What Is A CRO Test? 5 CRO Tests To Optimize Your Website In 2023!

Did you know that the average bounce rate of your website could be as high as 40.5%? That’s close to half of your website visitors who leave without taking any favorable action, such as downloading a resource or registering to receive emails. Imagine the countless number of leads you are missing out on that you could have eventually converted into sources of revenue for your business!

Well, not anymore! With tools and experiments that help you continuously refine the different aspects of your website based on user behavior data and make it a super-engine generating a steady stream of leads for you to nurture into paying customers, you can set your business on a thriving path! The process that gives you such amazing results is called conversion rate optimization or CRO and is supported by both CRO tools and CRO tests.

If you want to find out about the best conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools, you can check out one of our previous blogs. As for conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests, I will cover it all for you here. In this blog, I will tell you what CRO tests are, tips and best practices to conducting them, and finally, outline 5 CRO tests you can implement right now to optimize your website performance in 2023!

Let’s get started!

What is a CRO test?

First things first, let’s define what conversion rate optimization means. The method of increasing the percentage of conversions from a website or mobile app is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO typically entails brainstorming ideas for improving various aspects of your website or app and validating those hypotheses through multiple rounds of testing.

Each test done to optimize your website or mobile app to raise conversion rates can be called conversion rate optimization or CRO test. 

CRO testing can entail adding, removing, reorganizing, or redesigning components on your website homepage, landing page, or any other webpage. They can concentrate on improving the copy, style, or placement of your CTAs, the type of visuals you use to capture attention and make your visitors stop scrolling, and the length of your headlines, among other things.

When done correctly, a CRO test can help you find areas for improvement and maximize your return on investment. There is always something you can improve that positively impacts your conversion rates, and if you find nothing—congratulations, your business is set on the fast track to success! CRO tests ensure you are on the right track or make you aware of new possibilities that could enhance the user experience and boost sales. On the whole, it makes for a great investment! 

3 ways you can perform a CRO test

The 3 types of CRO tests are as follows:

1. Split (A/B) testing

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is when you evaluate two distinct homepage  (or landing page) versions against each other and split traffic 50/50 to each page, hence the term split testing.

You could try this with a different main visual for each page. It is advisable to not put in too many variable elements into the two versions since it can get difficult later to identify the contributing factor to greater or lesser conversions. 

2. A/B/n testing

This test uses multiple versions besides the control variable, hence the number “n”. For example, you could test three or four versions of the main visual or the CTA.   

Since you are dividing your traffic into thirds or smaller, this test may need longer to obtain statistically significant data.

3. Multivariate testing 

When you perform multivariate testing on a page, you test more than one variable simultaneously. These tests determine which ingredient combination maximizes your conversions the most.

For example, you could combine different elements like the main visual, CTA copy, and highlighted testimonial to create multiple versions of the same homepage (or landing page) and figure out which version brings you the most conversions. 

The advantage of multivariate testing is that the tool you use will inform you precisely which elements contributed positively or negatively to your testing goal. 

Since you're splitting your traffic into several parts to attempt all of the various combinations, multivariate testing is perfect for a website that draws in a large amount of traffic.

5 tips you can follow to perform CRO testing on your website

Here are 5 tips that can help you perform the right CRO tests on your website:

1. Define your goals and research accordingly

The first step in the process is to assess if your website actually needs CRO testing.

You should ask yourself if:

• Your conversion rate is low, and you want to try various approaches to improve it.
• You want to implement a variation that impacts your user experience positively?
• You have the bandwidth to serve more clients and are ready to increase the revenue generated from your business?

If the answer to each of these questions is an emphatic “YES!”, the next step is to research areas of improvement on your website and define the target audience you wish to reach with your CRO test, using analytics and user behavior data.

Your research needs to be both internal (i.e. evaluating previous optimization experiments and user behavior data and analytical comprehension of the information) or external (i.e. charting competitor strategies). 

The analysis of website user data comes in various forms. Some examples are interactive heatmaps, customer surveys, session recordings, funnel analysis, Google Analytics, user testing, and other tools. 

The main objective is to recognize what works with your target audience and design your test based to serve their needs.

One more thing you need to do is segregate your visitor data to figure out what percentage of your ideal prospects are visiting your website. To do that, you need to detail an ideal customer persona (ICP).

You can set up your ICP based on the following categories:

• Geography (country, region, city)
• Device (mobile or desktop)
• Behavior (new or returning visitor, time spent viewing a particular webpage, users coming from referrals)
• Whether they are coming from your Google Analytics services or your Google Ads account

Do not start experimenting blindly, maximize the value of data to created targeted CRO tests.

2. Create your masterpiece (we mean your experiment!)

While you can devise the entire experiment in your mind palace, it is always advisable to keep a dedicated document for the purpose. In it, you must highlight:

• The objective of your CRO test (this can be form fills, downloadables, purchases, subscriptions to newsletters, CTA clicks and interactions with the various other elements on the page)
  
• Your hypothesis: Get specific here—use numbers and figures. State your current state, the variable you are introducing, the metric you’re assessing and the ultimate outcome of the experiment you expect).
  
• Your design: Input all the details of your experiment here such as:

• The type of CRO test you want to perform
• The pages on which you will introduce your test
• The variable you will change
• Primary and secondary metrics
• Time for which the test will be active
• Anticipated outcome

• Results: Document your results once the experiment ends to find out if it served your requirements.

3. Build your experiment

This is the most time-consuming part of the process since it will possibly involve multiple stakeholders (like content creatives, graphic designers, and others)

Here is how it looks:

• Work on the design of the control and variable versions of your experiment
• Develop copy, if needed
• Assign different members of your team different tickets corresponding to the test versions 
• Enter the experiment in your testing tool (to collect analytical data and insights)
• Perform quality-assurance (QA) tests to determine if your experiment works properly.

Following this, you need to evaluate your CRO test on the Impact-Confidence-Ease (ICE) scale.

• On a scale of 1-5, define how what kind of effect you want the experiment to have on your main metric
• On a scale  of 1-5, decide how confident you are that the experiment will perform well based on past data
• On a scale of 1-5 rate how much the experiment cost you (not only in terms of money, but also in terms of time and resources)

4. Make the test live on your website

Once your experiment is online, you should first test it to ensure it is still functioning properly. Bugs are super common during launch. You should also check your analytics page to confirm your tracking is properly configured.

Next, you must notify your partners and other teams at your company because your test may have an effect on other teams' metrics, as well. This also provides you with additional eyes who can report any problems they notice.

5. Review your outcomes

It is time to reap the benefits of this endeavor. Once your test has garnered significant statistical data for you to analyze, assess the results.

Did your test perform as you had hoped? Is there a change in your conversion rate? If so, is it higher or lower?

Implement the changes to your website accordingly. Even if the experiment doesn’t go according to plan, there’s much to learn.

Getting to what you are here for, here are 5 CRO test examples to optimize your website and supercharge your business growth in 2023! 

5 CRO tests for high-impact results in 2023!

1. Increase site load speed

Did you know that when page loading time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, the bounce rate increases by 32%?

Therefore, increasing your site load speed can be a great way to boost conversions. Here are some tactics that can help you increase your website’s speed:

• Image optimization: Large images add bulk to the page and slow it down. You should concentrate on compressing your images as much as possible while preserving quality.
  
• Browser caching: Caching helps the website pages load quicker as the data is already saved in the cache memory. To employ this strategy, simply configure your website's cache options correctly.
  
• Good code with fewer bugs: Bulky, time-consuming code will also slow down your website. To improve site performance, you must ensure your code is clean and well-organized.
  
• Dedicated hosting plan: Regarding website speed, your website hosting makes for an essential piece of the puzzle. Sign up for a dedicated hosting package that guarantees fast servers and no downtime.
  
• Fast content delivery network: Using a high-quality content delivery network is a no-brainer because this decides how quickly content loads on your website.
  
• Lazy loading: It is an excellent strategy for improving performance. Visitors will not have to wait for the entire website to load because the pages and content load asynchronously. This means they can ingest the content more quickly, and images will only load when users scroll down to them.

Some more tactics include preventing redirects, enabling GZIP compression, and implementing SEO tips to increase site speed and, consequently, optimize for conversions.

2. Introduce social proof

Did you know that testimonials on sales pages increase conversions by more than 34%? Positive recommendations give your potential customers the confidence to trust in your brand and can skyrocket conversions if done right.

You can showcase your best user reviews and customer testimonials in many innovative ways. 

If you have big-name clients that you have served, you can simply add their logos to your landing page, like SendGrid.

Or, you can intersperse your landing page with multiple highlighted testimonials, like Intercom.

When it comes to making a purchasing decision, social proof is extremely essential. Your prospects want to know that other people have tried and liked your product, whether they get that advice from friends and family or peruse customer reviews before buying.

3. Optimize your lead capture form

Your lead capture form is built for collecting lead information, which in itself, is a micro-conversion. This means you must test your lead capture form for conversion optimization.

Now, there are many ways you can do that. 

You can play with the number of form-fields, although it is best advised to keep it to 3-4 form-fields to maximize conversions. If you require more information from your leads, introduce a progress bar.

HubSpot tried this with their form design and A/B tested four different variations of their sign up forms with their control variant. They measured form submission CVR as the primary metric to indicate success of the test. Here’s what the control variant looked like. 

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Results? Variant B and D performed 96% and 100% better than the control variant. Here are the respective designs.

4. Test call-to-action

A call-to-action is an explicit appeal to visitors to purchase your product, and it is the most effective method to increase conversions. However, in order to generate conversions, your CTAs must be appealing and visible to visitors.

You can experiment with various CTA placements, different text and visual styles, and even popups to increase the appeal and attractiveness of your CTAs. In reality, adding a CTA as a popup that appears just as a visitor is about to exit your website can significantly increase conversions.

Personalized CTAs also tend to do 202% better. Moreover, long landing pages with multiple CTAs paced strategically have proven to generate 220% more leads as compared to those with only one CTA above-the-fold.

Thus, you can see how a call-to-action can help boost your website’s conversion rate. Here are a few more ways you can test your CTA button:

• Test the font color and button color.
• Replace “your” with “my”.
• Make your copy spell out what the user gets, not what they have to do.
• Insert a right-pointing arrow on your button’s left side. 
• Test a headline CTA against a subhead CTA.

5. Add a live chat feature

This works wonders for conversions, especially on an e-Commerce site. Potential visitors are generally looking for quick responses, and would much rather not interact with you on a human basis. Live chat helps smoothen wrinkles here, by allowing them to get answers to their queries, quickly and easily.

Did you know that 51% of customers repeat purchases from a company that offers live chat support? Live chat provides a personal touch without the human factor involvement, and that makes the customer experience much better, leading to more sales and revenue opportunities.

However, when introducing a live chat option, you must make sure that the messages don't keep popping up on customers' screens, or they may become irritated—converting an excellent strategy into a blunder!

Companies like LiveChat and Olark help countless businesses with their software solutions to provide their prospects and customers with excellent live chat support.

Now that you have optimized your website’s conversion rates—what’s next?

CRO tests are definitely effective in helping you score more conversions for your business using your website, but it requires you to be patient and persevere and continue testing over and over again—in short, it is the long game. However, if you can embrace the process, CRO tests can help you achieve your business goals, discover hundreds of millions of new opportunities, and open an encyclopedic knowledge base of previously unknown insights and learnings.

Let’s say you have been able to successfully cultivate a culture of experimentation into your business, and have been reaping its benefits in the form of a steady stream of inbound leads. The next problem you are going to have is managing these leads and nurturing them towards conversion with the proper communication. The best way to do that? Use RevenueHero!

RevenueHero is a lead qualification and distribution tool that can double your form-fill to meeting booking ratio, thereby, maximizing the results of your CRO tests.

By incorporating this tool into your website or landing page, you can immediately qualify, distribute, and schedule meetings between your sales team and prospective customers. The leads are qualified and prioritized based on high-value offers, which means that a prospective customer who is about to spend a larger sum is automatically given a higher priority.

Here are some more features of this automation software:

• Meetings allocated in a Round-Robin fashion and shared equally among the sales staff, thus, creating unique distribution algorithms in an instant.
  
• Meeting outcomes are immediately transferred to the CRM, thereby ensuring that only the viable leads are being followed up within further stages of the sales funnel.
  
• Automated meeting workflows in the form of automated reminders and notifications with complete context sent to prospects to increase meeting attendance and reduce no-shows.
  
• Seamless product interaction with your GTM stack and an accurate lead scoring system to improve your sales processes and make certain that you receive all potential leads at each stage of the sales process.

Are you interested to know more? Schedule a call on their platform right away!