CRO: what it is and why it's essential in Paid Media

The CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) It is a very powerful methodology that seeks the continuous optimization and profitability of a website or app to Maximize the number of users who successfully complete an important action or task and that help us achieve our business objectives.

These procedures, which can range from technology analysis to platform usability (buttons, copy, images, design), are focused on eliminating barriers that hinder purchasing or optimizing processes.

Conversion

To illustrate the broad concept of CRO, we'll use the example of a school website seeking to increase the number of new students enrolled in preschool. In this case, the website conversion would be booking in-person visits to the school or calls with the admissions staff. Conversion varies depending on the business, so the first important point is to decide what a conversion is for your business.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate refers to the percentage of users who visit your website or app and successfully complete the desired action. Following our example, we would calculate the percentage of parents who visit the website versus those who complete the school visit booking form. If the school website has 1,000 unique visits and 50 forms are completed during a month, the CRO would be 5%.

Macro-conversions vs. micro-conversions

It's essential to understand purchasing as a process in which users must make several micro-conversions before facing a macro-conversion.

• Macro-conversion: These would be the conversions associated with the business objective. In our example, these would be all completed school visit request forms or informational video call requests.

• Micro-conversions: These are all the actions prior to the macro-conversion. In the case of the school, these would be:

  • Visit the landing pages of the training programs

  • Download the information catalogue

  • Visit the school's social networks

  • View a video

  • Clicking on a hyperlink that contains an email

  • Etc.

Measure-analyze-optimize

The implementation of this methodology, which requires a great deal of effort and involvement of cross-functional profiles (programming, design, marketing, etc.), has a very simple basic principle:

1st Measure everything: Start tracking all the small actions (micro-conversions) that make up your conversion funnel. Measure all the user's touchpoints with your website or app.

2nd Analyze the data: Once you begin to understand what happens in the different stages of the funnel, start considering actions that could increase the conversion rate. In this step, think about small changes that have a big impact, for example, changing the color of the form button on the school website example.

3rd Optimize: Execute the action and start the cycle again, re-measuring its impact on the business. If the results are unfavorable, you can always return to the previous solution—that's the beauty of the digital environment.

Why CRO is important in your paid media strategy

Continuing with our example, it would be of little use to help the school increase its traffic volume (by deploying ad campaigns, display, search, etc.) if once inside the website the user cannot complete the desired action, in this case, booking a visit to the school for multiple reasons: they cannot find the form, there are too many calls to action, the information is not clear, the website speed is very slow, it is not responsive and cannot be accessed from a mobile device...

For this reason in PaidStrategy We accompany all our consulting services with a CRO audit, in which we detect potential traffic leaks and align with the teams to address them before starting to increase user flow. Timing is important because both CRO and quality traffic acquisition are two processes that must be executed in parallel, as they are interconnected.