What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion rate optimization is the process of conducting a thorough analysis of your eCommerce store and then employing improvements in areas where necessary to maximize the sales for your store. CRO generally involves optimizing and improving specific elements of your eCommerce store that can typically affect the customer's interest in your site and ultimately influence your store's sales conversions.
A few examples of on-page elements are the color and position of action buttons, descriptions, and headlines. In addition, multivariate testing and A/B testing are two common CRO tactics employed to maximize the sales conversion for your store.
Multivariate testing is used to determine the best combination of elements for boosting your sales conversion by trying out different variations of these elements and then comparing those combinations. Multivariate testing focuses on a deep comparison of different combinations of website elements and does not compare two different versions of the same website.
A/B testing, on the other hand, involves systematically analyzing and testing different variations of specific elements on a web page. For A/B testing, you can modify one element on the website or web page and test to see if the previous version or the new version will result in more conversions or sales. Ultimately, as both versions are exposed to the users, you can analyze the data to determine which website changes to implement.
How to Calculate Conversion Rates
Calculating the conversion rate for your store is a straightforward task and involves dividing the total number of visitors by the number of conversions for your store. For instance, if your store is getting around 3000 visitors and 30 conversions for a specific period, this indicates that your store's conversion rate is about 1%.
An average conversion rate for eCommerce websites stands around 1%-2%. However, anything above the 2% benchmark is typically considered a high conversion rate and should be the target goal for your eCommerce store.
Benefits of CRO for eCommerce Stores
The role of Conversion Rate Optimization is crucial in increasing the revenue for your online store. CRO enables you to increase your revenue per visitor and ultimately lower customer acquisition costs.
For instance, if the landing page of your website receives 1000 visitors per month and the conversion rate is 10%, your page is generating 100 conversions per month. By utilizing different optimization tactics and modifying the elements on that landing page, you can possibly bring the conversion rate up to 15% (150 conversions per month.) This example shows how vital CRO is for the continuous growth of your business.
Focusing on CRO with the right strategies can help your business increase revenue. In addition, there are numerous benefits attached to Conversion Rate Optimization, the most important being:
- You have the chance to learn more about your target audience. As customers navigate through your website and landing pages, you will gain an in-depth understanding of their behavior, likes, and dislikes. Thus, based on those insights, you can modify your online store and website to increase online sales.
- Finding the perfect mix of elements that boost your conversion rates ultimately helps in lowering your customer acquisition costs, specifically with paid advertising. In addition, it will help increase your return on a spend (ROAS).
- Effective CRO strategies can render your website more user-friendly and improve rankings in the SERPs. Various factors such as mobile responsiveness and site architecture play a vital role in improving both CRO and SEO optimization.
- CRO optimization will result in a significant increase in conversion rates, a boost in eCommerce sales, and an upsurge in profit margins. It's a win-win for eCommerce stores.
CRO Strategies for eCommerce Products
When it comes to CRO for eCommerce stores, it all starts with products. Here's a list of some of the top CRO strategies and tactics to increase conversions and eCommerce revenue.
- Use High-Quality Images on Product Pages
A captivating product image can make or break a sale. Therefore, the goal for every eCommerce store owner is to display high-quality photos (or videos) for every product. Detailed images help the customer visualize the product and gives them a better understanding of its benefits. Ultimately, this results in more conversions and sales. - Display Products from Multiple Angles
It's crucial to have an aesthetically appealing store design with impressive product photos to help your customers envision themselves using the products. One effective strategy is to display products from several different angles, allowing customers to gain a 360-degree view of each. - Use Videos to Explain Complex Products
Videos are a powerful marketing tool and a great way to convey your brand story to your customers and build an effective conversion-rate strategy. According to The Human Attention Span [INFOGRAPHIC], the average attention span is only 8 seconds. Plus, with the rise of multi-tasking and scrolling on social media, attention spans get shorter each year. Therefore, it's even more vital to present engaging content and deliver high-quality product videos. Videos can be one of the most persuasive ways to engage people quickly and increase your eCommerce sales. - Be Clear & Transparent About Product Details
It's all in the details. Transparency is everything when it comes to writing product descriptions for your eCommerce store. Therefore, your product details and features should be clear and transparent to increase your shopper's trust level. Best practices will always lean on the side of "the more details, the better." Well-written and engaging product descriptions play a vital role in grabbing the reader's attention and ultimately capturing the sale. - Product Ratings, Customer Reviews, & Testimonials
It's undeniable that users tend to go for brands with a strong social media following and a healthy library of customer reviews. Therefore, one of the most effective ways to improve your CRO and eCommerce sales is to integrate customer reviews to highlight product satisfaction and offer social proof of your products. To quickly build a trusted library of product reviews, one recommended approach is to offer discount codes and coupons to customers for providing product reviews and feedback.
BigCommerce offers several Ratings & Reviews integrations and apps to showcase product reviews in your eCommerce store. In addition, hiring an experienced eCommerce web development agency to set up your online product catalogs with various integrations can help increase CRO and store revenues.
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Other Ways to Boost Your eCommerce Conversion Rates
From checkout to live chat to product filters, there are several other factors involved in eCommerce CRO. Here's a list of some other ways to boost your online store conversion rates.
Optimize Your eCommerce Checkout Process
As evidenced by the substantial number of shopping cart abandonment programs for eCommerce stores, sales can be lost forever from a complicated checkout process. The checkout experience should be smooth, easy, and intuitive. BigCommerce takes this strategy very seriously and offers a standard and optimized checkout process, consisting of a single page with a view of all your selected products.
Use Live Chat Software
Implementing live chat support for your eCommerce store can significantly impact the quality of customer service and sales completion rates. Live chat software is all about providing assistance to your customers and answering their questions in real-time.
Moreover, it's important to have live chat support during and after business hours to assist your customers when they are shopping online. As costly as it may be, sometimes this means you should offer 24/7 live chat availability. However, offering live chat to your customers and not having available agents to answer real-time questions can negatively impact the customer experience. Therefore, it's essential to offer live chat assistance only when you have consistent and reliable customer service agents available.
Safe & Secure Websites
A safe and secure website is an essential requirement for an eCommerce store. When it comes to entering sensitive data such as credit card information, your customers need to have a high level of trust in your company. Therefore, your online eCommerce store should have all the most current industry-standard security measures up to date to convey to your customers that this website is a legitimate, safe, and credible shopping space.
The most common way to demonstrate this is to ensure SSL integration with your online eCommerce store. You may also want to display security badges from verified digital certificates providers on your website. For example, if you have a BigCommerce store, their dedicated SSL certificates are verified by GeoTrust and offer a well-trusted layer of security reassurance to your customers.
Optimize Product Categories and Filters
It is crucial to provide multiple filters to allow your customers to navigate your site and find the right products. Common filter types for products include price, size, ratings, colors, and more. Filters are a helpful way to assist your customers in drilling down their selections from an extensive online catalog of products.
Organizing product categories is an essential aspect of showcasing your eCommerce line of products. They allow your visitors to gain a quick understanding of your product offerings and enable them to find products more efficiently. Therefore, make sure to organize categories and filters logically. This way, visitors can quickly navigate your website and discover new and relevant products, which helps increase average order value and eCommerce revenue.
How to Optimize Your Site Search for CRO
An eCommerce site search refers to a search engine solution for your online store. The core purpose of this tool is to refine the search results by matching the keywords specified by the users. This helps your customers find products according to their search criteria, which also aids in product discovery and add-on sales.
Benefits of Using Site Search in Your Online Store
- Achieve higher conversion rates
A study conducted by SearchNode demonstrates that on-site searchers can generate around 30-60% of your total eCommerce store revenue. This shows exactly how important site search can be to boost conversion rates and increase profit margins for your store. - Provide a better customer experience
Customers who already know what they are looking for can benefit from on-site search capabilities because they help narrow down the search results. This plays a vital role in enhancing the shopping experience for customers. - Data analytics help make well-informed business decisions
Data analytics and insights associated with your customers' searches provide significant advantages of using site search. With the knowledge gained, you can determine which products your customers are looking for the most. You can also make product development and product assortment decisions based on your customer's searches. Finally, the valuable data relating to your customers' searches will help you determine which changes to make to your online catalog, product offerings, and even online store promotions.
Analytics & Tools To Improve eCommerce Conversion Rates
Utilizing existing tools is an excellent way to improve your eCommerce conversion rates. Some valuable tools that provide comprehensive insights into conversion rates include HotJar, Google Analytics, and BigCommerce Analytics.
HotJar
HotJar is a remarkable heat-mapping tool that offers various functionalities such as capturing cursor movements and scroll-depth mapping. HotJar offers a diverse range of plans, and some include an in-depth analysis across 1,000-10,000 page-views.
Attribute-based filters are another impressive feature that HotJar has to offer and can help you analyze the types of users based on their countries, devices, and more. Session recording is another excellent functionality for analyzing customer behavior.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics offers deep insights into your visitors' actions and behaviors. It analyzes an extensive range of data and various aspects, including session duration, average time on page, number of page views, bounce rate, country of origin, device type, and whether or not they are returning customers. All of these events provide a comprehensive picture of your store visitors and helps you make data-driven decisions to increase conversions and eCommerce revenue.
Hiring an experienced eCommerce digital marketing agency can help you make sense of your data and outline strategies and roadmaps to exceed your revenue goals.
BigCommerce Analytics
A separate analytics section is available for store owners on the BigCommerce platform for viewing data related to customer analytics. The BigCommerce search tool also captures your customers' keystrokes. Searches resulting in "no products found" will help you determine which products you may want to add to your online store to increase sales.
BigCommerce Analytics is an incredibly sophisticated tool for understanding what your customers are looking for and how to improve their overall shopping experience. The tool comprises multiple analytics dashboards to deliver a diverse range of insights. The best approach to managing and implementing CRO is to hire an experienced eCommerce Digital Marketing to execute innovative strategies to boost conversions and a leading UX Agency to help you stand out in a crowded marketplace with a results-driven user experience.
Additional Metrics to Measure eCommerce Conversions
As discussed, there are hundreds of eCommerce data points to look at on a daily basis. Here are some additional metrics to analyze, which will allow you to make data-driven decisions and increase your CRO.
Bounce Rate – This indicates the percentage of people who exit your online store after viewing only a single page. Understandably, a high bounce rate would not be favorable for your store and will negatively impact eCommerce sales.
Exit Rate – This refers to the percentage of people who are leaving your store after viewing a specific page. This parameter helps in figuring out the exact page that people often visit before leaving. Taking a deep dive into the content, products, and CTAs on the specific page may help you determine which elements lead to such a high exit rate.
Click-Through Rate – The CTR is the ratio of visitors who click on a website link to the total number of users who viewed the page. In digital advertising, CTR is one of the key metrics used to determine the effectiveness of ads, social media, and email marketing.
Average Session Duration – This indicates the duration for which visitors explore your online store without leaving.
Average Page Depth or Pages per Session – This represents the total number of pages that a visitor navigates through on your website before leaving.
Site Speed – This is an essential factor and significantly impacts your revenue-generating opportunities. According to research, 53% of your total customers begin losing interest in your store if your website's load time exceeds 2 seconds. Even a 1-second delay can result in a 7% decrease in your conversions. For eCommerce stores, this can add up to a significant loss of revenue.
Conclusion & Next Steps
In this article, we have provided a comprehensive guide to the ins and outs of CRO, how CRO can benefit your business, and various key factors that impact your CRO. We have also presented an in-depth analysis of the major strategies to improve your CRO and the tools available to help you better understand your customers and website visitors. Plus, hiring an innovative UX Design Agency will provide key insights to improve the user experience and boost sales within your eCommerce marketplace.
Are you ready to optimize your CRO and increase revenue for your eCommerce store? At IronPlane, our experienced team of certified BigCommerce Developers, Magento Developers, and eCommerce digital marketing experts can create comprehensive CRO strategies and roadmaps to increase online conversions and eCommerce revenue.
Visit our eCommerce solutions partner page to learn more about our comprehensive list of services, and click here to schedule a free consultation today.
