What the hockey sticks is CRO you might be asking yourself?
We had a call from the corporate marketing director for one of our newer assisted living communities this week. She’d received one of those spammy emails (followed by a few dozen phone calls) from an SEO agency. The email contained what looked like personalized analytics for her company’s website.
You’ve seen those right? We get them all of the time, too.
While there are some fabulous SEO agencies you can partner with, there are others who are downright scammers. They utilize fear tactics to get clients to sign on. And it never. goes. well.
Our client was worried because these guys tried to convince her that the company’s site was failing in SEO and CRO. In fact, it was so awful she needed to turn gobs of money over to them to fix it ASAP.
Fortunately, she didn’t fall for it. But it did leave her wondering if CRO was a real thing and why she’d never heard of it before.
What is CRO?
CRO stands for conversion rate optimization. It’s an important part of creating your senior living website.
While SEO is the process of attracting older adults and their families to your site, CRO is the process of creating a good site experience once they are there.
CRO aims to turn website visitors in to converted leads. Doing so requires your site to be top quality. Your senior living website needs to answer questions families have, look good, be easy to navigate, and position your senior living company as an expert.
The best SEO in the world can’t keep an older adult or their family member on your site longer if the experience is bad.
Sometimes it is a tiny font that is hard for older eyes to read. Other times it is a website that is basically an online sales pitch.
Our best advice if you are wondering about your CRO, but are a little skeptical of agencies, is to create your own informal focus group.
Find older adults and their families who aren’t attached to your community and ask them to visit your site and share their brutally honest feedback.
And no, that doesn’t mean asking your mom or your great-Aunt to do it. You want people who will be honest and objective.
You can also ask first-time visitors to your site and your community for their feedback too. Whether they’ve mentioned it or not, most families visit your website before placing a call to you these days.
The bottom line is that by improving your CRO, you’ll convert more of your site traffic in to community tours and calls. That’s much less expensive than buying leads from a referral agency, right?
Drop us a note if you have questions or need help improving your senior living website experience.