tests on different variations of campaign ads or perform multivariate tests on different landing pages to figure out what works better.
- Behavioral Targeting
This conversion behavior technique will help you understand even more about the kind of people who are searching for your products and services and what makes them more likely to convert into customers. For instance, what is their actual time engagement on a specific product? What is their customer journey like?
- Contextual Targeting
For instance, if you don’t normally sell meat, but you noticed that a certain percentage of your customers search for it on your website, you can use this to fine-tune your website to include more meat products so more people will become interested in them.
- Conversion Rate Optimization Consulting
This is the most effective way to increase conversion rates without increasing ad spend and improving advertising efficiency while simultaneously optimizing the value proposition to customers.
What to Look for in a Great Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant?
There are a lot of CRO experts around, who are offering conversion rate optimization services. But how to choose a good conversion rate optimization consultant?
Here a few factors to identify what makes a good consultant:
1) Expertise in CRO. CRO is an extremely specialized field, and you want to find one who has a good degree of knowledge. They are specialists in using analytics (like Google Analytics) to pinpoint how to improve your website and using conversion-focused copywriting and design to multivariate testing and optimize any changes.
2) Understand your website's audience (and industry) to tailor their work to your business goals.
3) Knowledge of current CRO methods, testing tools, and best practices.
For instance, to create an optimization methodology for testing web design and measuring the results.
4) Can clearly communicate and present results to make recommendations
Using the right CRO strategy, your conversion rate could increase by 20% or more.
Your 5 Step Checklist for Choosing the Right Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant
1) Write down in plain English what you would like from your consultant:
Not "I want some solid traffic growth please".
You need to be more specific.
"I want to convert 10% more cold traffic into leads" or "I'd like to drive 12% more new sales" or "I need to get 21% get more orders from existing customers (increasing their Lifetime Value)"
2) Develop a list of potential service providers
You could try freelancing platforms like Upwork.com or Freelance.com. Better still, get recommendations from your peers or colleagues.
3) For each potential candidate you have shortlisted:
a) Research the services they provide
Is it the right fit for your business?
What does their website look like, and does it make you want to hire them?
b) Review their portfolios and read testimonials
Can they show you actual examples of previously completed jobs, as well as testimonials from real clients? Have they generated similar results to what you need?
c) Do they have a solid framework that can deliver great results?
They're happy to discuss their disciplined optimization process from the beginning to end, so you know exactly what your return on investment will be.
4) Interview a few CRO experts in person
Evaluate different consultants and how they can help you reach your goals.
Top Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant Questions & Answers
Here's a list of questions (and answers) you should ask before you choose the best conversion optimization consultant:
1. How well do you Know about XYZ technology/niche/industry/platform/market?
Ideal Answer: "I've not worked in your specific industry, but I have worked with clients in similar ones and can provide examples of new, fresh, ideas that will work in your industry. Additionally, I have a repeatable process that works in almost any industry, platform or channel."
2. How will you get to know my target audience?
Ideal Answer: "Finding your target audience will be one of the first steps of the on boarding process. I use analytics data, heatmap reports, surveys, reviews, etc. to tell me about your audience and discover any issues with your website."
3. How will you measure the success of your work?
In simple terms do they have a testing philosophy and a way to measure conversion rate optimization results, so you can see a return on investment?
Ideal Answer: "We measure success by improving your bottom-line metrics, like increasing leads, number of completed transactions, or increasing subscribers."
4. Do you offer any guarantees, like a conversion rate increase by X%?
Some firms do offer a guarantee or can work for a percentage of increased business revenue. The upside is you don’t pay if they don’t deliver the required results, e.g., higher revenues or conversion rates go up. But there are downsides too.
If revenues increase due to your own promotions, they'll still get credit, not just for their own conversion strategy work, so it may make you feel like you’re paying too much.
5. Do you have any case studies?
Case studies can help you provide a measure of a consultant's success in helping other similar businesses - whether that's improving the performance of their website from a lead generation, sales or subscription increase standpoint.
6. How much does a conversion optimization consultant cost?
There is no typical cost for a conversion rate optimization, but it does depend on the time and company resources it takes. Some designers will charge per hour, while others will charge by the job completed.
Small agencies fees may start at $2500 per month. For a full team running multivariate tests, you could pay $5,000 to $15,000 per month. Enterprise firms offering holistic solutions may charge up to $50,000 per month.
Also, you may find a digital marketing agency who specializes in one traffic source or specific marketing channels, like paid advertising, social media marketing, email marketing or search engine optimization. Their approach is to offer add-on services to their packages, like conversion optimization services, even though they may not be CRO specialists.
5) Finalize your choice
Negotiate including contract terms, deadlines, fee structures and the scope of work required.
Now you can go ahead and use the proven process I shared.
Remember, your conversions are the one thing that drives sales.
So, what's stopping you?
Go and get your Conversion Rate Optimization Consultant today.