Why CRO isn't what you think!

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) is every e-commerce-based business’ priority yet it remains unclear for most. As the name suggests, most people think it's just about the optimisation of conversion. But we could only wish that CRO could operate independently of average order value (AoV), repeat purchase and lifetime value (LTV) or even your main value proposition of business. It doesn’t 😀.

Your e-commerce site is like the storefront. CRO is how you enable your consumers first to understand what this store has to offer, then consider why they should step into the store, explore the collection, and finally make a purchase. The same AIDA funnel is relevant for CRO.

So if we keep the retail experience as a reference, it will become obvious that CRO is not just about moving your elements around the landing page to make consumers click and buy.

Each page on your website has a specific role to play

For example, measure the success of your homepage based on the amount of traffic that landed on the product page instead of measuring sales from the home page. Measure how the traffic keeps dropping at each level of the funnel and what can we do to improve it.

And this measurement takes you back to the basics.

Understanding your consumer profile! 

At a small or medium stage of business, it’s critical to understand which consumer demographics are working for you and what can you do to make your offering even better. How do you do that? Again, back to basics! Talking to your consumers.

Before going further, let’s delve into what CRO is NOT

Most brands take the path of what they shouldn’t do - revamp their websites.

1. CRO is not about revamping your website. Has nothing to do with your logo and your font type or even colours.

2. It is not about trying to place your add-to-cart button in the first few scrolls.

3. And, it most definitely isn't about blindly copying the leading business’ website flow.

While CRO is about improving your site’s performance to lead consumers from consideration to actual purchase, revamping of site has two major challenges:

1. It hampers your current operations. You would mostly stall all major updates on your site and not make any effective changes for 3 to 6 months. Because that's the minimum commitment to site relaunch.

2. Goal setting and measuring becomes an uphill task for every page of your site in a small/medium-sized company.

Recommended CRO process

And what gives us the right to recommend? Because I made the mistake of revamping for optimisation some 15 years ago when CRO as a term didn't exist. Spending 4 months to revamp a site for a large entity only to see no change in metrics. 

Ever since then any business I have worked in and any client, we work with directly today, we recognise that CRO does not operate in isolation and it’s dependent on:

1. Business/Brand Value proposition 

2. Navigating users through that proposition to make the correct decision

3. Enabling them to continue broken journeys and 

4. Come back for more products or solutions.

A broad level 4-step method which is mostly about answering some fundamental questions looks like this:

Step1: Understand the business value proposition:

1. How great is your product/s? (derived from talking to your customers)

2. Do you have some clear hero products to build a brand on? 

3. What is the key value proposition of your entire product line?

EXAMPLE: One of our clients in the personal care business (skincare, haircare and body care) has 150+ SKUs in their product line. A massive amount of information with a very weak thread or value proposition was stopping the business from not only standing out from the competition but also hampering its new product development strategy. We found strength in the brand’s product ingredients and weaved a value proposition that is now authentic to the entire brand and product extensions.

Step 2: Make discovery easy

Focus on your navigation. How soon is your consumer able to discover a collection of your products and land on a product page?

EXAMPLE: For the same brand mentioned above with 150 or more SKUs, we found a solution by creating collections based on skin, hair, or body care challenges and also based on ingredients. Enabling the discovery of products and ingredients through the search functionality was also a key area of work.

Step 3: Focus on Communication through Images

1. Do the images clearly and easily convey the proposition you have?

2. Is there enough authentic UGC to support the proposition?

Step 4: Remove friction from checkout

For example: What’s your free shipping threshold? Often businesses decide to put a higher shipping threshold because they want to increase AoV. This leads to lower conversions. Dive into analytics to find out what is truly your AoV and remove the friction to checkout and measure.

In the end, it’s about optimizing your funnel to improve conversions while still managing AoV which makes you profitable, value proposition which keeps your brand top of mind and relevant. CRO doesn’t happen with a website revamp, it happens with: 

1. Understanding each page’s role in the conversion funnel.

2. Setting a goal for each landing page and then measuring conversions.

3. Finding the friction and eliminating it without hurting your bottom line.

No metrics of business exist in isolation. When you work on one metric it impacts some others concerning it. A holistic approach leads to growth that's profitable and, hence sustainable.