SEO and CRO: a perfect marriage

We are dedicated to online marketing, every day we manage lead generation projects, online sales, visibility,… All of them have a common main objective, which is to grow the volume of business and, to achieve it, the sales process establishes secondary objectives that, in online marketing we can associate to Microconversiones. In an online store, before you get to sell a product you have to get the user to see it, like it and add it to the cart. In other words: microconversion 1 > Microconversion 2 > conversion.

When a customer invests in advertising (both offline and online), the goal is to get the maximum return on investment (ROAS). To maximize the ROAS, you have to optimize the conversions, get the highest number of conversions with the minimum investment. This, in online marketing, can be translated into a project of CRO (Conversion Rate optimization) and two of its fundamental pillars are the user EXPERIENCE (UX) and the AB Testing. Measuring, analyzing, testing, measuring, analyzing, testing, measuring,… This iterative process offers greater effectiveness and reliability, the greater the statistical sample. And that’s where CRO and SEO meet and love each other.

The effectiveness of CRO in low-volume traffic sites

An optimization project, in short and simplified, aims to increase the conversion rate. To establish a framework, a CRO project begins with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the Web site, experience level and user interface, metrics of behavior… To define the secondary objectives (Microconversiones) that help to reach the main objective (conversions) and to know the KPIs involved.

The conclusions drawn from this analysis define and prioritize:

• The Actions (on site and off site) to be carried out to improve the obvious weaknesses of the Web site.
• The assumptions about actions that we believe can improve the performance of the site and that should be the user to help us confirm.

But what happens if I have very few visitors?

Well, if you don’t have a visiting history enough to analyze the behavior of your users, your analyses will not be very reliable. And the worst part will come when you want to do AB tests; With a low volume of traffic, you can despair as you get a winner… if ever you get it!

When we have a conversion rate optimization project in a low-traffic site, there is a tool that becomes essential (and a headache): a Sample Calculator necessary for the test and a Time Calculator Required To carry it out with some reliability (actually, they do the same…).

So, having few visitors, a CRO project cannot be run in a regular framework. We will not be able to expect everything that we would like the user to tell us what works best, because it would not be efficient. But, Ojo!, we can still act and get good results by conducting good analyses and extracting successful conclusions. So, yes, a conversion Rate optimization project on low-traffic sites can be effective, but with much more uncertainty.

At this point, it is easy to conclude that, the more visits we have, the easier it will be to find out what is failing on our site, implement an improvement and test it with our users.

SEO strategy: More visits imply greater revenue?

We’re going to assume you have a clothing store in your neighborhood, where people barely pass by. One week you sell a lot of skirts and the next you just sell a T-shirt. Someone comes in from time to time, some buy in the morning and others in the afternoon. Buy 1 person from every 100 that they enter (your conversion rate is 1%). You hire a SEO strategy And you move the store to the main street of the city. Now a lot more people go into your shop! You check, you keep buying 1 out of every 100, but as many more people come in, you’ve increased your sales. However, your benefit percentage is the same. The first conclusion is that to sell more, you should invest more in SEO and move to the best local of the best street in the city. But, since this is not going to improve your profit margin… would not it be better to analyze why not buy the other 99 and improve what is failing? Yes, that’s optimization.

The ideal scenario: a lot of traffic and conversion optimization strategy

The more visits a Web site has, the more reliable the metric and user behavior analysis is. Discovering the strengths and weaknesses of the site is a much more objective task, it does not depend so much on personal criteria and opinions but on numbers and results.

But the real advantage of the marriage BETWEEN SEO AND CRO comes in the iterative testing process. The hypothesis testing process can be very advantageous. A simplified example:

1. We test the color of our main call to action. The test ends in 15 days and we verify that the change implies an increase of 0.4% of the conversion rate. We definitely apply this change.
2. In the following 15 days, we tested our website with a banner in the header and we see that the change implies an increase of 0.1% of the conversion rate.
3. Et cetera

In 30 days we will have achieved a total increase of 0.5% of the conversion rate. With the same number of visitors and the same investment in advertising, OUR ROAS increases and, therefore, our profit margin.

How many visits do they mean “under traffic”?

Speaking exclusively in terms of optimization of the conversion rate and handing out the calculators mentioned above, we can say that, under 700 unique daily sessions, an iterative AB Testing process begins to be Too long in time for improvement expectations below 20%.

But nothing is impossible and in Digital Menta We are so devotees of AB testing that we like to be patient and that it is the user who decides what works best.