Conversions are a crucial component of any paid search strategy. If users aren’t converting on your website, you aren’t selling your product or service…plain and simple. However, many ecommerce businesses still neglect conversion rate optimization (CRO) and overly focus on vanity metrics like page views, average visit duration, or even leads!
These metrics are certainly not useless to understand as a baseline for making sitewide improvements. However, if your company isn’t additionally focusing on the bigger picture of conversions and overall ROI, you could find yourself squandering your advertising budget with little to show for it.
So how do you improve conversions?
The first step is knowing what to focus on and which components to test. For an ecommerce company with multiple product pages, there are lots of opportunities. You can test overall site navigation, product page layout or copy, or even your external PPC ad copy.
The gut reaction for most businesses is to focus on the aesthetics of product pages, such as the color of a CTA button, the font style or size on a web page, or the images. This isn’t a bad place to start, especially if you’re just beginning the optimization process and haven’t run many A/B or multivariate tests yet. Look here for more info on these types of tests.
These decisions will help you get a basic understanding of what works best for your potential customers. Eventually, by optimizing these aesthetic features, you will see some small to moderate gains in your conversions.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The real meat of CRO comes when you start manipulating the actual content and ease of access on your site pages. Testing your navigation menu, dropdown menus, headlines, body copy, and CTA text can greatly impact your conversions.
The problem with most companies in almost any industry is that they tend to follow what their competitors are doing. There is this collective consciousness that infects businesses where everyone wants to copy what everyone else is doing. The problem is, what everyone else does may not be entirely successful!
To truly stand out and be seen above all the other internet clutter, you have to have an interesting offer that speaks to a consumer combined with a user-friendly web experience. There needs to be a reason for them to click on your site instead of your competitors. This is where testing your copy and usability can make a massive impact on your overall CRO.
It’s important to realize that not all of your tests are going to be successful, but that’s okay! You need to rule out what doesn’t work and fine-tune what does. It’s an iterative process. For instance, if you’re offering up free content in the form of white papers or case studies, modifying your message or the CTA might take several versions to nail down a great conversion rate.
Perhaps you started with a CTA that says “Download”, but after a few different A/B tests, determined that “Get My Report” converts 3x better. Maybe your initial headline was too negative and scared people away, and a more optimistic approach garnered better results. The bottom line is, conversion rate optimization takes time, but is absolutely worth it.
But don’t just take my word for it. At ROI Revolution, we have an entire team that focuses on CRO, and some of the results we’ve seen have been staggering.
One of our clients in particular was looking to improve their mobile conversion rates for their ecommerce business. Based on Analytics data, our analysts determined that visitors using mobile search had a 7x higher conversion rate. To capitalize on this, a multivariate test was run making the search bar always visible on mobile and using more descriptive labels for dropdown menus. The end result was a 34% higher conversion rate with one of the variations vs. the control.
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In another instance, testing showed that ease of use when navigating top-level menu items was crucial for one of our client’s websites. After further testing, a variation with very specific shopping criteria for categories was implemented, and converted at a 10.2% increase over the control.
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As you can clearly see, CRO is an extremely powerful tool. Maximizing conversions is an essential part of growing your business. As your rates increase, so will your sales, revenue, and overall profitability as a company.
If you are looking for even more testing strategies, as well ways to optimize your calls to action and value proposition, grab our latest white paper: The Q4 Conversion Rate Challenge. This detailed report will uncover further strategies to optimize your website and improve conversions.
To gain even more insights on how you can optimize your website, email cro@roirevolution.com to talk to one of our CRO experts. They can outline key areas of your site that are ripe for testing and help you down the path to an optimized customer experience and better converting website.
