5 Reasons Why CRO Should Be a Priority for Ecommerce Managers in 2020

Are you familiar with the CRO acronym?

Is it just another buzzword, or maybe there’s something more to it? And what’s in it for the ecommerce industry? So many questions about conversion rate optimization – we’re ready to answer them all.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a process of optimizing your website. It’s supposed to encourage more visitors to complete a particular goal and, subsequently, increase the conversion rate. When it comes to ecommerce, the purchase is the ultimate goal. Other, smaller goals, may include creating an account, adding items to cart or signing up for a newsletter.

In this article, we’re going to discuss why CRO matters for ecommerce managers. We’ve thought about it for quite a while and picked 5 main reasons why conversion rate optimization should be among your top priorities in 2020. Ready to find out? Read more below!

What reasons will you find in this article?

1. CRO Will Help You Earn Money
2. CRO Will Help You Save Money
3. CRO Will Help You Get the Most from What You Already Have
4. CRO Will Help You Understand Your Customers
5. CRO Will Help You Rank in Google
Key Takeaways for Optimizing Your Ecommerce Business

Sounds good? Let’s dig in.

1. CRO Will Help You Earn Money

First and foremost: the main point of CRO is to increase your revenue.

The main idea is quite easy to understand. Conversion rate optimization is about looking for opportunities to get more clients, which ultimately leads to higher revenues. CRO professionals work with a wide variety of methods to achieve this goal and keep the business growing.

To prove the effectiveness of this approach, let’s have a look at some statistics:

• According to Marketing Sherpa, 74% of conversion rate optimization programs increase sales. What’s more, when you improve your conversion rates by 20%, your sales also will go up by 20% – without investing in traffic acquisition separately. This sounds quite effective, doesn’t it?
• Hubspot claims that personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors than generic ones. It’s a quick win – you can add a personalized touch to a CTA in a couple of minutes.
• There is another aspect that matters a lot, yet it’s still often overlooked. We’re talking about page speed here. Neil Patel suggests that even a 1-second delay in loading the page can reduce the conversions by 7%.
• What about lengthy forms? You probably know the feeling: you wanted to make a purchase or sign up for something but you ended up discouraged by the long and inconvenient process. Luckily, the experience can be improved significantly by making the forms shorter. Unbounce.com claims that reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4 can increase conversion rate by up to 120%. Again: small change, big results.
• Venturebeat reports that conversion rate optimization solutions have an average ROI of 223%. Sounds like a great investment? It can get even better. Growcode represents a groundbreaking approach to CRO. For example, 77% of our experiments increase conversion rates, while the CRO industry standard is around 25%. The average ROI from using Growcode is 381%, which is also higher than for most traditional CRO methods.

Growcode’s approach to conversion rate optimization is what makes us unique.

Bonus – affiliate marketing: Last but not least, higher conversion rates mean that your affiliate will send you more traffic. They’re remunerated on a cost per action basis, which means that it’s more profitable for them to send traffic to websites that convert better. In other words, CRO has a positive impact on different kinds of marketing activities.

2. CRO Will Help You Save Money

It works the other way round, too.

Apart from increasing your revenue, CRO will help you spend your money more wisely. Through methods like A/B testing, usability testing, segmentation, customer journey analysis and gathering customer feedback, you’ll find better opportunities to spend your budget. Not sure how?

Here are some examples to make it clear:

• You can invest more in PPC, without spending more – It’s quite simple: you can still fit within the same budget and get more results. The return on ad spend (ROAS) grows together with higher conversions. This means you pay less for a single transaction. Because of that, you can increase your PPC bids and beat your competition.
• You can lower your customer acquisition costs – Instead of paying for more irrelevant traffic, you can focus on getting the most out of your relevant traffic – for a fraction of the price. In other words, you can focus on quality instead of quantity. This way, your customer acquisition costs will be much lower.
• You can locate the weakest links – CRO experiments boast impressive success rates because they’re highly data-driven. All the assumptions come from numbers and other empirical sources of information. You can find the parts of your website that need improvement through analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll know the weakest parts and it will be easier to come up with improvements. No need to waste your time and money on guesswork when you can rely on data instead.

One of #CRO pros: instead of paying for more irrelevant traffic, you can focus on getting the most out of your relevant traffic - for a fraction of the price Click To Tweet

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3. CRO Will Help You Get the Most from What You Already Have

Here’s what the “optimization” stands for in “CRO”. You don’t need to change your website completely – that would cost a lot and wouldn’t necessarily guarantee good results. You just need to analyze your ecommerce website and focus on the main fields for improvement.

CRO ecommerce tactics are focused on relatively small tweaks that may bring great results. Conversion rate optimization agencies are well aware that dramatic changes are expensive and may not always prove to be successful. This is why we focus on data-driven experiments instead.

For example, a CRO agency like Growcode won’t ask you to completely overhaul your website. Instead, they may suggest changing the structure of a product page, like in this example below:

Product page before conversion rate optimization.
This is the version before going through optimization. Not so bad but still, could be better, right? Here’s the one after applying CRO changes:

Product page after conversion rate optimization – already delivering better results.
To sum up, the change isn’t dramatic, yet small tweaks in the layout make the e-commerce website much more user-friendly and intuitive. It’s easier to choose the colour, the size and other crucial parameters. That leads straight to a higher conversion rate.

4. CRO Will Help You Understand Your Customers

CRO methods can be a goldmine of information. Here are some of the most informative ones:

• A/B testing – This is one of the most commonly used methods in the field of conversion rate optimization. A/B tests are an easy and effective way to test your hypothesis on real users. The idea is really simple: you create two or more versions of the same feature (or even an entire page). The variants of the page are shown to the users at random. Based on the user behavior, you will be able to determine which version performs better. Such experiments allow you to learn more about the preferences of your audience.
• Qualitative analytics – Numbers will show you what works, while qualitative data will show you why it works. With user recording tools, such as LiveSession, you’re able to see how the visitors are using your ecommerce website. You can track their every move, just like you’re looking over their shoulder. Quite amazing, isn’t it? What’s more, such tools are perfect for user segmentation. You can discover certain patterns and see how different groups of users interact with your website differently. This is the perfect opportunity to make the experience of your visitors more personalized.

Session recording tools can help with spotting areas for improvement. (Source)

• User surveys – If you want to know what your users think, why don’t you just ask them? This method works best with returning customers. When they’re loyal and attached to your ecommerce brand, they’re likely to share some truly valuable feedback. You can also involve your users in early beta testing, before you even release a new feature. One last tip: when you create user surveys, be sure to include just a few of the most important questions. The users are less likely to finish the questionnaire if it’s too long:

Questions per survey and respondent drop-off rate. (Source)

5. CRO Will Help You Rank in Google

Last but not least, CRO matters for SEO – and you already know that SEO is the bread and butter of most ecommerce companies. It might not seem so obvious at first, yet this is how conversion rate optimization can help you rank better in Google:

• Mobile-first – Mobile-first indexing is one of the most important SEO factors lately. This is where CRO and SEO compliment each other. Efforts to make your mobile experience better are going to improve both the user experience and your Google ratings. While mobile users complete purchases less frequently than desktop users, mobile devices are often used for research. It’s the perfect opportunity to make a good first impression. If this topic sounds interesting to you, our blog post on mobile conversion rate optimization may come in useful.

An example of a well-optimized mobile landing page. (Source)

• Good UX pays off – Google Search is getting smarter and smarter with every year. Good user experience is likely to lower your bounce rates, improve your conversions and, subsequently, increase your rankings. It’s pretty logical – if the visitors are happy with your ecommerce services, then Google algorithms are going to work in your favour too. This is why a good CRO agency should have a strong background in both UX and SEO – you can read more about it in our blog post on UX in ecommerce.
• Page loading time – As we’ve mentioned before, loading times are crucial for conversions, but did you know they matter for SEO as well? Google has a special feature to measure them – with Google PageSpeed Insights you can see how your website is performing compared to the competition. As you can see, CRO and SEO go hand in hand. Both fields are supposed to improve your business and your conversions. When you combine both approaches, you’re sure to get miles ahead of your competition. If you would like to learn more about the importance of this factor, you’re likely to enjoy our blog post on ecommerce site speed.

Key Takeaways for Optimizing Your Ecommerce Business

As you can see, conversion rate optimization is a promising direction for ecommerce managers. It’s likely to bring results very quickly, without involving too many resources. CRO agencies believe in in-depth research. Based on data, they come up with experiments and ideas for small changes that can make a big difference. The ecommerce industry is really complex, which means there are plenty of opportunities.

The average return on investment for the whole industry looks quite promising, and it can get even higher if you choose to work with Growcode. We know how to turn visitors into buyers and we guarantee results. You’re getting your money back if we don’t increase your revenue.

So, why not give us a try? Contact us to learn how we can help you improve your conversion rates and sales in 2020.

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💡 At Growcode, we develop and maintain online shops and B2B ecommerce on Magento!