When running a successful ecommerce website it’s essential that you optimise your page in order to benefit your business. Some people make the mistake of just focussing on driving traffic to their website as they believe this will increase sales on its own. Although there are still benefits to this, there are extra steps you can take to make the most of the high traffic on your site by increasing the chance of conversions by visitors. For any business but especially ecommerce, it’s important that you prioritise strategies on how you can increase the conversion rate effectively with the visitors on your site. With the amount of different digital marketing strategies available, it may be difficult to decipher one from the other and how one will benefit your business. Luckily, we at Assured Marketing have put together this blog on the guide to conversion rate optimisation for ecommerce, so you can be sure you’re getting the most out of this for your business.

What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

An important aspect of digital marketing, conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the amount of users who will take desired action on your website. Using different marketing strategies to improve the performance of the website or landing page will encourage users to convert, whether that be making a purchase or contacting you for a service. This is usually a long term method as the ongoing process isn’t only to encourage users to perform the desired action for the website; improved user experience can also lead to staying engaged and spending more time on your site.

There are many different tactics in which this can be achieved, such as: A/B testing, user research and data analysis. Which also will identify areas of your website that may need improving, and to implement any changes that need to be made in order to achieve more conversions. It’s important to consider CRO in digital marketing as it plays an essential role in helping businesses increase their return on investment (ROI), as its goal is converting more visitors into customers.

How To Calculate Conversion Rate

Calculating conversion rate may sound complicated, however it’s a simple process. It’s calculated by dividing the number of users who convert by the total number of users on your site, the percentage you get represents the rate of your website visitors who perform your desired action. Knowing this is a great way to understand what is going well for your website and what you need to change moving forward, in order to achieve better results and therefore improve your conversion rate.

You should use analytics tools to track your specific conversion rate over a period of time, and to measure the amount of conversions and website visitors accurately. While not only beneficial for ecommerce websites, calculating conversion rate can also be used for your website or landing page that has a specific goal or action such as contacting you for a service or filling out a form. It’s important that you keep track of your conversion rate in order to achieve the best results for your business.

Benefits Of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation

There are many benefits of CRO for businesses of all sizes but especially for an ecommerce business. The biggest benefit is that it allows you to generate more revenue through your ecommerce website, which will allow you to gain a higher ROI on your other marketing efforts. The increase in your ROI from more visitors converting to customers, will leave you with a higher profit for your business.

CRO often leads to a better user experience by helping you identify where website visitors may be struggling to find what they’re looking for. By improving the efficiency of your website you can reduce the number of visitors who don’t take action. This can increase the probability of returning customers which will lead to an increased lifetime value of the customer. CRO benefits your ecommerce business by establishing a strong customer base, offering an efficient user experience for your customers and building their trust.

Why Is Research Important To Improve Conversion Rate?

You can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, including their needs and decision making process, which will allow you to optimise your website accordingly to see the best results for your business. It’s essential for your ecommerce business to do research, rather than operating off assumptions, as sometimes these can be wrong. Research provides you with consumer behaviour which can help you to make strategic decisions to your website, which will provide you with the best results. Without thoroughly researching your audience behaviour you won’t be able to make the necessary changes that your website needs in order to improve the conversion rates for your business. There are many different tools that you can use in order to effectively measure what needs to be improved, so you can optimise your ecommerce website successfully to achieve your desired results.

Why Do Ecommerce Companies Use Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Companies use CRO in order to improve their return on investment from their other digital marketing campaigns. Once you optimise your website and landing pages, you will see results from an increase in the number of visitors who are performing the desired action.

CRO can bring many benefits that your ecommerce business will benefit from, such as a significant increase in online revenue, and helping your company more effectively achieve their business goals. Improving user experience and satisfaction is an added benefit of utilising a successful CRO campaign.

Analysing data and user behaviour can help your company more efficiently identify any areas of a website that potentially are causing visitors to leave before they convert, and by monitoring this you can make the necessary adjustments to improve the overall user experience. Implementing CRO also gives your company an advantage as it means more users will convert into customers than your competitors who are not utilising CRO. CRO also allows you to have a much better understanding of your audience and their behaviour, this can be a powerful tool that your business should be using across all marketing channels.

Importance Of Copy In Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation

One often overlooked role in CRO is copy, the language used on a website or landing page can significantly influence someone visiting your site to take the desired action on your page.

You should always make sure that the copy is clear, concise and persuasive, in order to highlight all the benefits of a product or service that’s being promoted. For example, when advertising the iPod, Apple used creative copy to make their device sound enticing to their audience. “1000 songs in your pocket” resulted in their potential customers seeing their product as more intriguing than other devices on the market, converting them into customers. Copy used should always be consistent to resonate with the branding of your company to promote your business to your target audience. Depending on your audience, the ideal copy can change drastically from the type of language used to the best adjectives for the product or service.

Headlines and call to action buttons are essential, as they’re often the first thing a visitor will see and should clearly stand out from the rest of the page. Call to actions can significantly influence a user’s decision to convert.

Another key role in copy is the use of persuasive language as well as showcasing customer testimonials, as this can be an effective way to highlight the credibility of your brand. It is important to craft compelling copy as it plays a vital role in CRO and has a surprising ability to determine the success of a website.

User Experience In Ecommerce Conversion rate Optimisation

One of the most important parts of CRO is user experience, as it directly impacts the probability of the potential customer visiting your website to take desired action. The look and layout of your website is important, however usability has more of an impact in ensuring customers convert.

Providing a seamless user experience can be achieved through a variety of design and layout changes, some typical changes include; providing clear call to action, making sure that your website is optimised not only for desktop but also for mobile devices, and simplifying the navigation menu. Usability testing can be used to collect feedback from real users on the website’s design and functionality, which allows businesses to find and solve the issues that could be causing visitors to leave without converting.

It’s also important that your website is easy to navigate, increasing the chance of users converting to customers, the easier it is to purchase the more likely a customer is to do so. As user experience plays a crucial role in CRO, every ecommerce business should strive to create a website that is not only user friendly, but tailored to meet the needs of their target audience.

A/B Testing To Improve Conversion Rate

One strategy in CRO is the use of A/B testing. Allowing website owners as well as marketers to have the ability to test different variations of a webpage to observe which version performs better when comparing key performance indicators (KPIs).

A/B testing works by showing different versions of a page to visitors at random, then comparing the results, doing this means it’s possible to identify which version of the page is most effective in converting customers. Headlines, images, call to action buttons and forms are all aspects of the website that can be tested. Different layouts, colours and even entire websites can be tested through A/B testing, which results in giving you a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t so you can have confidence in the changes made. Making decisions driven by precise data can create a significant impact on the performance of a website.

Can You Do CRO If You Don’t Have Enough Traffic for A/B Testing?

While A/B testing is a common method in CRO, if your website doesn’t have enough traffic it may be impossible to use A/B testing to collect enough data to make informed decisions. If you have low traffic it is just as important to increase website traffic through SEO, PPC and other marketing strategies before performing CRO for you to be able to thoroughly retrieve data about user activity.

Another way you can effectively use A/B testing is to compare the results from your current website to the data from your previous page to see how the results vary. You can also get various users to test the page and record their opinions on whether the user experience needs improvement, and if it’s easy to navigate. This means you can review the results and see what is working the best for your website.

What Is A CRO Strategy?

Creating a strong strategy is essential for any successful CRO campaign, this includes everything from selecting the audience to the changes themself. Utilising website and audience analytics gives you a clearer insight into who your target audience is, allowing you to make more informed decisions regarding changes to your site. This increases the likelihood of making changes that increase conversions.

Essentially a CRO strategy is taking all of the necessary steps to ensure that you’re using all of the information available before making any changes to the site. By analysing users and their behaviour you can identify issues with the site as well as understand what your users are looking for. A good CRO strategy allows for informed decisions on changes and how they should be implemented, such as whether or not A/B testing is required.

Is Conversion Rate Optimisation Part Of SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) and CRO are closely related within digital marketing and actually have a lot of overlap, however there are some key differences. While SEO’s main purpose is to improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search engines, CRO focuses on improving the performance of a website by increasing the likelihood of users that take action or convert. While they’re both key factors of digital marketing and are essential to the success of a website, it’s important to note that they’re not the same. Both SEO and CRO work well together so it’s wise to involve both as part of your digital marketing strategy.

By combining the efforts of SEO and CRO your website will not only drive more traffic but also increase the conversion rates. You’ll also gain more revenues as you will have an improved user experience with the website being optimised and the increase in users on your site, you’ll gain the most benefits using these strategies.

CRO vs SEO

Although both SEO and CRO are used as part of digital marketing, they’re both used for different reasons. While both strategies are used by businesses to improve their online performance, it’s essential that you understand the benefits of using both strategies and how it can impact your business so you can successfully use it.

One benefit of CRO is that it focuses on increasing the percentage of website visitors who will convert, which is a great advantage for ecommerce as that is the main outcome your website is aiming for. A disadvantage of using CRO is that you’re prioritising your marketing strategy on visitors who may already be planning on making a purchase anyway, meaning it’s a wasted marketing effort that you could have focussed on attracting new potential customers instead. SEO on the other hand, benefits your business by focusing on ensuring that your website will rank in search results, which will expose your website to those who are unaware of your business and attract new potential customers. One disadvantage of using SEO is that the number of visitors completing your desired action on your page is not always guaranteed; just because someone has landed on your page doesn’t ensure that they will make a purchase if your website hasn’t been optimised.

Even though they have a different purpose and will gain different results for your website, they can be used to support each other; by using CRO strategies to influence more people to take desired action on your site it’s important that people are on your website in the first place in order for you to get the most out of this tool. That’s why it’s important to consider both when optimising your ecommerce website in order to obtain the best results for your business. Both CRO and SEO work well together so rather than choosing which strategy would work best for your business it’s wise to consider using them both together as your business will benefit the most out of both strategies.

The Importance Of Conversion Rate For Ecommerce

When running an ecommerce business it’s especially important that your website visitors convert as the reason your website exists is to sell the product you’re providing. Having a high conversion rate can imply that your website is effectively persuading visitors to turn into customers, a low conversion rate on the other hand, may indicate that there are some problems with the website’s design, navigation or marketing efforts that are preventing visitors from taking desired action. It’s crucial to be aware of this information and monitor it closely so you can make the appropriate changes that you see fit. This is a good way to keep track of any improvements you may need to make in order to increase sales and revenue. One benefit of obtaining a high conversion rate is that it can also help improve the ROI of any marketing campaigns. The conversion rate is a key indicator of the effectiveness of an ecommerce website, so making sure that it’s optimised is an important step in achieving success for your ecommerce business.

How To Increase Conversion Rate Ecommerce

In order to increase your conversion rate for your ecommerce business it’s crucial that you monitor it closely so you can spot any improvements that need to be made. You need to have a thorough understanding of your website analytics in order to be able to spot a dip in conversion rates, and identify what on your website could be the cause of this.

Some common ways you can increase conversion rate for ecommerce:
Optimising website design
Optimsing user experience
Make sure the website is easy to navigate
Optimise the site speed
Clear call to action buttons
Improve copy
Seamless checkout process

After monitoring the site’s analytics and gaining insights into your target audience, you’ll be able to identify what changes you will need to make in order to see an increase in your conversion rate. From the results you’ve found you’ll be able to select the changes above that apply to your website and implement them, which will lead to an increase in conversions for your ecommerce site.

Results Of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimisation

Using CRO for many types of businesses of all sizes can produce significant results, by increasing the conversion rate this will lead to an increase in revenue for your business.

More engaged and satisfied customers is another result of using CRO on your site, which will improve brand loyalty for your ecommerce business. Another great result from implementing a CRO strategy for your business is you will gain a competitive advantage, as if your website has a higher conversion rate you will be more likely to gain customers coming back and outperform any competitors, which will mean you will capture more market share.

Understanding Audience To Improve Conversion Rate

Understanding the audience you want to target is the first step you need to make sure you take in order to effectively optimise a website for conversion rate. Identifying the demographic and motivations of your target audience will ensure that you can direct all of your brand messaging design to their specific needs and preference. This will lead to you gaining the most out of your CRO strategy, as it’s important for you to use data to get results and to ensure you have the right target audience.

Web Design To Increase Conversion Rate

If you are taking the steps to monitor your conversion rate and notice that there’s either a dip or it’s not as high as you want it to be, then it may have something to do with the overall look of your website. Your website design impacts the conversion rate and can determine whether or not a visitor will convert on your website. If you’ve been neglecting your website design and notice that your conversion rate is low, the design or usability may be causing customers to leave.

Optimising the website design plays a significant role in increasing conversion rate and shouldn’t be neglected. Not only does a well designed site look professional and credible to your target audience, it will also provide a positive user experience by providing easy to navigate and encourage them to take desired action. Good web designers take user experience into consideration as it’s not only important that everything looks good to the customer, but that they find it easy to navigate making it a seamless process.

Optimise Product Page To Improve Conversion Rate

For an ecommerce website, optimising a product page is an essential CRO strategy, product pages are the most important part of an ecommerce site, ensuring you have optimised all parts. One common way to quickly improve your product page is high quality images that show the products clearly and highlight its uses, will show your website visitors what your products are.

Other improvements such as:
Customer reviews
Ratings
Testimonials

These are a great way to build trust and credibility between you and your customers, as you will be seen as more reputable this will encourage them to make a purchase. Another great way to optimise your product page is to include a clear call to action that encourages customers to follow through with a purchase. CRO is a useful strategy to implement in a product page, it’s also useful to make sure all your product pages are easy to navigate and load quickly to make the checkout process as seamless as possible and not to discourage customers from seeing their purchase through. CRO plays a valuable role in your ecommerce business that you shouldn’t overlook.

Why Choose Our Conversion Rate Optimisation Agency?

When putting into action CRO it can be difficult to know where to start, and finding the time to fully commit to this strategy alongside running your business can be a struggle. At Assured Marketing we will take this off your hands, so you will experience all the benefits that CRO strategy provides for your ecommerce business. Choosing us as your CRO agency will ensure that you will see an increase in conversion rate, as well as an increase in your revenue. Contact us today to improve your ecommerce business and start seeing results.