We get it.
It can be frustrating to have a ton of traffic coming to your website but see little to no actual sales. You've put in countless hours building your online store, creating appealing product listings, and driving traffic through marketing efforts, only to find that visitors are leaving without making a purchase.
Take, for example, a scenario where you've noticed a high number of visitors adding items to their cart but abandoning the checkout process before completing their purchase.
Despite your best efforts, these missed opportunities can leave you scratching your head, wondering what you could be doing differently.
Lucky for you, we have the solution to help turn those missed opportunities into sales!
In this article, we'll show you how to work the power of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to make your website more effective at converting visitors into customers.
What Is CRO?
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization in e-commerce. Now, let's break it down in simpler terms.
Say you have a shop, but instead of a physical store, it's online. Now, when someone visits your online store, you want them to buy something, right? This is known as a conversion.
"Conversion" basically means getting a visitor to do what you want them to do, like making a purchase. And "conversion rate" is the percentage of visitors who actually do what you want them to do.
So, CRO is trying to make your online shop as effective as possible at turning visitors into customers. It involves tweaking different parts of your website, like the layout, design, content, or even the checkout process, to encourage more people to buy from you.
For example, maybe changing the color of your "Buy Now" button to make it more noticeable, or making sure your product descriptions are clear and convincing.
These little changes can make a big difference in how many visitors actually end up buying something from your online store.
Crafting an E-commerce CRO Strategy: How?
What Are Your Goals?
First things first, you need to figure out what you want to achieve with your online store. Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Are you aiming to sell more products in one go (also known as Average Order Value or AOV)? Or maybe you want to focus on getting new customers or keeping the ones you already have?
Every business has different priorities, so you need to decide what's most important for you.
For example, if you're just starting out with your online store, you might want to focus on making it easier for people to buy from you.
Did you know that a lot of people start to buy something from an online store but then change their minds during the checkout process because it’s too confusing? It happens a lot! So, one common goal might be to make the checkout process smoother, so more people actually complete their purchases.
Think about what will make your customers happier and what will help your business grow, and that's where you should start with your Conversion Rate Optimization efforts.
Review What You Already Know
Before you start changing anything on your website, it's important to understand how your customers are moving through your online store. Try analyzing your data to figure out where customers might be having problems or getting stuck, so you know where to focus your efforts for improvement.
It's like this: when someone visits your online shop, they go through different stages. First, they discover your store, then they might spend some time looking at your products or reading about them. After that, hopefully, they make a purchase. If they're really happy with their experience, they might come back again and again.
To understand how people are moving through these stages, you can gather insights from Google Analytics, which tells you how many people are visiting your site and what they're doing there.
You can also look at data from your customer relationship management (CRM) system, which helps you keep track of your interactions with customers.
Come Up with an Idea to Test
Once you've gathered all the info about how your customers are using your website, you can start pinpointing where they might be having problems. Then, you can brainstorm ideas on how to improve the website and increase the number of conversions.
For example, if you notice that one of your landing pages is getting way more sales than the others, you can try to figure out what's different about that page and see if you can use those same tricks on other pages to boost sales there too.
On the flip side, if you see that a lot of people are putting items in their shopping cart but then leaving before they finish checking out, you'll want to figure out why that's happening and try to fix it. Maybe there's something about the checkout process that's confusing or frustrating for customers. Or the payment is just not going through.
Or if you're stuck on what changes to make, you can ask someone you know to try using your website and give you feedback on their experience. Their perspective might help you spot things you hadn't noticed before and come up with new ideas for improving your site.
Sometimes, the fixes are pretty obvious. Other times, you might need to try out a few different ideas to see what works best. Don’t give up!
Decide Which Changes to Make First
You'll likely have a bunch of ideas for making your website better. Some of these changes will be pretty simple to do and have a big impact, like fixing a typo on a page.
Others might be more complicated and need help from a tech person, and they might not make as much of a difference.
So, it's important to decide which improvements to tackle first. You want to focus on the ones that are easy to do and will make a big difference right away.
This way, you can start seeing results quickly. It's also helpful to focus on just one goal at a time, so you can keep track of how each change is affecting your business.
Try Out One Idea at a Time
Now it's time to see if your ideas really work.
It's important to test one change at a time. If you change too many things all at once, you won't know which change actually made a difference.
For example, let's say you want to see if changing the color of your "Buy Now" button makes more people click on it. You can create two versions of your webpage: one with the button in the original color, and another with the button in the new color.
Then, test each version on different groups of people and see which one gets more clicks. That way, you can be sure that it's the button color making the difference, not anything else you changed on the page.
What Did You Learn from Your A/B Test?
So, what did you find out from your tests? It's easy to just focus on finding out which version of your webpage works better, but A/B testing is about more than just that. It's also about learning more about your customers.
Were there any unexpected outcomes from the tests? For instance, did you see an increase in website traffic, but no change in sales? What do you think might have caused this discrepancy?
Did you notice any patterns in customer behavior after implementing the changes? For example, did certain demographics show a stronger response to the changes compared to others? What can you understand from these patterns?
This last step, figuring out what the results mean, is really important. It helps you improve your strategy and come up with new ideas. Now, you can go back to the beginning, think about what you want to achieve, come up with new ideas to try out and decide which tests to do next.
Final Words
Remember, this isn't a one-time fix.
It's an ongoing process. Keep testing, keep learning, and keep making improvements based on what you find out. With persistence and a bit of trial and error, you'll see your online store grow and do better than ever. Happy trying!
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
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