When it comes to conversion rate optimization, there’s a lot to keep track of. And if you want to increase your chances of success, you need to cover as many bases as possible. You want to be methodical about it, though.

Otherwise, the process can feel overwhelming and it’s not likely to flow very efficiently.

Hence the reason for this checklist: to help you stay organized and on top of your optimization endeavors.
So as you begin the process of optimizing your website and product offers, what should you focus on first?

How To Get Started

To begin, you first need to come up with a clearly defined set of goals. You need to know what you want your visitors to do after they arrive on each of your website’s key pages. This information allows you to establish a baseline by which to measure the effectiveness of your slit-tests.

Second, you need to have a solid understanding of how your visitors move through the conversion funnel on your website to ultimately become paying customers.

These first two steps are key and should not be overlooked.

Optimizing Your Site’s Design And UX

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Think of your website’s design and UX as its foundation. As such, your site’s design and UX need to be strong and effectively support your business’s mission and brand, and always keep your customers needs front and center. Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

1. Focus on UX over design if necessary.
2. Avoid clutter, especially on landing pages – make your offer and copy stand out and make it easy for visitors to quickly access the most important information.
3. Include high-quality images to capture attention but don’t let them overpower your message.
4. Take care choosing the right fonts and color schemes.
5. Give visitors multiple ways to move around your pages, enabling them to take action at various points.
6. That said, still keep navigation as simple as possible (the more links you include, the more opportunities you give visitors to get distracted from your conversion goals).

Next, let’s work our way top to bottom (more or less) through your site’s pages, starting with…

Optimizing Your Site’s Titles And Headlines

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Note: You can also apply this checklist to subject lines for your email marketing campaigns. 

1. Create titles and headlines that convey a sense of urgency and let visitors know what to expect from your copy.
2. Keep titles and headlines search engine friendly and relatively concise.
3. Use action verbs to make them more engaging.
4. Write multiple versions of each headline and title, checking them all with CoSchedule’s headline analyzer.
5. Split-test the top two variations you come up with to see which yields higher conversion rates.

Optimizing Your Site’s Copy

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1. Keep your copy benefit-driven, focusing on your customers’ needs and providing them with solutions to their problems and fears.
2. Make your copy unique and engaging by following storytelling techniques.
3. Address potential points of friction to reduce customers’ purchase anxieties.
4. Write concisely, familiarize yourself with words that convert, and avoid jargon.
5. Include subheadings, bullet points, and numbered lists to make your copy more readable.
6. Include SEO but not to the point of stuffing your text with keywords and phrases.

Optimizing Your Call-To-Action

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1. Make your CTA specific to the page’s copy, not a generic “Click here” or “Sign up.”
2. Create a sense of urgency.
3. Include more than one CTA on a page, but not so many that they’re distracting (you will have different audiences and they will come at different points in your sales funnel).
4. Test a variety of factors, including CTA placement, size, color, shape, and wording.

What do you think about this CRO checklist? Did you find it helpful? What points might you change or add? Get in touch via social media and let us know.