If you are reading this page, it means that you have faced the problem of low conversions on your site. You know that there is a problem, but you do not know how to solve it. Sounds familiar? Be patient and take care of the conversion optimization process. Below you can read:
✓ what CRO is;
✓ why CRO is important for small businesses;
✓ reasons for the conversions drop;
✓ tools and methods on how to improve conversions.
What is CRO? / What is conversion rate optimization?
Conversion optimization is an analysis of existing traffic on your site in order to determine user behavior as well as the interface weaknesses and strengths, and also the low conversion rate reasons and how to increase your conversions. This is working with data on your site.
There is more than one conversion rate optimisation definition. As for me, CRO is the process of optimizing a site, as well as the income, number of leads, and conversions based on quantitative and qualitative data through introducing hypotheses by changing UI / UX, text, graphic content, etc.
As the owner of an online store, you should have a basic knowledge on how to increase conversions, even if you are not going to do it by yourself. What for? You should know and understand your clients in order to serve them the goods in the form they need. Satisfying each customer entails the dissemination of information about your product, which affects the increase in the number of new and repeat sales.
Let’s clear it up at once. A conversion rate optimizer is not attracting new customers as a part of marketing. These are related processes, but they have different goals. An advertising expert attracts users to your site, while a conversion rate optimization consultant determines the quality of visitors and their behavior on the pages.
Why is CRO analysis so important for small businesses?
An online store owner is concerned about the issue of attracting traffic to his or her website. Okay, you got traffic, and Google started to bring it up, but do you know what to do next? Traffic is the users with whom, in real life, you need to communicate and motivate to make a purchase. How do you do it? With the help of high-quality and sophisticated content on the site. To create high-quality and motivating content, you need to know the needs, requests of your user and his or her behavior on the site. You can do it in two ways:
- to conduct a survey among your customers;
- to use the tools to determine the behavior on the site.
We use different analytics tools and user surveys depending on the client’s budget. Depending on the budget, you can choose the right tool that will cope with the task at the proper level. But before turning to CRO guide tools, let’s consider the reasons why the conversions drop.
Why do your conversion rates drop?
This is a question disturbing all online stores owners. But let’s consider it closely. The drop in conversions takes place when the users leave the site.
Here are some factors that affect this process:
1. Lack of confidence. We conducted our own research and identified the top issues that make your customers concerned before leaving your site:
- Why should I send an advance payment for the goods?
- What are the terms and conditions of delivery?
- The site has no reviews, maybe this seller is unreliable?
- How do you contact the seller?
The customer is looking for this information in your online store. It is important for him to know that you are a reliable seller, so if the site does not have this data, the customer will go to your competitors.
2. Inconvenient and incomprehensible interface. The site should work correctly on all devices. This rule has been mentioned more than once, but we decided to focus your attention on it again. Otherwise, the client will get tired of adjusting to errors on your site and he will leave. Also, each block in your interface should carry some meaning. If you overload the interface with unnecessary elements, the client will forget why he went to your site and will leave without a purchase.
3. Lack of value. Why are they so expensive? After all, the sites of their competitors are similar, but the products are cheaper. I’d better order from their competitor’s site. You have to understand that every third visitor of your online store has a similar train of thought. This is okay. However, to prevent a number of similar questions, tell your client about the value of your product. Prove that you have best goods with the help of the content on your site. To achieve the best result, I recommend that you contact a designer for some help.
In practice, there may be even more problems, that’s why the phase of collecting and analyzing information is so important.
How can sellers increase conversion rates?
Conversion increase is a phased and carefully planned process which is based on working with website data. Before you solve the problem of low conversions, decide at what stage they are dropping. You can identify the weaknesses in the interface of your site by only using data collection and analytics with the help of a number of tools. For example, you can use the basic Google Analytics tool that allows you to track conversion data and users on your site. We also recommend that you install Google Tag Manager. With its help you can track events on the site, install heat maps, and record client behavior on the site on video. These actions will allow you to find the main reasons for the drops. I describe the whole list of online conversion optimisation tools that we use for analytics below. I advise that you start with the analysis of weak points in your store, otherwise what are you going to optimize?
Methods for improving conversions
We have described to you a conversion-based optimisation theory, but let’s see how it works in practice. Since 2017, we have been working with an interesting eCommerce project — zinvowatches.com. Zinvo is a Swiss watchmaking company with a network of offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The owner of the company addressed us with the problem of declining sales and poor performance. The task that our partner set for us was to find out the reason for the conversions dropping and build a strategy to improve this situation.
To quickly solve this problem, we have worked through the following steps:
- Analysis of the funnel and the user’s path from entering the site up to making a purchase. As a result of the analysis, we found out that the majority of users make a purchase without visiting the product page, but they add the product to the cart from the categories page.
- We also identified problems and hypothesized how we would increase conversions.
- After conducting the A / B test, we determined that our hypotheses were successful and incorporated the results into the project.
There are no special methods, just collect, structure and qualitatively analyze all possible data. With well-developed hypotheses, the results of A / B tests will be several times more successful.
How can I increase conversions?
Pretty simple. Below I will describe how to monitor conversion rate optimization and the conversion optimization strategy that we use, and you will decide on a sales improvement plan for your online business:
- Install event tracking tools on your website.
- Start collecting data — quantitative and qualitative. For a quality report you will need the following data:
- traffic sources;
- site loading speed;
- the effectiveness of the main page: which blocks are clickable and which do not attract the attention of users;
- user path after visiting the main page;
- on which page you are collecting the most conversions;
- on which page the users leave your site;
- pay page performance. Make sure that it is working properly and there is no content on it that distracts the user from the key goal.
This is only part of the information that will allow you to build hypotheses to improve the site. Hypotheses should also be generated correctly.
- Having found out the main places of drops, collect qualitative data on the behavior of customers on the site.
- Basing on the data obtained, generate your hypotheses to improve the site.
- Prepare several types of conversion content.
- Run A / B testing on your hypotheses. Not every test will be successful, but you can formulate useful conclusions from every failed test.
- Choose the version of the site that brings the best results.
Tools to improve conversion rates
I have compiled a list of effective tools that I use in the process of work and I advise that you you test them. Not all of them will suit you, but many will be pretty useful.
Tools for collecting quantitative data analytics:
- Google Analytics
- Matomo
- Mixpanel
- Kissmetrics
- VWO
Tag Managers
These tools are needed to track events that are not basic ones (clicks on buttons and product cards, filling out forms, etc.)
Tools for installing heat maps, recording screens and user polls.
With the help of these conversion rate optimization services you will be able to understand the behavior of customers on the site, as well as determine the reason for them leaving the pages.
- Сrazy Egg
- Hotjar
- Lucky Orange
- VWO
- Matomo
Cryptocurrency website case: how it works in practice
The owner of an online cryptocurrency store contacted our team. The situation which bothered him was low conversions. Like most of our clients, the store owner realized that there was a problem, but did not know how to solve it. To help him, we acted according to the plan described above: we began collecting and analyzing quantitative data from the site. At this stage, our experts have determined the quality of traffic, sales potential, and the conversion rate of each channel.
It turned out that a cryptocurrency wallet was the main channel for sales. At the time of the analysis, the policy of many advertising services, including Facebook, was rather rigid in relation to cryptocurrency, so our client did not receive traffic from advertising.
We found out that 90% of users who logged on to the site instantly left it, that is, the engagement coefficient was almost zero.
At the main drop points, we installed heat maps, as well as some surveys.
According to the surveys, it became clear that visitors wanted to buy cryptocurrency, but not the goods associated with it.
The same problem was found in heat maps, as well as screen recordings. The fact is that the site had two menus: the first was the store itself, and the second was the group of sites with a large button — when it was clicked the users got to another site. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to solve this problem. After 50 entries, it became clear that users did not understand where they were and got lost in the menu categories. That is, the site had problems with navigation.
Based on the most popular products and screen recordings data, we decided to change the design of the main page. The changes also affected the menu: the category names were corrected to clearer ones, we also applied card sorting. We changed the banner to a more understandable one — it became clear what the site is selling. Then we identified two of the most popular products and one of the important categories — merch (t-shirts, caps, etc.), which was not shown before.
In the end, after a month of work on the site, we received the following data:
The obtained figures illustrate the result of our team’s productive work and an increase in customer sales.
As you can see, it is quite difficult to find a perfect solution that will allow you to maximize the conversion rate. You will have to do a lot of tests and test everything from images and text up to the design of the layout itself. But this is the essence of conversion optimization.
Having thoroughly examined the landing page conversion optimization rate of your online store, evaluating each of its components for how well it meets the needs and characteristics of your customers, you can improve the quantity and quality of leads. You can not only increase your sales and income, but also have returns on investment. And the last tip: trust only the numbers and reliable data on customer behavior on the site. By relying only on intuition and untested decisions, you can make mistakes that will cost you a lot. Test and improvise! If you are confused regarding the steps or you need some help, please, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will find a solution to your problem asap.
