What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is the use of analytics, user feedback, and related measurements to improve a website's performance. Used correctly, the CRO can help improve key performance indicators or any other metric that you consider important to your business. Today, however, the CRO is mostly associated with attracting and acquiring new leads, customers, downloads, registrations, and subscriptions. It helps increase the percentage of passive browsers that turn into valuable conversions.

Conversion rate optimization, in essence, has everything to do with figuring out exactly what users are looking for as they arrive at a website and giving it to them. It takes various forms and is largely based on what KPI or key performance indicator you are trying to improve. Most of the time, CRO involves making CTA or call to action more apparent, other times, it means removing or simplifying time-consuming or complicated steps from the conversion funnel so conversions are easier to achieve.

Any business owner serious about attracting new customers and keeping existing ones should care about their website's conversion rate. One way or another, you are likely paying for traffic to come to your site. This means that higher conversion rates translate to better returns on investment. Moreover, converting the visitors you already have into paying customers is also a lot more cost-effective than attracting more visitors. Conversion rate optimization also enables you to address the limited attention span of average visitors by giving them exactly what they want before they can even think about clicking on the back button.

Since conversion rate is determined by a wide range of different metrics and indicators, it is important to remember that optimization should also be about getting the right kind of customers instead of merely optimizing the conversion rates of a page or a campaign blindly. Your optimization efforts are futile if the people you are attracting the wrong kind of people for your business.

5 Reasons to Develop Responsive Web Design for Nonprofits

If you run a non-profit organization, you are probably wondering if you should switch to responsive web design—a development technique that makes the layout of a website ‘fluid’ so that it can adjust based on what the screen size of the viewer is, whether it’s an Iphone, Android phone, a Windows tablets, an Apple tablets, or any-size laptops. Below we present five reasons why it is prudent to develop a responsive design for your non-profit’s website:

1. Fixed-Width Websites Do Not Fit Small Phone Screens

Your existing fixed-width site is built to exact specifications that do not respond to the viewing device. Your site might look fantastic on a desktop screen, but it is probably virtually unreadable on a Smartphone. People will find it very difficult to read and navigate your content—much less click your ‘donate’ button—if you don’t have a responsive website.

2. Mobile is the Future

There are no two ways about it. Mobile usage continues to climb and is unlikely to stop. As of May 2013, 56% of people in the world own smart phones, and 67% of them used that phone to access the web every day. Expect these percentages to continue to rise. Another Google study found that 25% of donors who gave online in 2013 made their donations from their mobile device.

3. Social Media Sharing is Easier with Responsive Design

Do you want your non-profit’s cause to be shared by as many people as possible on social media? Then you need to go responsive. As of January 2014, 556 million people use Facebook mobile. The same trend goes for Twitter and other top social sharing platforms. To take advantage of free social media publicity, you need to make it easy for users to access your website across different mobile devices to encourage them to share your message.

4. Responsive Design Makes You Ready for New Devices Yet-to-Come

Because responsive websites are designed with fluid structures, they are able to adapt their layouts to any device today and in the foreseeable future with minimal updates.

5. Boost Your SEO

Google and other leading search engines no longer rely on keywords and content in ranking a site—they also take into consideration responsiveness. This is why mobile-friendly and tablet-friendly websites often rank better.