Driving traffic to your website is a required objective for any modern marketing strategy. But what happens when it seems like you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns? Or you aren’t sure which changes are the right ones to make?

Smart website changes aren’t always driven by rapid or frequent updates, or increasing traffic regardless of the source, but instead by updating design elements on your website to convert more of the existing traffic to leads.

This is called Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO. CRO is a testing process that serves alternate versions of a website or landing page to website visitors, tracking their activity for each version. Ultimately, the process produces data driven results that show which version was better at generating clicks, conversions and other activities.

Which website elements should you use as variables in the CRO test?

Most CRO tests use design elements that are intended to influence the impact of a Call-to-Action. These typically include:

  • Call-to-Action copy, button color or location

  • Headline copy
  • Hero image
  • Primary homepage colors
  • Location of links to internal pages such as “property features” or “schedule a tour”

What should you measure to determine effectiveness of a CRO test?

It’s important to benchmark and measure an increase of the metrics you’d like to improve. List your metrics and first determine if they are truly measurable. If not, you may select different metrics. The following are metrics that are commonly looked at for benchmarking and improvement:

  • Lead volume by location
  • Calls by location
  • Conversions from lead to move-in
  • Return on investment using lead to move-in attribution

What types of CRO tests should you be running?

Think of CRO as your lab. There are many types of tests you can run to determine which design elements are impacting your metrics positively. The two most common are A/B testing and multivariate testing.

  • A/B testing: also known as split testing, compares two versions of a web page to see which one performs better with live traffic. In showing the two versions to similar users you will be able to determine which design elements are most effective for converting visitors to leads.

  • Multivariate testing: As with A/B testing, traffic is split between different versions of the design, but compares a higher number of variables and how they interact with one another. The purpose of a multivariate test is to measure the effectiveness different design combinations, as opposed to a single element.

To learn more about Conversion Rate Optimization, check out G5’s webinar “Top Five Tips for SEO Survival in 2015” at GetG5.com.