Conversion Rate
Optimization
Playbook
Table of contents
eBook
The Contentsquare
title guide to conversion rate optimization (CRO) 1
Table of contents 2
Chapter
The secret
1 to maximizing growth 3
Chapter
Why focus
2 on CRO? 5
Subsection
Is Google Analytics helpful for CRO? 7
Chapter
What does
3 CRO look like in your industry? 8
Subsection
CRO for ecommerce 9
Subsection
CRO for SaaS 11
Subsection
CRO for FinServ 13
Chapter
8 steps to
4 improve your site and product conversions 16
Chapter
CRO in the
5 wild: 3 examples of conversion rate optimization 28
Conclusion 32
About Contentsquare 33
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 2
Introduction Every time a user visits your website or app, they make a series of rapid-fire decisions. Do I want to
browse the latest offers? Do I need the premium product, or the deluxe one? Should I buy it right now?
The secret to Users go through dozens of these micro-decisions before making a purchase, and every time they say
‘no’, you lose a sale. But, by systematically reducing and simplifying these decisions—and by making the
maximizing ‘yes’ more tempting—you can get more users to progress towards the finish line.
That’s what conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about. It’s about creating more helpful, intuitive,
growth and pleasing experiences so that more users ‘convert’ from one stage to the next.
These conversions could involve opening an email, navigating to a product page, clicking ‘start my
trial’, and much more. And while some might seem more important than others, each of these micro-
conversions are responsible for your overall results. Every little ‘yes’ contributes to a ‘yes’ at the point of
A million people visiting your final conversion.
site is great ... but how many
In other words, CRO is the art and science of getting your users to say ‘yes’ more. That’s great for your
can you turn into customers? customers—and great for your growth, too.
If you could get your users
to say ‘yes’ more often, what
would that mean for your
business?
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 3
What does CRO look like Software as a Service (SaaS)
in different industries?
(SaaS) companies often use CRO to get more people to sign up for trials or freemium offers
The goal of CRO is to create better and to direct existing customers towards using more features in their products.
experiences, help users make decisions,
and keep them moving towards a goal.
However, these goals will be different for
different industries. Ecommerce
Read on to discover the strategies
Contentsquare suggests for increasing E-com companies often use CRO to encourage users to add more items to their carts and
conversions on your site or app. to help move them to the next steps in the buying process.
Financial Services (FinServ)
FinServ companies often use CRO to help users complete applications, use new features,
modify their accounts, or change coverage smoothly.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook Introduction 4
Category
Section 1
Why focus
Chapter titleon CRO?
–up to three
When a user ‘converts’, they take an action that
moves them further down your funnel towards a
lines long
desired action (like making a purchase). But CRO
isn’t just about making money. While you’re doing
research and improving your digital experiences,
your business benefits in several
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Here are 6 solid reasons to focus
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Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 5
1 2 3
Get more from your web traffic—and your Spend less on each acquisition and attract more Improve user experience on the granular level
investments high-quality prospects
CRO tools such as funnel and path analyses and
Many teams, especially marketing, invest time CRO helps you lower your customer acquisition session replays put you inside the minds of your
and money into increasing their traffic—but for cost (CAC) by converting more qualified visitors prospects. They tell you where people spend the
that investment to pay off, those visitors need to into customers. Instead of paying more to attract most time, where the bottlenecks are, and why
actually become buyers. irrelevant visitors, CRO helps you turn high- people are leaving.
quantity traffic into high-quality customers.
4 5 6
Learn more about your customers Enhance your user experience (UX) Increase retention
Effective CRO processes involve research that Conversion optimization means ensuring every For SaaS and FinServ businesses, CRO frequently
helps you identify what users need and where task on your website is easy to perform and focuses on getting users to adopt features they
they’re getting stuck. As you implement your CRO that each step in the conversion process flows don’t currently use. This helps them get more value
strategy, you gain important insights that help you logically. Therefore, CRO often results in improved from your product and turns them into sticky, long-
make better marketing and product decisions. UX, even if you’re not intentionally doing UX work. term customers.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook Why focus on CRO? 6
Is Google Analytics Shallow insights
helpful for CRO?
GA4 can tell you your overall conversion or the time users spend what your overall conversion is, or
CRO involves understanding what your data tells you what time users are spending on a page. However, it doesn’t analyze hidden behaviors to find new
about your users—so naturally, you need tools that help insights in your data. It offers no capabilities that surface alternate user paths, unseen moments of
you gather and analyze data. friction, or user backtracking, which are all critical for improving conversions.
Google has improved its free tools over the years,
particularly with the upgrade of Google Analytics to GA4.
However, Google Analytics was originally developed to Limited data collection
help companies run paid ad campaigns. It was—and still
is—ineffective for CRO work, for several reasons: While GA4 features like codeless tracking and automatic tracking will save you time, you have to
manually tell GA4 what to track. So you’re still only working with user behavior that you already know
about, not user behavior as it actually happens.
In summary: to do CRO well, you need to be able
to find things in your data you didn’t already know.
With Google Analytics, you’re left to trawl through Low customization
mountains of data on your own.
The artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive metrics that GA4 offers are really just alerts. You can set
While GA4 might give you some basic insights, up events and parameters ahead of time and Google will notify you about changes in the metrics you’re
it’s not designed to reveal the hidden aspects of tracking. But, you still have to manually define the conditions to detect trends that you deem important
user behavior. And, it isn’t equipped for the huge or critical.
amounts of data that sites will likely process in the
future.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook Why focus on CRO? 7
Section 2
What does
CRO look like
in your industry?
No two companies have the exact same
conversion opportunities. So how can you create a
CRO strategy that fits your unique business goals?
A great place to start is by looking at what’s
typical for your industry—so let’s check out
some typical scenarios in ecommerce, SaaS, and
FinServ.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8
CRO for ecommerce 4 key steps in the ecommerce
The ideal ecommerce customer journey can customer journey to focus on
vary across companies. Some are looking for
lots of repeat visitors. Some are more geared
towards an occasional sale.
1. Getting users to add products to their 2. Raising the average order value (AOV)
shopping carts
As an ecommerce company, your first priority You want your customers to spend more
will be to make it easy for visitors to find The design of your product pages makes a each time they buy. You can do this by
products—after all, if they can’t find it, they huge impact on your conversions. Assess and
can’t buy it. Many ecommerce companies improve page elements like images, product • Increasing the average price of items in a
descriptions, delivery information, customer user’s shopping cart (i.e. get them to buy
start by reviewing their menus, search bars,
reviews, and your call-to-action (CTA)‘add to more expensive stuff)
homepage links, and category page layouts. cart’ button’s appearance and placement. • Increase the number of items the average
user buys
In addition, it’s worth researching what
journeys your key audiences commonly There are numerous strategies for
achieving this, such as presenting upsells,
take through your site. Simple data-driven
recommendations, product comparisons, and
changes, such as putting links to your most complementary products.
popular category pages directly on your
homepage, can help to deliver a healthy
conversion boost.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 9
How to optimize for these conversions
3. Making it effortless to complete purchases
The smoother and more intuitive your customer’s Check how your mobile and desktop Make sure customers can easily find answers to their
journey is, the more likely they’ll buy. By locating conversions stack up. questions.
and easing moments of friction, you can get more
customers across the finish line. If you experience wildly different conversion Many shoppers won’t call customer support when they
Many CRO programs tackle this by using funnel rates between mobile and desktop, dig into the get stuck. Instead, they’ll simply leave. For this reason,
underperforming experience to figure out why. adding a support chat feature is essential in modern
and path analysis to identify key dropoff points.
ecommerce.
Next, they assess how users navigate the micro-
• Do your users have different needs on mobile
conversions just before purchase, such as vs. desktop? Similarly, adding FAQs, sizing tables, and product
reviewing the cart summary, entering payment • Does your mobile site deliver an easy, intuitive information tables can help to ensure that unanswered
experience? questions don’t block conversions. However, take care
info, and dealing with shipping.
• Can users move easily from desktop to mobile not to give unnecessary information—too much content
while shopping? could also add extra friction to the user journey.
4. Building campaigns around customer segments
Encourage users to make repeat visits.
The real magic happens when you are able to
target the customers who are most likely to buy. Teams often focus heavily on acquiring new customers, but many users aren’t ready to convert on their first visit.
Behavioral analytics lets you segment customers Encourage repeat visits by displaying product recommendations, or by capturing the user’s email address (in
into groups and then track behaviors to learn what exchange for a discount voucher) and sending them special offers.
each group is most interested in. Once you’ve
Wherever possible, try to provide a highly personalized experience by making recommendations based on the user’s
located a segment of potential customers, you can previous activity. This helps build their desire for your products, while also increasing trust, so they eventually make a
start sending them targeted marketing materials, purchase.
coupons, and special offers.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 10
CRO for SaaS 3 key steps in the SaaS customer journey to focus on
When trying to sell the power of CRO to
other people in your organization, it’s worth
reminding them of all the benefits a strong 1. Getting people to sign up for a free product trial or talk to your sales team
CRO strategy confers. Most SaaS companies
focus their optimization efforts on these 3 For product-led growth companies, even ones with dozens of salespeople, getting people to sign up
for a free trial is considered the first major conversion. In a more complex product or sales process, the
key conversions that will most likely have the
conversion event may be to sign up for a demo.
biggest impact on your profits.
The goal is to show customers how your product makes their lives easier and get them excited about it.
The ideal SaaS customer journey involves
your visitors coming back and back and back,
until they get to a point where they just don’t
How to optimize for this conversion
want to leave.
• Messaging and copy. Trial different ways to speak with your potential customers, from formatting to terminology,
to see what has the most impact.
• Call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Test the size, color, and placements of your CTA to identify what visual elements
help to drive a higher click-through rate. The copy used on your CTA should also be tested. Try different words or
phrases to see what resonates best with your customers.
• Design. Put time into designing your site to make it as user-friendly as possible. Use simple design mechanisms to
help your potential customers feel comfortable navigating your site.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 11
2. Getting customers to upgrade from a free 3. Getting existing customers to renew paid subscriptions
trial to a paid version
Studies show it costs 5 times as much to acquire a new
The free trial period is your time to showcase customer than to retain an existing one—so don’t forget
exactly what your product can do and why about your customers once they’ve signed up.
users should subscribe. To do this, you need
to nurture potential customers while they’re To improve renewals, encourage customers to interact with
testing your product and get them over their key features that provide the most value. You want them to
learning curve as quickly as possible. get so much return on investment (ROI) from your product
that it becomes something they can’t live without.
To improve renewals, encourage customers to interact with
key features that provide the most value. You want them to
How to optimize for this conversion get so much return on investment (ROI) from your product
• Segment customers. Segmenting customers that it becomes something they can’t live without.
helps you understand their individual interests
and needs, so you can tailor your educational
content and in-app guidance for a more unique
experience.
How to optimize for this conversion
• Improve the product experience. Incrementally • Show customers what they can do. Help them see the full value
improve your product’s design so each customer of your product by educating them about new and existing
segment can complete tasks with minimal features.
friction. Carry out A/B testing where relevant to
identify changes they respond best to. • Help customers get answers. In-app guides and
recommendations nudge customers to explore, while
• Offer support. Provide guides and live chat comprehensive content pieces (like blog posts, video tutorials,
to support customers in areas you identify as and case studies) highlight useful best practices.
causing frustration. This makes it easier for them
to find the information they need instead of • Keep improving your product. Think through your various
getting frustrated and leaving your product. user flows and identify where adding new features (or cutting
redundant ones) could enhance their processes and unlock even
more benefits.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 12
CRO for FinServ
Given the types of products FinServ Unlike ecommerce, applications in FinServ
companies typically offer—mortgages, come with a twist. If the process is too easy,
insurances, loans—conversion rates can you’ll get a lot of unqualified people applying,
often be lower, with fewer repeat visits. While which can create a lot of unnecessary work
customers will typically spend a lot while for your teams. But at the same time, if your
taking out these products, they will usually process is too difficult, it may drive potential
only need to sign up for such services a customers away. So you’ll often want to
handful of times in their lives. find the right balance, asking for specific
information while reducing friction in the
At the same time, FinServ conversions—at application process.
least, when potential customers are applying
for complex financial products—tend to be The ideal FinServ customer journey is one
difficult, and often involve many pages of where that involves your users trusting you
forms. This can make conversion a game of enough to rely on them, and dealing with
micro-conversions. To get people through a them to handle the requisite forms and
long and complex funnel, you’ll usually have standards, without becoming overwhelmed.
to clean up and optimize each individual mini-
step—but that’s not all. FinServ CRO is about reducing friction while
ensuring you still get enough information to
FinServ CRO is much more than creating filter out bad-fit leads.
simple customer journeys.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 13
3 key steps in the FinServ customer journey to focus on
1. Initial application forms for financial services 2. Self-service support features
Applications for loans, insurance quotes, and bank accounts often involve Many FinServ companies provide ‘self- service’ resources that allow customers to
many pages of forms. Some tools will allow you to track conversions on perform important actions—like modifying their account or changing their insurance
these forms, but will require you to manually ‘tag’ each step, which is very coverage—without calling a contact center. While this can potentially be more
time-consuming. convenient for customers, you’ll need to ensure all these processes are optimized to
deliver a smooth, friction-free customer journey.
With a solution that auto-captures all relevant user data points (like
Contentsquare), you can understand user journeys without manual Optimizing self-service resources makes it more likely that customers will continue using
tagging. your services, and even take advantage of other revenue-generating services you offer.
Tip to optimize for this conversion Tip to optimize for this conversion
Tweak the forms to improve flow. Each form field should be intuitive, with clear Get customer feedback. Are there certain actions they find difficult to complete on their own? What
guidance that helps your customer go through the process. other actions would they want to be able to complete on their own? Find out what works for your
customer and what doesn’t on their self-service journey.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 14
3. Adopting new features
The more companies go digital, the more they create
new features like stockpickers, financial calculators, and
IRA option choosers. When customers adopt these new
features, it can greatly improve the value they get from
the product.
By monitoring how many customers regularly engage
with these features, you can understand how useful and
intuitive they are. When a new feature has a low adoption
rate, look further into your data and use CRO strategies to
improve the customer experience.
Tip to optimize for this conversion
Monitor interactions. Find out how, and when, your customers are
using your new feature. Does it add to their existing experience? If
not, get customer feedback to better understand why.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook What does CRO look like in your industry? 15
Section 3
8 steps to improve
your site and product
conversions
When a user ‘converts’, they take an action that
moves them further down your funnel towards a
desired action (like making a purchase). But CRO
isn’t just about making money. While you’re doing
research and improving your digital experiences,
your business benefits in several powerful ways.
Here are 6 solid reasons to focus on CRO:
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 16
Step 1
Figure out your primary Not every conversion
conversion events is a primary conversion
Marketing teams may also focus on smaller
Primary conversion events vary across industries
conversion goals that contribute to the
and depend on context. Before tackling CRO, define
primary conversion path, known as micro-
what matters most to your team and product.
conversions.
For example, your primary conversion events might
Typical micro-conversions for your business
be when the user
might be when the user
• Completes a purchase at checkout
• Visits a product detail page
(in ecommerce)
• (in ecommerce)
• Signs up to a paid subscription in your product
• Starts a free trial of your product
(in SaaS)
• (in SaaS)
• Pays for an insurance plan (in FinServ)
• Fills in the first page of an application form
(in FinServ)
These primary conversions are usually the ones
that have the biggest impact on your business,
Together, these micro-conversions bring
such as generating leads or winning paying
users closer to making a large-scale, primary
customers.
conversion. Your CRO efforts should consider
how both types of conversions fit together,
as improving a single micro-conversion could
remove a major blocker to your primary
conversion.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 17
Step 2
Map the major events in your
conversion funnel(s)
After clarifying what primary conversion event you hope
to produce, map out the steps that lead to it. This helps
you understand the ideal flow that will lead your visitors
to become paying customers.
This is called a conversion funnel, and it’s a great tool for
understanding what a user experiences at each stage of
their journey.
Your conversion funnel should ideally have 4 – 6 steps. If
you add too many steps, it’s easy to lose track of the big
picture. If you add too few, it’s hard to track what users
are actually doing.
Mapping out these steps on your own site can help
you determine which conversions you need to track in
your own optimization efforts. If you’re a Contentsquare
customer, you can use the Customer Journey Analysis to
create helpful visualizations of the paths that customers
take through your site.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 18
Step 3
Use data to find the key
moments between major events
Setting up the perfect user flow can be an immensely
gratifying experience. Unfortunately, you probably know
the unavoidable fact of business life: users never do what
you think they’ll do.
On the plus side, drop-off points provide major
opportunities. Why? Because they’re the moments where
users tell you exactly where they lose interest. If you
figure out why they leave, you can figure out how to
make them want to stay.
Here’s where data science is a game-changer. Advanced
analytics tools like Contentsquare can automatically show
you the invisible steps between events and reveal which
are most important to the conversion path.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 19
If your analytics tool can’t do this work automatically,
you can still do it manually. Look for the steps with the
biggest drop-off between them, then go to your site and
go through the user flow on your own. Write down every
action in it.
Sometimes you’ll notice problems with forms, or buttons
not working. Take each of these little steps and analyze
them in your analytics tool to see what users do before
and after.
Contentsquare CRO shortcut
Use Customer Journey Analysis to give you a full picture of your customer
journey on-site, including which pages they visited and in which order.
Next, use the Session Replay feature to discover exactly which content or
feature is causing customers to loop or drop off.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 20
Step 4
Use session replays to see
Discover how visitors actually experience your Uncover unexpected behaviors
what’s happening at key product
moments When users act in ways you didn’t expect,
Your product’s conversion rates depend on this can help you understand how to
how well it helps users complete specific tasks. optimize their journeys—for example, by
As we saw in the previous step, numerical data is perfect
Replay their sessions to answer important making certain page elements more visible
for finding where users are dropping off within the funnel.
questions, such as to them. Session replays will help you
Session Replay is a great tool to help you get to the why.
identify unexpected things that users do,
• Are users finding the highest-value products such as
By watching user sessions unfold, you can gain an
easily?
intimate understanding of how users interact with and
• Are they following the paths you predicted • Scrolling past content you wanted them
navigate your digital experience.
they would? to see
• Where can you add new elements, remove • Ignoring or struggling to find important
Any session replay tool can give you this info, but the
friction, and make user interactions smoother buttons
best session replay tools come already integrated into
and easier? • Adopting or avoiding features
your analytics suite. This ensures you can use your
analytics tool to find key moments, then use session
replay to see what’s going on.
Learn why certain parts of the funnel give users problems
For instance, Contentsquare cues your sessions up to the
exact moments you’re interested in so you can get helpful
When users are frequently dropping off from a particular part of your funnel, session replays can help
insights in less time.
you understand why. Take a look at individual users journeys to answer important questions, such as
• Are users confusing static elements of your landing pages for buttons and links?
• Are there any broken buttons or CTAs you’re unaware of?
• Do users rage-click at a certain spot before they abandon forms?
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 21
Step 5
Identify why users struggle
Find out what nearly stopped users from converting.
Improved conversion rates are often the result of creating
Use ‘Thank you’ page forms, email surveys, and on-site surveys to ask users questions to help identify blockers. For
better experiences for your ideal customers. To do this,
instance, ask users “What, if anything, nearly stopped you from signing up today?” Their answers will often reveal
you first need to understand what those customers are blockers that are holding them back, like missing information or unresolved doubts about pricing.
thinking, feeling, and experiencing.
Get deep insights into user perspectives.
Tip
Three great questions to ask your users Perform one-on-one user interviews to ask
follow-up questions, explore pain points, and
learn about their experiences with your product.
1. What brought you to our website today?
2. What can we do to improve this page?
3. What almost stopped you from signing up today?
Combine your user research with product
insight data to get a full picture of the user
experience.
For example, suppose users tell you that your
support pages are confusing. Use Contentsquare
Zone-Based Heatmaps to investigate what
support links users are clicking on and watch
session replays to learn how they interact with
those pages.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 22
Step 6
Figure out where your customer
was before they landed on a
specific page
In an ideal world, your users would always follow the
steps you want them to, in the order you want them to.
But in reality, they may discover any number of paths
through your funnel, especially ones you hadn’t
anticipated. The best way to find out how your customer
ended up on a particular page or event is to use the
reverse digital journeys capability in Contentsquare’s
Customer Journey Analysis.
By knowing which pages your customer visited before landing on a specific page or event, you’ll gain key
insights into how they engage with your site. Use Contentsquare’s reverse digital journeys feature to better
understand your customers’ motivations for landing on a particular page, and the factors that led to such an
action. This can help you build a more intuitive site and fix any friction points that might be slowing down the
flow of your customer journey.
If you don’t have a tool that can do that work for you, you can still get insights about user journeys from
traditional analytics platforms like Google Analytics. They can help you understand what users do before and
after your major conversion events.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 23
Step 7
Segment your users and see
Segmenting by channel
who’s most (and least) likely to
convert Your data shows that website visitors coming from Accountants Weekly magazine convert at twice the rate compared
to those who don’t. To capitalize on this finding, you adjust your marketing spend to bring in more traffic from this
channel. You also optimize the messaging on your landing page to appeal to this audience.
When it comes to understanding your users, there are
few methods more powerful than user segmentation.
Breaking your user base into different groups gives you
all sorts of insights into what each of those groups need Segmenting by user type
from you.
Your data reveals that users in vice president roles
convert at a higher rate than users in account manager
By discovering which segments are most profitable, roles. Accordingly, you use that information to tailor your
or which ones need the most help, you zero in on the product further to vice presidents. Additionally, you tell
best optimization opportunities. You can also compare your sales team to focus their efforts on selling to vice
segments that convert against those that didn’t and then presidents.
analyze your data further to find out what’s making the
difference.
Segmenting your users also helps you develop new Segmenting by behavior
strategies to increase conversions. Let’s look at a few
You can use sequential behavioral segmentation to
examples of how you could do this. break down any behavior by trend and profile of users,
including browser type, operating system, and other key
performance indicators. Using Contentsquare’s Impact
Quantification capability, you can also quantify the impact
of any segment or user behavior such as page viewed
or button clicked on revenue, conversion rate, and user
experience.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 24
Discover more growth opportunities
through segmentation
Boost revenue via targeted Facilitate the buyer’s journey
in-app marketing
If you discover that customers
If you discover that FinSech who use your ecommerce
customers aged 35—40 site’s ‘save for later’ feature
are more likely to upgrade tend to spend more than
to a multi-currency bank those who don’t use it, help
account, send them an customers find their saved
email or alert offering that items list more easily.
upgrade.
Improve customer retention and reduce churn
If you discover that SaaS users who are inactive for longer than 60
days have a low rate of retention, send a 3-stage email marketing
campaign to re-engage users who have been inactive for 30, 45,
and 60 days.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 25
Step 8
Test, analyze, iterate. Form a hypothesis and test your new assets
Then repeat.
Next, it’s time to push your optimized marketing assets When it comes to optimizing your pages and product Determine which pages to
live. This is often where you’ll generate exciting results— screens, avoid making changes based on hunches. Instead, optimize first
and learn a whole lot more about your users. form a hypothesis for what would improve each page based
on what you’ve learned about the needs and experiences Start with pages that are
CRO isn’t a one-off event, but a continuous process. of your users. When you have a big enough audience (or underperforming, like those with
While there is a limit to how much you can optimize any enough traffic), A/B test your new product version against a worse conversion rate than
given asset, you can repeat the process below as many your old one. Here’s how: average, or a lower time on page.
times as makes sense, based on what the data is telling
you. Let’s dive in!
Identify any problems that are Remove barriers that hold users back
‘low-hanging fruit’
Make changes that resolve fears, concerns, and usability
For example, if session replays issues affecting your users. For example, in SaaS, you
revealed obvious issues, like broken might add tooltips explaining how to use a complicated
links and badly displaying page feature for the first time.
elements, fix those first.
If you’re testing web pages, use an A/B testing calculator that will tell you how long you need to run
your test to get statistically significant results.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 26
Analyze your results
At the end of the test period, review your results to see which variant won.
Sometimes your new variant won’t win, and that’s ok. You can still learn
from each test by combining your quantitative data, like conversion rate,
with qualitative data, like session replay and heatmap insights.
Tip
Iterate and repeat Top 10 things to experiment
with for CRO (based on your
findings)
Use the data you’ve gathered to identify why you got the result you did.
1. CTAs
You can then make an informed decision about whether to make another
2. Website and messaging copy
iteration of the marketing asset or move on to optimizing something else.
3. Navigation and site structure
4. Form design
Remember to keep a log of your actions and conclusions from each test
5. Relevant imagery and brand logos
so that colleagues can learn from them in the future too.
6. Landing page design
7. Value proposition of your product
or service
8. Product photos
9. Offers and promotions
10. Mobile vs. desktop
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 8 steps to improve your site and product conversions 27
Section 4
CRO in the wild
3 examples of conversion rate
optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook 28
Opploans wins a +10% Gathering the right data Imagine you could have the superpower
conversion lift that Seeking a faster solution, Opploans
of understanding everything users do in
your digital experiences.
translates to 7 figures enlisted the help of Contentsquare.
Because Contentsquare automatically
in annual revenue captures all user actions, the Opploans
team was able to gather fast and
With Contentsquare, you do!
accurate data around its funnel
Opploans is a FinServ startup that provides performance. Opploans began monitoring
a safe and reliable alternative to payday conversions at key choke points in its Making game-changing optimizations
loans. The company wanted to improve funnel—and quickly identified a broken
funnel performance and reduce friction in its step that was slowing users down. Based on its discoveries, Opploans decided to
change its 5-step loan application process to a
customer experience, but in order to do this,
3-step one that would require users to load fewer
it first needed to identify any weaknesses in pages. And for its mobile users, the company
+10%
its funnel. took the opposite strategy, breaking down the
Results: application form into more steps to deliver an
Opploans initially wanted to use Google improved mobile app experience. The changes were
successful in both cases, resulting in more users
Analytics to research user behavior in its increase finishing the application process overall.
funnel, but needed to carry out extensive in completed forms
manual setup (aka tagging) to get the right By making meaningful improvements to our pre-
insights. Being a growth-stage start-up, the pop experience, the team saw a 7-figure lift in new
company’s engineering team simply didn’t issued principal annually and a +5% increase in
have time to carry out the tagging required. conversion rate for direct mail.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook CRO in the wild 29
Sur La Table uses
+12%
Using Contentsquare’s user segmentation, Sur Results:
a cross-product La Table found the more products someone
views, the more likely they are to convert—and
merchandising strategy the higher the revenue per visitor. Accordingly,
Sur La Table used email newsletters to
increase
to increase product drive visitors to its category pages. It also in total views of product
pages
page views and overall
started prominently displaying similar or
complementary products on product pages.
conversions
+6%
Sur La Table is one of the largest cookware Results: When the company tested this change, the
retailers in the world, offering premium- improved cross-merchandising for one of their
most popular products resulted in a large lift
quality kitchenware and cooking classes.
in co-purchase and average order value. The
Its ecommerce strategy involves using increased
team at Sur La Table found that driving people
conversion rate optimization and rapid overall conversion rate to category pages led to a +12% increase
iteration to build the best customer in total views of product pages and a +6%
experience possible. increase overall in conversion rate.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook CRO in the wild 30
HUEL uses data-driven
+30%
Contentsquare is helping Huel drive its Results:
insights to improve marketing spend by measuring A/B test results,
as well as tracking how many customers
conversion and reduce choose subscriptions vs. single purchases.
What’s more, Contentsquare is enabling
increase
subscription cancellations Huel to build better strategies for retaining
customers.
in new customer conversions
UK-based ecommerce company Huel
offers its customers a range of nutritionally
complete, affordable and convenient For instance, Huel began to track how
-15%
customers interacted with their account
plant-based food. The company’s growing Results: area to manage subscriptions. This led the
popularity (and traffic) has led it to invest company to launch a ‘cancellation saves’
heavily in its digital experience, using functionality, where customers get taken
conversion optimization strategies to improve decreased through a funnel to try preventative actions
its website for customers. subscription cancellations rather than canceling their subscription—for
example, postponing their next delivery or
trying different flavors.
By using marketing strategies based on
insights from Contentsquare, Huel achieved a
-15% decrease in subscription cancellations
and a +30% increase in conversions.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook CRO in the wild 31
Conclusion
CRO is about using user-driven data to make Your product analytics tech
better decisions. However, it’s an ongoing
process. While a single improvement can
easily lead to increased revenue, successful
stack needs Contentsquare
CRO is often the result of small changes that Start using Contentsquare for free
add up over time. in minutes and automatically capture data that
helps you build better products.
The best optimization projects involve using
Book your demo
the right tools to measure and analyze your
results along the way—allowing you to turn
incremental updates into outsized impact.
If you have questions or simply want to
know more about Contentsquare’s approach
to product management, visit us at
[Link]
Best of luck with your optimization!
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook Conclusion 32
About
Contentsquare
Contentsquare moves beyond traditional
analytics to enable an unprecedented
understanding of the customer experience
that transforms your business. With intuitive
technology that reveals the behavior, intent and
feelings of any and every user, Contentsquare
allows businesses to deliver more human
experiences quickly, while ensuring privacy
and accessibility. This results in faster
growth, greater agility and happier customers.
Contentsquare powers the new digital
experience, made more human.
Visit us at [Link] to learn more.
Conversion Rate Optimization Playbook About Contentsquare 33