Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the work, and the software, of testing and changing an online store's pages so that a larger share of visitors buy. The conversion rate is the share of visitors who buy: if 1,000 people visit and 12 buy, the conversion rate is 1.2%. CRO software is used by online stores, travel sites and banks that sell products online.
A brand spends money to bring each visitor to its site, usually through advertisements. If the page the visitor lands on is slow, confusing or unconvincing, the money is wasted. The page a shopper reaches after clicking an advertisement is called the landing page, or post-click page. CRO software improves it in two ways.
The first way is testing. The software shows different versions of a page to different visitors, at random, and counts which version sells more. This is called an A/B test. It runs until the difference between the versions is large enough that it is unlikely to be chance. The second way is personalisation. The software shows different visitors different versions of the page, based on where they came from or what they did before.
Take, for example, an online coffee brand from Chikkamagaluru. It brings 50,000 visitors a month to its store through advertisements, and 1.2% of them buy, so it gets 600 orders. Its CRO team has an idea for a new landing page. The new page is shorter, it shows customer reviews at the top, and it says clearly that cash on delivery is available. For two weeks, the software sends 25,000 visitors to the old page and 25,000 to the new one. The old page converts 1.2%, or 300 orders. The new page converts 1.6%, or 400 orders. The brand switches every visitor to the new page. At 1.6%, the same 50,000 visitors now bring 800 orders a month instead of 600. At an average order of ₹650, that is about ₹1.3 lakh more sales a month from the same advertising spend.
The software can also match the page to the advertisement. A visitor who clicked an advertisement for filter coffee sees filter coffee at the top. A visitor who clicked an advertisement for cold brew sees cold brew. The visitors arrive through the brand's advertising platforms, and the pages run on its e-commerce platform.
CRO is different from e-commerce personalisation, which chooses which products to show each shopper. CRO changes the page itself: its layout, its wording and its order. It is also different from a customer engagement platform, which brings visitors back with messages. CRO works on what happens after they arrive.