Creating CRO Strategies (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
Rather than investing your time and money in attracting new traffic, enhancing your conversion rate can generate more value from your existing browsers.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is a marketing strategy that aims to increase the percentage of an audience performing a specified action, known as a conversion. This could mean making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or clicking on a link. You might target multiple types of conversion within a single website or marketing campaign. It’s here we will specifically focus on increasing purchase conversions.
For an e-commerce website, the average conversion rate for orders is often estimated between 2.5% and 3%. If your conversion rate is above 3%, you are in the top-performing online stores.
Here are ways to increase your conversion rate with customers who are already browsing:
Product Pages
Product pages are the backbone of any e-commerce website and can significantly benefit from CRO. Test the impact of optimising your product images, descriptions, and brand voice. Include customer reviews as this is proving to significantly increase conversions among new shoppers
Navigation
Ensure efficient browsing through your navigation bar and search tools. This allows customers to find exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Product Photography
When your customers can't physically interact with your products, the media you use to represent your items becomes a key conversion factor. Ensure your product photography is high-resolution and highlights each item's most popular features. If possible, include a 360-degree view, demonstration video, or 3D model to provide browsers with a complete visual experience.
Announcement Bars
Placed at the top of every page, announcement bars, similar to pop-ups, are effective at grabbing your browser's attention and quickly providing useful information. They are ideal for showcasing new collections or sales and discounts.
Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are one of the few touchpoints between e-commerce shoppers and products. While it might be tempting to write a detailed description about each of your store's items, high-converting product descriptions need to be “short and sweet”. Descriptions lacking information key information or unique selling points will always increase bounce off-rates. But, too much information may result in shoppers being overwhelmed by the thought of reading through it. Provide clear, simple descriptions that highlight product features and benefits.
Brand Commitments + Social Proof
Leverage social proof through customer testimonials, product reviews, and seals of approval from trusted brands. Ensure you have a clear return policy that allows customers to try out and return their purchases with minimal stipulations. Real-life product videos showcasing your product in its natural environment can also be beneficial.
Abandoned Cart Emails
This strategy works well if the shopper has previously visited your website and you track their associated email. Sending an abandoned cart email, ideally 24 hours after they were browsing, can be effective. Why 24 hours? If they were browsing at 9:30 one morning, they may be browsing again at that time the next day. Anything more or less, and there's no guarantee it will pop into their inbox at a time they can respond.
It's important to begin by taking careful note of your current conversion rates. This baseline will serve as a crucial point of reference as you make adjustments to your approach. Once you have a clear understanding of your current situation, you can then proceed to deep dive into various areas of your digital storefront. This could involve examining customer behaviour, analysing product performance, or looking at the effectiveness of your site design. As you explore these areas, be sure to track your findings and measure the success of any changes you make. This will provide valuable data that can be used to support longer-term decisions. Understanding these metrics and their impact on your business will be key to driving growth and success in your digital marketplace.
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