Insights
Head of CRO
CRO
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) increases the number of browsers that turn into buyers. Marketing Sherpa advised 74% of CRO plans lead to increased leads and sales. By analysing data, you can identify where the top drop-off points are and why this is happening. Once you have both quantitative and qualitative insight, you can write a data supported test hypothesis and launch your experiment to determine if the proposed changes have affected the overall evaluation criteria (OEC).
Whilst increasing conversion rates, CRO creates a virtuous circle of benefits that improves all channels. Making better use of current spend by ensuring more conversions, the optimisation process increases ROI without increasing advertising spend.
Designed to maximise the value of visitors, CRO focuses on the customer journey in each of your channels, driving more conversions whilst improving the whole experience of your brand or service. Combining the likes of web analytics, user experience/interface (UX/UI) design and persuasion psychology with usability testing, CRO optimises performance across all channels.
Baymard’s recent study revealed up to 94% of top-grossing sites are incompliant with the four core accessibility requirements on images, links, form fields and keyboard navigation. This means that despite the best efforts of many, there is still plenty of room for companies to improve their user experience for visitors reaching their website.
Gaining insight into why drop off points occur is key to informing your CRO strategy. Do they differ by device or source? Is this different with new and returning customers? Build a library of audience behaviours that can be used to inform your strategy.
User objections gathered from key drop off pages will help identify why visitors did not convert and help you understand the customer perspective. This can be achieved through using feedback polls for collecting insight from diverse types of visitors. Data from converted customers can then be used to help inform how your brand positions itself to reach more similar visitors.
For example, polls from an accommodation client exposed difficulties around visitors understanding what exactly was included with the room, appearance, and availability. Recognising the opportunity for improving the ease of access and articulation of room benefits and appearance, we ran an experiment, which led to a 10% uplift in visitors moving from the product list page to the product details page.
All data received from users is an opportunity to gain perspective, optimise your site’s experience and boost cross-channel performance.
This case study is a useful example to illustrate the effects of CRO for an award-winning travel company. Conversion research identified drop-off points and areas of the website that would drive the most value in the shortest timescale.
Following A/B testing and working together with the Technical SEO team, the client saw a 28% improvement in overall conversion rate and 8.5% in leads. The annualised result of this had a significant impact on the company.
Qualitative and quantitative conversion research is the key to identifying what and where to experiment. Asking questions about the experience of your site allows you to tailor the user experience around the traffic source.
Breakdown the behaviours on each channel to allow you to start the process of ideation and prioritise the opportunities for improvement. For example, customers from direct traffic are much more likely to be aware of your brand. Recognising this creates space for a more personalised experience, understanding that the traffic will potentially benefit from less brand identification messaging and more from an intuitive presentation of relevant products.
Whereas non-brand paid traffic is more likely to benefit from brand explanation, building trust and persuasive tactics to guide them to the point of conversion. A rigorous programme of experimentation is the only way a company can discover the right combination of changes required to drive online growth.
CRO should not be limited to only focus on online performance. Offline performance is now growing in opportunity as companies adopt measurement strategies and a test and learn methodology.
Would in-store presence compliment your brand? Should you offer same day delivery? How can customer experience grow from satisfactory, to an enjoyable experience? Without experimenting and drawing data from your audience, it is impossible to know how to scale to a higher level.
Short term trials, tests and tweaks are vital to nurturing your brand’s performance. For example, the immense growth of Amazon’s leading marketplace is steeped in experiments, from testing different page layouts to the current Prime Air drone experiments. A constant test and learn approach is driving innovation that is revolutionising Amazon’s service. As its founder, Jeff Bezos, stated: “If you double the number of experiments per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness”.
Implementing an internal culture of experimentation speeds up the process of discovering what works best. While many manufacturers have adopted a test and learn approach, many consumer companies have been slow to adopt to this approach, ultimately delaying their own growth.
Read more about conversion rate optimisation’s potential in our ten ways to improve your CRO blog.
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Insights