3 Reasons Your Ecommerce Business Needs Conversion Rate Optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation is a growing sector. More and more ecommerce businesses are turning to specialist conversion rate optimisation agencies to help them increase the number of people that buy on their website.

Successful ecommerce businesses know that there are two ways to grow sales; either increase relevant traffic, or improve your ecommerce conversion rate. Get more eye balls on your website, or get a higher percentage of those eye balls buying something.

But the ecommerce businesses that grow ridiculously fast are those that consistently increase relevant traffic AND improve their conversion rate, at the same time.

Sadly many of the ecommerce directors we talk to are hung up on just the traffic part of this equation.

Variation vs control on an a/b test

The fundamental objective of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is to maximise profitability by turning more visitors into buyers. But there are also bi-products of the CRO process which are extremely valuable to your business and your strategic planning.

So now you’re obsessed with CRO as well as traffic, aren’t you? No? Okay, well here are three more reasons you need to put conversion rate optimisation to work in your business.

#1: Better conversion rates make your business easier to scale

Unless you are in the delightful position of being in a market where the demand for the products you sell massively outweighs the supply, and there are few competitors, you will be investing significantly in acquiring traffic.

Even if you’re solely focusing on acquiring traffic from organic sources, there’s a time cost associated with creating content, building domain authority, publishing said content via social media, not to mention the cost of hosting and supporting the website.

So if it costs you £50 to get 100 people to your website, and on average two of those people will buy something generating a gross profit of £50, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you don’t have a scalable business.

Clearly this is an over simplification but you see the point. The higher your conversion rate, the less you have to spend on traffic, and the easier it is to scale your business.

#2: Good conversion research enables you to react to actual problems rather than gut feelings

Research shows online shopping is a love/hate relationship for users because the web still has a long way to go before an easy, pleasant ecommerce experience is the norm. The hard reality is people hate a lot of things about your site too. But, don’t worry because this affects the vast majority of ecommerce sites, including your competitors, and even some big names.

Here are a few of the reasons people abandon their purchase according to a survey by VWO in 2014:

Unexpected shipping costs (28%)
Had to create new user account (23%)
Was just conducting research (16%)
Payment security concerns (13%)
Confusing checkout (12%)
Couldn’t find coupon code for purchase (8%)

Conversion rate optimisation reasons for abandonment example

Create an account or login checkout example

So CRO gives you the opportunity to create a better shopping experience by pinpointing the specific things people dislike about your site. This means you’re improving your website using a data-driven approach rather than the gut instinct that can lead to a lot of wasted developer time.

#3: Shoppers will come back to a good customer experience

Let’s face it: the majority of visitors will not buy anything from your site on their first visit. In fact, according to Marketing Metrics, you have a 60-70% chance of selling to existing customers, rather than 2-20% with new prospects. This is why it’s fundamental to optimise your user experience in order to draw those potential customers back.

Moreover, it’s these returning customers and repeat buyers who account for 40% of your total ecommerce revenue even though they represent only 8% of all visitors. So it goes without saying you should invest the time to create a better shopping experience and keep your visitors coming back for more.

Take Amazon as an example. It has established itself as the name in online shopping and it’s largely down to creating a customer experience that has people coming back for more. This is achieved through a systematic approach to CRO by careful A/B and multivariate testing in order to create the ultimate ecommerce experience.

Conclusion

Conversion Rate Optimisation is a process that never ends, but it can quickly yield some amazing results, especially when you first start out. As you collect more data over the years and continue to improve your online business, you’ll have a far richer understanding of what your users need and expect from you, allowing you to make better decisions in the future.

And, in the meantime, by fixing the problems that stop people buying from you, you’ll be on a continuous course to a more profitable business.