We all know that blogs are a great way to reach out to communicate thoughts within a specific online community. Lately, bloggers are trying on the title of entrepreneur and using their sites to make money. For your blog to make you an income, you really only need two things: something to sell and customers.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is when your blog inspires visitors to purchase the product or service you’re selling, making them into customers. There are simple techniques you can use on your blog to encourage CRO.
Focus on user experience first
Figure out why your visitors have come to your blog in the first place. Crazy Egg co-founder Neil Patel suggests asking yourself a series of questions that look at the users who frequent your site. Who are they? What do the users want from your site? How did they get to your page? What is the first thing the users will look at? What do the users expect next?
When you are able to answer these questions, you will be able to design and format your blog to best suit the needs and preferences of your visitors. Once you understand who the users are, you will be able to give them what they want and what they are attracted to in order to experience high levels of conversion optimization rates.
Select your tactics
After you have figured out who your blog visitors are, there are many different strategies you can put into place in order to convert users into customers. Business freelance blogger Jonathan John advises bloggers to take actionable and specific steps to increase their CRO. Everything from color psychology (what colors appeal to specific user behaviour) to split testing can be used in order to increase your sales and help you reach your financial goals.
Which tactics you decide to employ all depend on how effective you think they will be, whether it’s including an “add to cart” feature or using blue colors to attract impulsive buyers. Use the strategies that will work for your site as a whole and that you believe will have a more effective impact on your visitors, encouraging to buy from your blog.
Monitor and evaluate
Once all your tactics are in place to increase your CRO, make sure you pay attention to which ideas are working and which ones are not. According to Tim Ash, author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization, monitoring helps you learn if your strategies are going according to your plan, or, if they aren’t, what obstacles are present that are preventing users to purchase from your blog. Evaluating your site will help you determine not only how successful you are in reaching your selling goals, but also can identify unintended effects.
By tracking your key points of interest (KPI) and sales history, you can see how your plan to convert more users into customers has been working and what you can do to be more effective in the future.
