---
title: 3 Reasons You Need to Know What CRO Is
description: CRO involves looking at what is working, what is NOT working, and shifting the strategy and tactics to what works for your consumers.
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[Blog](https://mktgessentials.com/blog) > [Strategy](https://mktgessentials.com/blog/topic/strategy) > 3 Reasons You Need to Know What CRO Is

# 3 Reasons You Need to Know What CRO Is

Posted by [Kelly Braun](https://mktgessentials.com/blog/author/kelly-braun)  on September 27, 2016

![inbound-marketing-now.jpg](https://mktgessentials.com/hubfs/Changed%20Blog%20Images/inbound-marketing-now.jpg)

CRO - or Conversion Rate Optimization - should be on the forefront of any online marketing strategy today. Gone are the days of extensive website overhauls that end up with stagnant content.

CRO involves looking at what is working, what is NOT working, and shifting the strategy and tactics to what works for your consumers. Not only should it be at the forefront of marketing, it needs to be a continual process that involves your content, design, social posting, SEO, and strategy.

 

**Why Should I Care About CRO?**

1. **Because you have less than a second to make a first impression.**

When viewing a website, it takes users less than two-tenths of a second to form a first impression, according to an [eye-tracking research](http://web.archive.org/web/20130209052518/http://scholarsmine.mst.edu:80/thesis/Eyes_dont_lie_unde_09007dcc80993a1e.html) at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

What first impressions are your websites and social media sites making?

Are the headlines grabbing attention?

Are the images appealing?

Are the images loading quickly?

*Quick Tip:* Images can have a major impact on loading times, especially when you load a huge image and show it really small, like using a 1500×1500 pixels image and showing it at 150×150 pixels size. The entire image size will still have to be loaded. You’ll want to make sure you scale the image to the size you want to show.

1. **Because everyone is on social media!**

Statistics show a 5% growth in social media profiles from 2015 to 2016, with [78% of the U.S. having a social profile](http://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/) this year.

People want to know what others like and recommend before they buy.

[84% of online shoppers](https://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/01/23/conversion-optimization-stats-2015/) use at least one social media site to get recommendations before making an online purchase.

Optimize your social media sites for higher conversions by:

- Testing days and times for optimal posting
- Hooking interest with great headlines
- Providing unique content
- Gathering testimonials and reviews

1. **Because readers today are skimmers!**

Today’s digital consumers are skimmers and scanners. Their attention span is short. In fact, [it’s shorter than a goldfish](http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/).

With the average attention span at 8.25 seconds today, check your website and social sites for readability.

Online readers move quickly from page to page, scanning to find exactly what they are looking for or something that captures their attention - in 8 seconds,

If you want them to stop and convert on your site, the content must be written, formatted and displayed for SEO and CRO.

- Can your content be easily scanned, with key points jumping out and hooking the reader?
- Are you using header tags, bullets, lists and white space effectively to grab the reader’s attention?
- What message does your reader walk away with after a quick scan of your content? Are they getting any message?

There’s always room for improvement in just about any project. And that’s what’s great about CRO - it’s all about making improvements and using data and analytics to find what works to meet your company goals.

A MUST READ!

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