Ecommerce is about more than just advertising and getting traffic to your site. While optimizing for search engines and marketing on social media and other platforms bring traffic to your pages, it is meaningless if that traffic doesn’t convert to revenue. Attracting customers to a business is one thing, but how do you convince them to actually make a purchase? This is where Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is required.
CRO is the measurement and improvement of the percentage of visitors to a site that take some desired action, like buying something, signing up for a newsletter, and adding things to a cart. While other types of optimization focus on attracting more visitors, CRO actually focuses on optimizing your existing traffic, and is for anyone looking to improve the efficacy of their site. This is why working with a professional website conversion agency is so valuable, especially for ecommerce merchants.
CRO is a scientific method that focuses on the website and users to improve site performance. Unlike the more subjective approach of relying on estimation and guesswork, a CRO specialist looks to capture and understand the visitors and the site as a unit. This means that a shopping cart abandonment study is more important than the actual cart.
Barriers that hinder ecommerce conversions and revenue include difficult navigation, long-loading pages, vague product descriptions, and a confusing checkout. Even small changes in these areas can lead to big changes in revenue and conversions. An example includes reducing checkout abandonment, by streamlining checkout processes and removing unnecessary steps. Moreover, to inspire customers to complete their purchases, improving the design of product pages and including customer feedback can diminish hesitation.
Increasing traffic through advertising and search engine marketing is something that many ecommerce companies spend a lot of time doing. Even though traffic is necessary for growth, it can make a website very expensive. The more a website fails to convert traffic, the more money the business will lose. The problem of traffic that isn’t converting can be solved by adjusting the current traffic to be more profitable. Instead of increasing advertising, ecommerce companies can invest in a better website to convert visitors.
The benefits of CRO is:
CRO can increase the sales of your previously underperforming store.
CRO agencies focus on figuring out areas where improvement can be made in the conversion funnel and the strategy that can be put in place to increase those conversions. They utilize a number of data based techniques to learn how to manage and control user behavior alongside hypothesizing and empirically testing those strategies.
The typical CRO process includes:
The CRO agency should focus heavily on data to help make as many of the decisions as possible.
A data driven approach is the main reason many people bring in a specialization CRO agency and that is a big reason many agencies bring in performance-based models. This offer where agencies solely make money based on results is a novel approach to pacts with clients.
This is where the agency and the client’s business are completely aligned. Once the business begins to see increased conversions, the CRO strategy becomes successful.
I will discuss several performance-oriented strategies related to conversion rate optimization (CRO):
Businesses that utilize these strategies will improve their conversion rates as well as their income.
CRO agencies will generally focus on the following areas of an ecommerce site that can affect the business’ bottom line the most.
Product pages are where the actual purchase decision takes place. Hence, CRO specialists are responsible for optimizing not only the compelling presentation of product images and descriptions and reviews, but also the overall product page layout and design.
When checkout processes are overly complicated, customers will abandon their carts, especially if they have to fill out unnecessary, and/or overly complicated, forms, and if guest checkout is not available, and/or if they are presented with limited payment methods. A more user-friendly checkout process will, therefore, result in an increase in checkout completion rate.
CRO specialists are responsible for ensuring that mobile-friendly ecommerce sites are not only responsive and user-friendly, but are also optimized for fast loading on mobile devices to improve the mobile shopping experience.
CRO specialists improve customers’ confidence in the website by displaying security seals and customer reviews, as well as providing clear and easy to understand return policies. The more customers are able to trust the site, the higher the conversion rates.
CRO is not a one-off task. Trends online, technology, and customer behavior are always changing, and a successful CRO strategy will include testing and refinement that are ongoing.
Website optimizations that are conducted continually give your business a long-term edge over your competition. Your business will be better able to respond to customer demands and will be able to refine their shopping experience. You will also be able to use your marketing dollars to their fullest.
With time, the smaller changes you make to your conversion rates will yield higher and higher returns.
Ecommerce business owners know that to work in a digital marketplace that is competitive, they can’t rely solely on increasing traffic, that is not sustainable. Converting potential customers into repeat customers is even more vital, and that is where the real value lies.
CRO is an effective way of achieving that through continuous testing and data-informed strategies. Partnering with a dedicated CRO agency helps merchants to fully harness the potential of their online stores and helps to achieve tangible results that will be maintained over time.
