2023 is the a critical year for ecommerce businesses. The industry is expected to grow at an unprecedented rate, with Shopify predicting that global ecommerce sales will reach $6.54 trillion by 2024.
With this growth comes increased competition, and businesses will need to find new ways to stand out from the crowd and attract customers. You can’t just rely on your products or services to sell themselves – you need to have a well-optimized website that converts visitors into customers.
This is where ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. CRO is the process of optimizing your website to increase the percentage of visitors who take the desired action, whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or anything else.
Millions of businesses and still only a few know how to take advantage of CRO properly.
Why? Because it’s hard.
This guide will show you the benefits of ecommerce conversion rate optimization and how you can use it to grow your business.
Ecommerce CRO is one of the fastest and most effective ways to boost sales and grow your business. In this post, we’ll take a look at what CRO is and some of the benefits it can offer your business.
What is Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization?
When we talk about conversion rate optimization (CRO), we’re talking about the process of increasing the percentage of visitors to your website who take the desired action.
This could be anything from making a purchase to signing up for a newsletter, but whatever the action is, CRO is all about increasing the number of people who take it.
“Ecommerce” just means that the desired action is a purchase. So, ecommerce CRO is the process of optimizing your website to increase the percentage of visitors who make a purchase.
It’s important to note that CRO is not the same as marketing. Marketing is about getting people to visit your website, while CRO is about getting those visitors to take the desired action once they’re there.
Think of it this way: Marketing is about getting people in the door, while CRO is about turning them into customers once they’re inside.
Now, let’s look at some of the benefits of ecommerce CRO.
Biggest Benefits Of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization
1) You make data-driven decisions:
“We think this change will increase our conversion rate by X%, so let’s try it.”
Sound familiar? If you’ve ever made a change to your website without doing any research or testing first, then you’re not alone. Too many businesses make changes to their websites based on hunches or guesses, but with CRO, you make changes based on data.
Before making any website changes, you need to set up tracking and run tests to see how those changes will impact your conversion rate. Only then can you make informed, data-driven decisions about what changes to make.
This data-driven approach will help you avoid making changes that don’t actually improve your conversion rate and, as a result, save you time and money.
CRO practice takes you from “I think this will work” to “It did work – here’s the proof.”
Remember, with CRO; you’re not making assumptions – you’re basing your decisions on data. Before CRO, businesses needed to make a decision, implement it, wait, and see what happened, then make another decision. The cycle went on and on with very little data to show for it.
CRO allows you to test different versions of your website and see which one performs better before fully implementing it.
You can make changes and see the results in real time, so you know exactly what’s working and what’s not. As a result, you can make informed decisions about which changes to make to your website and see a direct impact on your bottom line.
You need to calculate e-commerce conversion rate after you impememnt every strategy to understand where does the rate stand. Either it increased or stayed the same. You can use CRO calculator by ConversionWise which will indicate the overall percentage before and after the new strategies implemented.
2) Increase revenue without increasing your marketing spend:
“We need to increase our sales by X% this quarter. How much do we need to increase our marketing budget by?”
If this sounds like a question you’ve asked yourself before, then you know how important it is to find ways to grow your business without increasing your marketing spend.
Unfortunately, most businesses don’t realize that there’s a way to do just that – and it’s called e-commerce conversion rate optimization.
With CRO, you can increase your sales without increasing your marketing budget. How? Making changes to your website increases the percentage of visitors who take the desired action.
In other words, you’re getting more out of your existing marketing efforts by optimizing your website to convert more visitors into customers.
What changes can you make to your website to increase your conversion rate? That depends on your business and your customers. Still, some common examples include improving the design of your website, making the checkout process simpler and more user-friendly, and adding customer testimonials to your website.
For instance, let’s say your marketing budget is $10,000 per month, and your conversion rate is 2%.
If you increase your conversion rate by just 1%, that’s an extra $200 in sales each month – and you don’t have to spend any more money on marketing to get it.
Now, let’s say you increase your conversion rate by 2%. That’s an extra $400 in sales each month, again without having to spend any more money on marketing.
As you can see, even a small increase in your conversion rate can greatly impact your bottom line – and that’s why CRO is so important.
3) Generate more leads and sales from your existing website traffic:
“We’re getting a lot of traffic to our website, but we’re not generating as many leads and sales as we’d like. What can we do to fix that?”
If you’ve ever asked yourself this question, you know how frustrating it can be to invest time and money into generating website traffic only to see that traffic doesn’t convert into leads and sales.
Most businesses focus on ad-spend when they’re trying to increase leads and sales from their website – but the truth is, you can get a lot more mileage out of your existing traffic by optimizing your website for conversion.
In other words, you can generate more leads and sales from the same amount of traffic by making changes.
You can also use CRO to improve your email marketing campaigns by testing different subject lines, call-to-actions, and images to see which ones result in more clicks and conversions.
And the best part? Unlike paid advertising, CRO is an ongoing process that you can continue to work on and improve over time. So, the more you do it, the better your results will be.
Remember, a website is never “done.” There’s always room for improvement – and that’s what CRO is all about. The above-the-fold content is one of the most important aspects of a website since it’s the first thing people see when they land on a page. That’s why ensuring that your above-the-fold content is compelling and conversion-focused is important.
Following are some tips for optimizing your above-the-fold content:
Your USP:
Make sure your unique selling proposition (USP) is front-and-center in your above-the-fold content. Your USP sets your business apart from your competitors, so it’s important to ensure it’s prominently featured on your website.
Example:
Let’s say you sell shoes. Think about what makes your shoes different from all the other shoes on the market. Maybe you sell handmade shoes, or maybe you have a wide selection of sizes and widths to accommodate different foot shapes. Whatever sets your shoes apart, ensure it’s featured prominently in your above-the-fold content.
Your call-to-action (CTA):
Your CTA should be clear, concise, and easy to spot in your above-the-fold content. It should also be relevant to the page people are on. For instance, if someone is on your home page, your CTA might be “Shop Now.” But if someone is on your product page, your CTA might be “Buy Now.”
Social proof:
Social proof is a powerful way to build trust and credibility with your website visitors. It essentially means using testimonials, customer reviews, and other forms of social proof to show potential customers that others have had success with your product or service.
When used correctly, social proof can be very effective in increasing conversions. So, if you have any social proof – whether it’s customer reviews, testimonials, or case studies – make sure to feature it prominently in your above-the-fold content.
4) You can find and fix problems:
“We’re losing a lot of website visitors. What can we do to stop that?”
If you’re seeing a high rate of website visitors leaving your site without converting, it’s important to find out why that’s happening. Is there a problem with your website? Are people not finding what they’re looking for?
CRO can help you identify these problems and find solutions to them. By running tests and analyzing data, you can pinpoint where people are dropping off in the conversion process and make changes to improve the situation.
Nothing is ever perfect, and there’s always room for improvement – that’s the beauty of CRO. Even if your website is already converting well, you can still use CRO to make it even better.
So, if you’re not already using CRO to improve your website’s performance, now is the time to start. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results.
Bottom Line: Benefits of Ecommerce Conversion rate Optimization
Businesses of all sizes can benefit from CRO. By testing different elements of your website and analyzing the data, you can make changes that will increase traffic and conversions. CRO is an ongoing process, so the more you do it, the better your results will be.
Benefits aren’t just potential outcomes from experiments; they are also real-world changes that can be made to a website that leads to increased traffic and conversions.
Curious about how e-commerce conversion rate optimization can benefit your business? Our experts at ConverionWise can help you increase traffic, boost conversions, and grow your business.
You can join hundreds of eCommerce businesses in Conversion rate Academy and get the training you need to take your business to the next level. Click here to join the academy.
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