Lúgh Studio’s Ultimate Guide To Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a critical aspect of any digital marketing strategy. It is an entire range of actions that any organization can take to get more people to take specific actions.

Sound vague? In this ultimate guide, we dive into everything you need to know about CRO — regardless of where you work. In a world where competition for attention has never been higher, quality CRO can be the difference between a thriving organization — and one that struggles to meet its goals.

Let’s get started!

• What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
• Why CRO Matters
• 13 Tips For CRO Success
• Common Challenges In CRO
• CRO Best Practices For Nonprofits
• Tools
• Conclusion

Download your PDF version of this guide here.

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What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

As you will see throughout this guide, CRO is a huge topic. There are plenty of ways to approach it, and the 13 tips we give you below are just the beginning.

Before we dive into any of that, though, it helps to have a common definition to work with. Here is how we define conversion rate optimization:

The systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. 

It’s important to understand what our CRO definition implies for this guide: 

• While CRO can also cover “real life”, our focus will be online interactions
• Because CRO is all about understanding what influences your audience to take specific actions, human psychology plays a huge part in how effective your actions are
• CRO as a topic is equally applicable to most organizations, regardless of the exact industry

This last one is important. Both private business and nonprofit organizations can benefit from CRO. That said, while the overall principles of it apply universally, their implementation can vary slightly. With that in mind, we also included a brief section towards the end of this guide called “CRO Best Practices For Nonprofits.”

Before we get into why CRO is so important, it helps to have specific examples of what it looks like in practice. Here are a few key components to most CRO plans:

• User Experience (UX): a website that is both user-friendly and easy to navigate is absolutely essential in CRO.
• A/B Testing: as we will see, testing is a fundamental part of most CRO actions you will take.
• Persuasive Copywriting: good copywriting affects everything you do, and can improve most aspects of your CRO testing.
• Analytics and Data Analysis: gathering data and acting on it are key to everything we are going to talk about in this guide.

We now understand what CRO is — but why exactly is it so important? 

Why CRO Matters

Here are three important benefits you can experience when your CRO is optimized
professionally:

1) Business Growth

CRO is directly tied to business growth. Better conversion rates translate directly to more customers, higher revenue, and ultimately, more business success. By focusing on CRO, businesses can maximize the value of their existing traffic. This leads to an increased ROI on various marketing efforts.

2) Cost-Efficiency

One of the key elements of a successful business is making the most with what you have. At its essence, this is what CRO is all about. Rather than spending more money to bring in increased traffic, CRO efforts focus on getting more value from the traffic and audience you already have. This makes it an effective long term strategy for organizations with tight budgets.

3) Snowball Effect

Better CRO improves almost every aspect of your business. Understand why your audience acts in a certain way (as CRO will allow you to), and you are able to apply it to all areas of your company. Paid ads? Email sequences? Sales pages? Social media posts? These are all parts of a functioning company — and they can all be improved with the insights that CRO gives you.

13 Tips For CRO Success

Let’s now go over our main tips for CRO. Remember: these are applicable regardless of your industry or organization.

1) Conduct A Website Audit

What is the current performance of your website? For this first step, you need to identify a few key things. These include areas where users drop off, pages with high bounce rates, and any other point where the user experience is poor. Tools like Google Analytics (see our “Tools” section) can help you gather data for this audit.

2) Set Clear Objectives

Once you have this information, it’s time to make a plan. What is it that you want to achieve with your CRO efforts? This can be anything from increasing sales or sign-ups to improving average donation amount. Regardless, you need clear and measurable goals in place before you act.

3) Gather And Analyze Data

With CRO, data is the name of the game. Use tools like heatmaps and user surveys for insight into how visitors interact with your site. This will help you identify potential areas for improvement. You should also consistently take stock of specific data points metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate and average session duration.

4) Test Everything

You have the data — now it’s time to test. A/B testing is one of the most fundamental parts to a good CRO strategy. The purpose here is to determine which version (of just about anything) converts better. It’s worth noting that you should test everything. Nothing is off limits — including headlines, images, CTAs, and different layouts. It might surprise you what converts better!

5) Optimize And Iterate

Based on the results of your A/B tests, you will need to make the necessary changes to your site. Again, the purpose here is to get rid of “hunches” and instead make decisions based on proven data. Remember: CRO is an ongoing process. You should continuously monitor performance and make adjustments as needed.

6) Prioritize User Experience (UX)

If you want CRO that works, you need to prioritize a high quality user experience. Think of your own online behavior. How much time do you spend on websites that are a headache to use? Likely not much. Ensure that you have high quality web design. This includes clear CTAs, easy navigation and fast load times.

7) Simplify

When you are optimizing for higher conversion rates, simplicity is key. Not just to your design, but almost everything you do. Here are a few things you can implement:

• Keep signup forms short and simple
• Send email sequences that focus on single actions
• Keep your home page clean and minimal

These are all things that avoid confusion and increase conversion rates as a result.

8) Focus On Value

If you want to convince people to convert, you need to make their decision a no-brainer. This is the role of value. Clearly communicate your offer and how valuable it is to your audience if they take it. This is relevant no matter if you’re asking people to buy a product or donate to a cause. Users need to understand what’s in it for them.

9) Personalize The Experience

People respond best when they feel like you are talking directly to them. The fact is, the more personalized your approach to CRO, the more successful it will be. Different parts of your audience have different needs and behaviors. Deliver more relevant content and offers to them, and your conversion rates will gradually increase.

10) Leverage Social Proof

Social proof is important for any organization. However, when it comes to CRO, it’s even more essential. People simply don’t convert if you can’t back up your claims. Social proof is how you avoid this problem. Consider investing time in gathering testimonials, reviews, and case studies. These build trust — and encourage conversions.

11) Optimize For Mobile

Mobile optimization is becoming more and more important as people switch over to mobile devices while browsing. In fact, as of 2024, over 60% of web traffic is on mobile devices. Neglect mobile optimization and your conversion rates will suffer as a result. As for the things to act on? Prioritize responsive design, fast load times and mobile-friendly forms.

12) Report And Communicate Results

Your entire team should be on top of how your CRO efforts are going. You should also share the results of your efforts with stakeholders. This keeps CRO (and the various tests you are running) top of mind for everybody involved. The effect? More accountability (and ownership) when it comes to results.

13) Implement Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting involves using data on user behavior to deliver more relevant content or offers. This can include a variety of things. However, past purchases, browsing history, and search queries are some of the most common. This is particularly useful for CRO because it can quickly move leads down the sales funnel.

Common Challenges In CRO

The 13 tips above should give you a solid start to improving your conversion rates. That said, there are certain challenges you are still bound to face — regardless of your industry. Knowing these common challenges ahead of time can prevent you from making costly mistakes.

Here are four of them:

• Low quality traffic. The fact is, not all traffic is created equal. Even with a strong CRO strategy, poor-quality traffic will not convert at a high rate. This is true regardless of your business. If visitors aren’t interested in your products or services, it doesn’t matter how many of them you bring in. That’s why traffic that is both targeted and relevant is crucial for your CRO efforts. 
• Poor user experience. While user experience is crucial in just about any business endeavor, it’s even more essential in CRO. That’s because a poor user experience can severely hinder conversion rates. This can include anything from slow load times and complex navigation to poorly designed forms. If these problems pop up, be sure to address them.
• Lack of data. It’s easy to rely on assumptions. You know your audience better than anybody else, and are likely an authority in your field. Still, if you want to take actions that work, data is essential. Relying on assumptions, rather than leading with analytics, can lead to ineffective CRO strategies. Be sure you’re using the right tools (which we outline at the end of this guide).
• Scaling CRO efforts. As your organization grows, so too does your audience. This brings with it a variety of products, markets, and even regions that you serve. This can make it difficult to maintain a consistent CRO strategy. If you want to take CRO seriously even as you grow, you need a flexible approach that can adapt to the evolving needs of a business in flux.

Before we continue on to our last section on tools that we recommend, we have some actionable information on CRO for nonprofits. 

CRO Best Practices for Nonprofits

At this point you understand the “10,000 foot view” of CRO. You know what it is, why it’s important, how to improve it, and the most common challenges when it comes to the field.
Like we said at the beginning, CRO looks remarkably similar across all organizations. That said, if you want the best results for your nonprofit, it helps to have highly specific advice. Here are four best practices for CRO in the nonprofit sector:

1) Simplify the donation process

Just like many areas of your organization, the big goal of CRO is more donations. This should be your “guiding light” in everything you do. Thankfully, there are a few quick wins that will make the donation process easier:

• Ensure donation forms are simple and easy to fill out
• Provide suggested donation amounts
• Offer multiple payment options

Here’s the truth: if you aren’t getting more donations in the long run, CRO isn’t worth the effort. These three simple actions will have an outsized effect on your CRO efforts.

2) Leverage (the right) social proof

We’ve written a lot about social proof. Just like any private company, it’s also essential for nonprofits. The kind of social proof you use (such as testimonials, case studies, or displaying the number of recent donations), can build trust. This encourages more conversions. Don’t forget this crucial aspect of your CRO strategy.

3) Focus on impact-driven content

We all know how important good content marketing is. However, for nonprofits, it’s important that it takes a slightly different form. For CRO, you need to highlight the impact your organization has had. Use stories, images, and videos to communicate the difference donors have had. These can be a powerful motivator in driving more donations. Done well, they can also build a deeper emotional connection with your audience.

4) Optimize for recurring donations

As we said in our first point, it’s important to have the end goal of “more donations.” This is the metric that justifies all of your CRO efforts. That’s why recurring donations are so valuable: they create predictability in your fundraising efforts. They also significantly increase the lifetime value of your donors. Here’s what to do: 

• Make it easy for donors to set up recurring donations
• Highlight the benefits of ongoing support

These two actions can have all the difference.

Tools

Lastly, we finish our ultimate guide with a list of tools and resources. All of these tools are built to help you understand user behavior, test changes, and analyze results. Use just a few of them and your CRO efforts will be better (and more consistent) as a result.

1) Google Analytics

This is a comprehensive platform for analyzing website traffic and visitor behavior. The tool is foundational for tracking key conversion metrics like bounce rate, average session duration, and goal completions. If you want to pointpoint the areas you need to improve for higher conversion rates, Google Analytics is a good place to start.

2) Hotjar

Any CRO plan can benefit from a quality heatmap tool, and Hotjar is one of the most widely-used. Heatmaps help you visualize which parts of your web pages users interact with the most. They also let you see where people have the tendency to leave your website. This is valuable data to have for more sophisticated CRO actions.

3) Optimizely

If you are going to take CRO seriously, it pays to have a tool that is dedicated specifically to testing. This is exactly what Optimizely does. This tool is a robust experimentation platform that allows you to test a ton of different things (even including different versions of your website!). It also has advanced targeting and segmentation features if you want to invest in personalized content. Optimizely is a great combination of powerful features and user-friendly interface. If you’re looking for a tool to help with your A/B testing, look no further. 

4) Kissmetrics 

This is a great tool when you’re ready to dive into the analytics part of CRO. With a focus on user behavior, Kissmetrics allows you to track individual users across their entire customer journey. This gives you valuable insight into the finer details of customer acquisition, retention, and drop-off points. The tool also lets you create a variety of custom reports. This makes it easier to find patterns in your conversion data and optimize your entire conversion funnel.

5) HubSpot Marketing Hub

For the organizations that want everything in one place (and have the budget to pay for it), HubSpot can be a great option. The platform includes tools for everything from A/B testing and website tracking to lead generation. With HubSpot, organizations can track customer interactions, segment audiences with precision, and automate lead nurturing in a way that nudges them down the conversion funnel. If you’re ready to optimize every part of your CRO process, HubSpot is a fantastic option.

Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization is a huge topic, but it’s one well worth mastering. Take CRO seriously and implement what you’ve learned, and you are well on the path to converting more of your audience.

We hope this guide has helped you — and good luck! 

Download your PDF version of this guide here.