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How a CRO Audit Can Boost Your Ecommerce Business

13/06/2018 - Digital Marketing

When it comes to digital marketing, it’s always a good idea to place yourself in the customer’s shoes.

You’ve probably shopped online in the recent past. What would have stopped you making a purchase from a user experience standpoint?

Things like ‘difficulties using the site, confusing navigation, hidden costs at the checkout’ might well be on your list. They all just add hassle and grief to what should be a stress-free process.

But subtler things come into play too. By evaluating factors like call to action placements, how simple your pricing page is and even changing the colour of certain buttons on a page, companies can give themselves a better chance of turning that site visitor into a customer.

In an ecommerce context, the process of visitors to your site becoming customers by placing an order via your website is known as a ‘conversion’. The better the rate of these conversions, the higher your sales. So, for example, 1 in every 100 site visitors might be converting into a customer. That’d give you a 1% conversion rate. You naturally want this percentage to be as high as it can be.

So, if your company’s not getting the kind of sales you’d like online and your conversion rate’s not ideal, a Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) audit might be exactly what you need to improve performance.

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Dynamic Customer Insight

Just picture this – if a company has a conversion rate of 1% and makes £100,000, by simply improving their conversion rate to 2% and keeping the same level of traffic and average order value, they’ve managed to double their revenue.

A CRO audit is the best way to identify ways in which a website could be enhanced to give every visitor the best chance of converting into a customer.

Gaining an insight into how visitors interact with your site is an excellent base from which to start.

“Companies can sometimes be making mistakes by keeping their website the same and not making changes to it,” said Yasser Mohammed, full stack digital marketing manager at Un.titled. “It is important to constantly monitor websites in relation to user behaviour, as activity and preferences change over time. Some companies think that once they have built a website, that it will look after itself. But keeping up with customer trends and tastes is important.”

It’s important to appreciate that having an active approach to web design, content and promotions can have as big of an impact online as changes on the shop floor can have in store.

“If we look at Tesco for example, they constantly update their stores and modify the layout based on their strong understanding of user behaviour,” says Mohammed. “The same goes for department store giant John Lewis. Brick and mortar stores are constantly changing the layout of their physical stores, and companies shouldn’t be afraid of doing the same when it comes to the layout of their website.”

Audit and Analyse

With a CRO audit, you can identify where site visitors may be losing interest, affording you the chance to come up with ways to turn them into customers. Charting customer feedback and buyer behaviour also allows for steps to be taken to boost the efficacy of your website and secure more sales.

“CRO audits help companies understand user behaviour and analyse the customer journey more effectively,” Mohammed says. “You can uncover areas that could be barriers to conversion. In-depth analysis allows you to target specific pages – be it a product page or the checkout page – and look at where changes can happen. You can also gain deeper insights using heatmaps and analytic tools. These allow you to really get to the core of how your website is being used by visitors.”

What might be improved?

– Design: Creative web designs are key to enhancing the user experience. Your website not only needs to look great but should be easily navigable and allow your customers to locate and purchase what they want with ease.

– Content: The content on your site allows you to engage with customers and define ‘personas’ for your business.

– Finding Glitches: A CRO audit can provide information on website difficulties that could be impacting conversion rates. With this information to hand, active decisions can be made to remove problems.

“A CRO audit can provide information relating to different aspects of the website, from reinforcing trust signals, to optimising product pages,” Mohammed explains. “Key decisions taken from a CRO audit should be around reducing the steps required to complete a conversion journey.”

Taking a structured approach to CRO can really pin down what is making a difference on your website. Test plans can deliver measurable results that can then be used to shape your CRO goals in the long term.

It’s worth noting that CRO isn’t a static concept. To get the best conversion rates, companies need to be flexible and move with the times, making regular CRO audits a part of their digital strategy.

That’s where our team of CRO experts come in to help! Our CRO audit service can help you identify the steps you need to take to significantly improve your ecommerce revenue and grow your online business.

If you can’t wait to get started on CRO and see your conversion rate soar, drop us a line at [email protected].