What are conversion rate optimisation services?

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is still a relatively new term for some, yet it plays a crucial role in driving success for any online business. If you're new to CRO, the first step is conducting a thorough audit. CRO refers to any strategy aimed at improving how visitors to your website, landing page, or online campaign convert into valuable actions.

In this guide, you'll discover:

• What is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)?
• Where can CRO be used?
• Factoring in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• How we help you with CRO
• CRO top tips for better strategies
• What results can you expect to achieve?
• Designing a high-converting landing page
• Useful CRO tools
• How are conversions recorded?

Conversions can be tracked using tools like Google Ads, which record the percentage of visitors who take actions you've designed—whether it's calling your office, filling out a form, downloading a resource, signing up for a newsletter, or participating in a survey. These actions give you valuable insights, helping your business generate leads, collect feedback, and ultimately, drive more sales.

CRO Services

At Higher Ground, we specialise in optimising your digital experiences to increase conversions and improve your bottom line. Whether you’re looking to refine your landing pages, reduce your cost per acquisition, or enhance user experience, we offer comprehensive CRO services to help you succeed.

Let us show you how effective CRO can transform your website's performance and take your business to the next level.

Who benefits from Conversion Rate Optimisation services?

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) services benefit a wide range of businesses and individuals looking to improve their online performance. Here's who can benefit the most:

E-commerce Businesses
Why? CRO helps e-commerce websites increase product sales by optimising product pages, checkout processes, and overall user experience, reducing cart abandonment, and increasing the average order value.

SaaS (Software as a Service) Companies
Why? For SaaS companies, CRO improves sign-up rates, reduces churn, and enhances the onboarding process, ensuring more visitors convert into paying customers.

Lead Generation Businesses
Why? Businesses focused on generating leads (e.g., real estate, finance, legal) benefit by increasing the percentage of visitors who fill out contact forms or request consultations, which leads to more sales-ready leads.

Content Publishers
Why? CRO helps media sites, blogs, and content marketers improve newsletter sign-ups, increase time on site, and enhance engagement with content, leading to more ad revenue or affiliate sales.

B2B Companies
Why? B2B companies benefit from optimising their websites to capture high-quality leads, improving engagement with decision-makers, and shortening the sales cycle.

Nonprofit Organisations
Why? CRO helps nonprofits maximise donations, increase volunteer sign-ups, and improve engagement with their cause by streamlining the user journey.

Startups
For startups, CRO can be a game-changer by improving early growth metrics such as sign-ups, app downloads, or beta testers, helping them scale faster with fewer resources.

Digital Marketers and Agencies
CRO services allow digital marketers and agencies to improve their clients’ ad performance, reduce cost per acquisition, and boost ROI, leading to more successful marketing campaigns.

Subscription-Based Businesses
Why? CRO helps subscription services—whether it's for products, memberships, or content—optimise their funnel to increase sign-ups, reduce churn, and improve long-term customer retention.

Local Businesses
Why? Local businesses can benefit from CRO by increasing local leads, calls, or foot traffic through better-optimised websites that convert more visitors into paying customers.

In essence, any business or organisation with an online presence that relies on user actions—whether purchasing, signing up, or engaging—can benefit from CRO services. It ensures every marketing dollar spent yields better results.

Where can Conversion Rate Optimisation be used?

Pay Per Click

CRO is predominantly applied in Pay Per Click advertising to give the marketeer insights into the success of a campaign. The term was first introduced by Google as a method to analyse the success of a campaign. From there it became industry standard term to define the goal(s) of the advertiser.

For example; if a company sells ‘red shoes’ - to yield a profit from advertising on ‘red shoes’ a marketer needs to know the profit margins on 'red shoes'. If the marketing spend is higher than the profit yielded, the marketer needs to optimise their strategy - or the company will go out of business. Obviously. By optimising for conversion, a marketeer can identify a value of a conversion, estimate how much they need spend and convert to ensure the website doesn't go bust.

Search Engine Optimisation

CRO can also be used in Search Engine Optimisation. Even though the people finding your site on SEO usually always very different to PPC. It is still possible to segment visits and accurately gauge how users need to convert from SEO visits by simply matching the search engine title to the page H1 and core offering.

Page content

‘Content is king’. We heard this phrase years ago and it’s stuck. Engaging content with your target audience is almost as important as your customer service.

People quickly lose interest if you don't offer the information your users are after quickly. Typos are bad, as are long-winded articles that never really giving any value. And always use a good copywriter!

Online reviews

Poor online reviews are as important as any other element of your marketing. If people constantly voice their displeasure at your products or services, it makes it very difficult to persuade potentially new customers otherwise.

Bad reviews will mean your sales will be suffer. Good reviews on the other hand do much of the hard work for you. People trust you and are therefore likely to take action/sign up/buy or trial your software with little anxiety.

Factoring in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

How much business was acquired by your conversions? Higher Ground believe in an end to end solution for all our customers. A typical end to end conversion to acquisition journey can run across numerous touch-points of your business. These might include:

• People on the web in your market area
• People finding your site
• What people do on your website
• What happens after they take action/don’t take action
• How are leads/conversions handled?
• Did anyone follow the lead up in time?
• How many sales were generated by your leads
• What profit did you marketing yield?

Top tips for successful Conversion Rate Optimisation

1. Create Dedicated Landing Pages

A dedicated landing page allows complete control over the user experience by catering directly to their search or marketing intent. Landing pages should be designed with a singular focus—whether it’s to promote a product, gather leads, or encourage sign-ups.

• Why it works: Highly targeted landing pages convert better than general website pages because they eliminate distractions and are tailored to a specific audience’s needs.
• Best Practices: Ensure the content, tone, and design match the user's intent and the ad that directed them to the page. Keep the design clean and focused on a single call to action (CTA).

Reference: HubSpot on Landing Page Optimization

2. Align Ad Text, SEO, and Social Posts with Landing Page Content

For paid ads (PPC), social media, or organic search results to succeed, the messaging must align with what the user finds on the landing page. If there's a disconnect, it leads to higher bounce rates and wasted marketing spend.

• Why it matters: When the ad or post promises one thing and the landing page doesn’t deliver, users lose trust. Matching keywords and content throughout the journey leads to better user satisfaction and higher conversions.

Reference: Search Engine Journal on Ad and Landing Page Alignment

3. Click-Through Rate (CTR) Is Not the Only Success Metric

High CTR can be misleading if the clicks aren’t converting into meaningful actions like sales, leads, or sign-ups.

• Why it’s important: A high CTR might look good on paper, but if the ad text is overly broad or deceptive, the traffic won't convert. Focus on intent-matching traffic, not just high click volume.
• Solution: Measure success by focusing on post-click metrics such as conversions, cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Reference: WordStream on CTR vs. Conversions

4. Be Selective with Keywords (Use Negative Keywords)

Broad targeting wastes budget, especially when ads show up for irrelevant terms. Incorporating negative keywords ensures that your ad doesn't show for searches unrelated to your offering.

• Why it matters: Negative keywords filter out low-intent or irrelevant traffic, focusing the budget on valuable clicks.
• Best Practices: Regularly analyze your search terms report to find irrelevant queries and update your negative keyword list.

Reference: Google’s Guide to Negative Keywords

5. Landing Page Headlines: Be Clear and Targeted

A strong, relevant headline grabs attention and reassures visitors that they’ve landed on the right page. It should instantly communicate the value and relevance of your offer.

• Why it works: Visitors should know exactly what they’re getting from the moment they land on the page. Targeted headlines increase engagement and conversion rates.
• Best Practices: Include keywords in the headline that match both user intent and the ad that brought them to the page.

Reference: Neil Patel on Crafting Effective Headlines

6. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

A well-designed CTA leads the user towards conversion. Avoid multiple conflicting actions on the same page, and make sure the CTA stands out both visually and contextually.

• Why it’s critical: If your primary CTA doesn’t stand out or is confusing, users won’t take the desired action. Simplifying the number of action points makes it clear what step they should take next.
• Best Practices: Use a distinct color for your primary CTA button. Ensure the action aligns with the landing page content, i.e., if the page promotes a free trial, the CTA should focus on signing up for that trial.

Reference: Unbounce on Effective CTAs

Final Thoughts

For a successful CRO strategy, focus on creating a seamless journey from the ad or post that brought the user to the landing page, all the way through to the conversion point. CRO is about reducing friction and enhancing the user experience so that potential customers are led to take the desired action. Make sure your efforts are consistently tested (A/B tests) and data-driven to ensure continual improvement.

By focusing on specific, relevant audiences and aligning content across ads, landing pages, and CTAs, you can maximize the return on your marketing efforts.

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Some useful tools we use are

Optimizely A/B testing tool www.optimizely.com

Instapage - super intuitive WYSIWYG landing page software www.instapage.com

HotJar survey tool for running fast, free polls to gather user feedback. www.hotjar.com

Google Custom Surveys https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/surveys/

Google Analytics Let google recruit people and get feedback from them https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/

Insightly CRM Easy to use, low cost CRM for lead nurturing https://www.insightly.com

What conversion rates can you hope to achieve?

This a question we get asked all the time. The honest answer is we don't know.

Conversion rates are no longer a measurement in your Pay Per Click account. A conversion could be a new customer coming on board for instance.

That said, PPC is usually the best way to learn from your target audience whether they want to do the task you want them to do. Mainly because with PPC you can experiment. PPC also offers you fast insights into what new customers think about your business.

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