Conversion Rate Optimisation Strategies for Enterprise Brands

The top 25% of websites across all industries convert at a rate of 5.31% or higher, but many websites don’t come close to this benchmark. Effective conversion rate optimisation strategies are essential for brands who want to increase the number of conversions. 

By focusing on converting visitors into customers, organisations can significantly reduce their cart abandonment rates, increase customer satisfaction and maximise the return on investment (ROI) from their digital marketing efforts. As we look ahead to the second half of 2024, it’s crucial to understand the latest trends and strategies in conversion rate optimisation to stay ahead of the competition.

Understanding Conversion Rate Optimisation Strategies

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is an essential ingredient in any marketing strategy, particularly as a lot of brands are tightening their purse strings on marketing spend. In practice, CRO helps brands to increase the number of visitors who take positive action. This could include a purchase, a form completion or a subscription to a newsletter. The end goal of all CRO activity is to improve user experience and make the journey to conversion as simple as possible.  

CRO strategists will consider a mixture of variables, to identify areas of improvement on a website. This can include looking at customer behaviour, analysing parts of the site that cause blockers or friction and implementing strategies to fix this. This is what our Sitecore MVPs will do for clients in our Conversion Funnel Optimiser. 

Why Conversion Rate Optimisation Matters

With trends in customer behaviour changing almost daily, marketers need to focus on details and data to really stay front of mind for customers. CRO allows brands to understand exactly how their customers are interacting with their site in real time, so digital teams can make adjustments based on these insights. 

Some of the benefits of CRO include:

• Improved ROI: Organisations can generate more revenue from their existing traffic rather than spending additional budget to increase visitors.
• Enhanced User Experience: Brands can enjoy better customer satisfaction and, in turn, increased repeat business by making their website easy to use. 
• Competitive Advantage: Many brands still aren’t taking full advantage of conversion rate optimisation strategies, meaning that any work your brand completes gives you the competitive edge to attract and retain customers. 
• Data-Driven Insights: Data is a source of truth for your brand to understand customer behaviour and preferences on a deeper and more granular level. This will inform future marketing strategies across the business. 

Key Conversion Rate Optimisation Strategies

Conversion Funnel Analysis

Your conversion funnel includes every step of the journey from discovery to purchase, and, generally, the quicker this happens, the better ROI. Picking apart this funnel in detail can take time, but is an important strategy to help you understand where users are finding blockers, where they are engaging in hooks and when they drop off the site altogether. This research can help you identify what is needed to improve the customer journey, so you can rest assured that you are making informed decisions. 

• Persona Building: Making sure you’re crystal clear on your customers’ key motivations and pain points to understand what to serve them and when. You can use polls, customer data, or simply ask them through interviews. 
• Mapping the Customer Journey: Understanding the different stages users go through before converting and identifying potential bottlenecks.
• Identifying Drop-Off Points: Using the data, heatmaps and user videos to understand where customers are abandoning their journey and identifying some of the key reasons for this.
• Optimising Each Stage: Implementing targeted strategies to improve the user experience at each stage of the funnel, from awareness to conversion.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI is a buzzword for a reason. It can help brands understand what needs to be done to improve customer experience and automate processes in a fraction of the time. Used in isolation AI may not be suitable for a true CRO strategy, however, it is a key part of understanding more about customers, their experience and what to do in order to see improvements. Some of the main applications for AI and ML include:

• Predictive Analytics: Using AI to analyse user data and predict future behaviour, enabling more accurate targeting and personalisation.
• Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: Implementing AI-powered chatbots to provide instant support and guide users towards conversion.
• Automated Personalisation: Leveraging ML algorithms to deliver personalised experiences in real-time.
• Retargeting: Using targeted ads to re-engage visitors who have previously interacted with the website but did not convert.

Optimise Content and Messaging

Personalisation plays a bigger role than ever in conversion rate optimisation, with 89% of marketers reporting a positive ROI when they use it in their campaigns. Data is essential to create content that is relevant to each customer, reduces bounce rates and increases engagement. Personalisation tactics include: 

• Dynamic Content: Using different creative, copy or CTAs depending on the visitor’s behaviour, location or demographics.
• Personalised Recommendations: Surfacing products or services that are likely to engage a customer based on their previous interactions with the site or purchase history.
• Customised Email Campaigns: Segmenting contact lists to ensure all email campaigns are targeted and specific to the needs and preferences of each individual.

• Engaging and Relevant Content: Creating content that resonates with the target audience and addresses their needs and pain points.
• SEO Best Practices: Optimise content, title tags and meta-descriptions to relevant keywords to improve organic search visibility.
• Interactive Content: Incorporating interactive elements, such as quizzes, surveys, and videos, to engage users and encourage conversions.

Focus on Mobile Optimisation

Around 60% of all website traffic now comes from mobile devices, with internet users accessing websites for research, shopping, and entertainment. Brands can use conversion rate optimisation strategies to identify any issues with the mobile experience. This can include:

• Responsive Design: No matter what the screen size or orientation, customers should be able to easily access and engage with your content without issues. 
• Fast Loading Times: Removing any unnecessary code, images or bloat on pages will reduce the load time and keep people on your site for longer.
• Simplified Navigation: Cut out anything complicated and design a simple navigation that helps customers find what they’re looking for with ease. 

Conduct Testing and Experimentation

Testing and experimentation are essential for CRO. Brands can test anything from a slight change in CTA text to comparing two completely different web pages, depending on the type of test and the goals set out. With so many variants to trial, brands must approach testing with a systematic and methodical approach which allows each change to be tracked and analysed. These tests include: 

• A/B Testing: Isolating two similar changes and testing them against each other to see which gives the best performance for your goal.
• Multivariate Testing: Testing multiple variables to decide which combination is the best.
• Personalised Testing: Conducting tests that account for individual user segments and preferences.
• AI-Powered Testing: Using artificial intelligence to automate and optimise the testing process, leading to faster and more accurate results. We expect to see a lot more of this in 2024, and have already started to do some of this with our own clients.

Implementing a Successful CRO Strategy

To implement a successful conversion rate optimisation strategy, organisations should follow these steps:

• Set Clear Goals: Define specific, measurable goals for what you want to achieve with your CRO efforts, such as increasing the conversion rate by a certain percentage.
• Gather Data: Use analytics tools to collect data on user behaviour, including traffic sources, page views, bounce rates, and conversion rates.
• Analyse and Identify Opportunities: Conduct a thorough analysis of the data to identify areas for improvement and potential barriers to conversion.
• Develop and Test Hypotheses: Create hypotheses on how to improve conversions and design experiments to test these hypotheses.
• Implement Changes and Monitor Results: Implement the changes based on the test results and continuously monitor the performance to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved.
• Iterate and Improve: CRO is an ongoing process. Continuously refine and optimise your strategies based on the latest data and insights.

Getting Started with Conversion Rate Optimisation 

Conversion Rate Optimisation is a key strategy for brands to leverage the data and insights available at their fingertips to make the technology work harder for them. Often, when brands see a dip in revenue, the first solution is to grow the audience base but this is not always necessary, CRO proves that brands can work with what they have to attract high-intent customers, improve the relevance of content, and shorten time to purchase to increase ROI. 

As a leading Sitecore Partner, we work exclusively with Sitecore products to help brands implement and optimise this technology to unlock your website’s true potential. Whether you’re still trying to understand what Sitecore is or you’re a seasoned user ready to get the best ROI from your product, we’d love to help. 

We’ve implemented over 100+ Sitecore solutions to help ambitious organisations achieve their digital transformation goals.

Think Sitecore is right for you? Whether you have questions about Sitecore Pricing, want to find out more about Sitecore 10 or are ready to migrate to a Sitecore website we’d love to speak to you to help you get started, contact us to book a free demo with one of our accredited experts. 

We’re proud to be a recommended Sitecore Agency with over 20 years of experience working with global brands to maximise their Sitecore investment and create experiences that convert. 

Check out some of our work to find out more about how Sitecore has powered world-leading brands.