Conversion Rate Optimization is a scientific process. It involves multiple intricate steps that are often time-taking.
For this reason, many CRO newbies (and even “experts) try to cut corners. However, they end up making several mistakes.
Many times, they miss out on conversions. And sometimes, even worse, they lose revenue.
This post aims to make you aware of such common conversion rate optimization mistakes, and ways to avoid them.

1.Not Having Enough Traffic

What is the first thing you need to have conversions on your website? That’s right, traffic!
And what happens when your website doesn’t get significant traffic? Well, your CRO efforts suffer.
With small-sized traffic, there come many issues:
Firstly, analyzing the website data becomes tricky.

Let’s say, you use a web analytics tool (such as Google Analytics) to track your website performance and user behavior. You analyze data, and look for web pages, traffic sources, and other such areas that require optimization. However, when you have low traffic, your website data represents only a small sample size of your potential customer base. The trends and projections based on this sample size can often be misleading.

Secondly, traditional (Frequentist) A/B tests on small sets of website visitors can take a long time to give statistically significant results.

Another pitfall in testing ideas on low traffic is getting skewed results. With Frequentist A/B testing engines, it’s always advisable to have a large number of visitors before running A/B tests.Hence, a low-traffic website should focus on user acquisition first, and then on conversion optimization.
However, if you still want to perform Frequentist A/B tests on a low-traffic website, here’s a useful guide.

2.Ineffective Targeting

So you’ve got healthy traffic on your website. It must be enough for your CRO practices to deliver favorable results, right?Not quite.

Sure, having a significant number of website visitors is important for A/B testing. But, it’s equally important to have the “right” kind of visitors. Your CRO efforts, again, won’t deliver conversions if the visitors you attract have no interest in your product at all.

Here’s ConversionXL on how to get the kind of traffic that actually converts.
When your marketing campaigns attract users from the wrong demographics, it may result in high traffic but minimal conversion rate. Suppose, you run a fashion eCommerce store catering to young women and your web traffic consists mostly of men, they will seldom convert.

Similarly, if your website attracts visitors from geographies where you do not operate, you’ll lose out on conversions.
Ensure that your website and its related campaigns (online ads, SEO, email campaigns, etc.) only acquire relevant users. Target users based on characteristics that directly pertain to your business.

For example, Monetate has helped its clients offer personalized experiences to visitors based ongeo-location, and improved their conversion rates.

3. Borrowing A/B Test Hypotheses

Yes, finding inspiration from A/B tests performed by other websites is fine. Even best practices cansometimes tell you which parts of your website need optimization.
But if all your A/B testing hypotheses are borrowed, chances are they’ll not work on your website.
Why? Because not all websites (and their visitors) are the same.
You must follow a methodical approach to find leaks and areas of improvement across your conversion funnel. Here’s what you can  do:

4. Thinking Design Equals Conversions

There is an even bigger blunder than borrowing hypotheses every time. It’s not hypothesizing at all (or applying changes to a website without A/B testing).
For instance: Just revamping your website, and giving it a fresh, modern look will not guarantee conversions.

The mistake is to think that a newly designed website will invariably improve conversions.

A case study from our archive demonstrates how a seemingly neat, modern design failed to improve conversions.

 

While design is an integral part of website usability, it’s not enough to convince users to convert.
Of course, there can be a case when your revamped modern website offers a greater conversion rate than a previous traditional website. While that is great news, you cannot be sure if you’re getting the most out of the new website.

To unleash the full potential of your new website, you need to come up with data-driven hypotheses, and perform A/B tests on it.

5. Ending A/B Tests Too Early

First of all, you MUST not end a Frequentist A/B test before it arrives at a statistically significant result.

read on the orginal article here