Why Your CRO Campaign Went Awry and What to Do about It?
There are many reasons for your conversion rate optimization campaign to fail. However, you should not give up: learning from your mistakes can give you valuable experience and knowledge on how to define priorities, run A/B tests, use different metrics properly and understand your target audience.
It goes without saying that conversion rate optimization is vital for your marketing strategy. You have probably read related articles backwards and forwards, tried usability testing, website personalization, asked your customers for feedback, and done many other things, but your efforts have not resulted in sales increase. What could go wrong?
1. Have you spent enough time on A/B testing?
There is no Split Testing Universal Guide, which tells you how long A/B tests should be run. The duration depends on many factors and one of them is traffic. The more visitors you have, the less time you need and vice versa.
If you own a small business, you should avoid repeated significance testing errors – it is when the results seem statistically significant, but in fact, they do not reflect the real picture. Do not jump to conclusions too quickly, take your time and make necessary calculations before running tests.
2. You haven't taken into account your business seasonality
Although most businesses experience fluctuations, some of them are more affected by seasonal factors than other ones. For instance, if your product is work management software, it is in demand throughout the year. And if you provide services for students or run a gift basket business, there are seasonal peaks and troughs.
You have to consider it for A/B tests, because running them at the wrong time gives you false results. Different options should be tested when your lead generation is at its highest and you have the most traffic.
3. You have misinterpreted your test results
Using too many variables in your testing can be confusing. For example, if you consider 20 colors for your CTA button, and one option is slightly ahead, it does not necessarily mean it is the best one. You should double-check the results, if the difference is insignificant.
4. You have driven traffic in vain
The more traffic the better? Yes, but there is one caveat: only relevant traffic can help you boost your conversion rates. If you thoughtlessly attract people that are not interested in your product or service, you do not move closer to your goals.
Make the list of resources that can give you your target audience and do not waste efforts on driving traffic to pages that do not lead visitors to action.
5. You have blindly followed marketing gurus’ advice
There are a lot of articles, books and videos out there, where you can find out about useful methods, successful cases or failures. Of course, you should put this knowledge into action, but do it with a view to your situation. Something that worked really well for another business might not work for you. Something that was a good advice three months ago might already become useless. And remember that even famous experts make mistakes.
Think through the consequences of your actions – all the publicly available information should not be applied as it is. Add your own insights and take responsibility for your success.
6. You were plugging the holes instead of building a new ship
Sometimes it is better to go back to the drawing board, although it means additional efforts. If you have chosen the wrong direction, slight changes like replacing your CTA buttons, changing their colors, or modifying the content on landing pages will hardly improve the situation significantly.
Review all the elements of your CRO campaign to make a measurable difference. Change its very core if necessary and the results will not be long in coming.
7. You have tracked results with wrong metrics
Have you defined your goals? Sometimes people do not have a clear vision of what a conversion means to them and what they want to achieve. Do you want more subscribers? Or, you aim for your customers’ personal data? Or, maybe, you actually want to increase sales?
For example, tracking social media engagement does not necessarily gives you an insight into increasing sales. You can produce more and more highly shareable content, but sell nothing. In this case, you have to analyze what exactly makes your leads buy your products or services.
CRO is never an easy task, so you should not blame yourself for mistakes. The latter may even make you come up with great ideas and successfully implement them.