Five steps to ensure your website performance keeps a keen edge
Picture the scene. After months of experimentation and significant investment of time and resources, you’ve finally struck Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) gold. Your strategy and framework have come together, driving a steady flow of traffic to your website and consistently converting visitors into paying customers.
Staying faithful to your proven formula is understandably tempting. But within the fast-moving ecommerce landscape, standing still is not an option. The question is: how do you know when you need to refocus and reinvest some time in optimisation?
Has your conversion rate fallen through the floor, despite steady traffic? Are your visitors faltering at the first hurdle, dwelling on the homepage without moving to the checkout? Do your A/B tests struggle to deliver meaningful results?
All of these are telltale signs that your current CRO strategy has lost its edge.
But if you need to sharpen up your CRO capabilities, there are a number of tried-and-tested approaches:
- Conduct a comprehensive CRO audit
- Identify and prioritise issues
- Align with the customer journey
- Implement data-driven testing
- Optimise for mobile users
Conduct a comprehensive CRO audit
It’s often said that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But how do you know if it’s broken without a thorough check?
A CRO audit tells you where there are issues on your website, the all-important first step to solving any conversion-related friction. Heatmap tools such as Hotjar and VWO can paint a picture of customers’ interactions, highlighting which areas are driving engagement and generating interest - and which are, to all intents and purposes, dead space.
Similarly, session recordings - which provide replays of a visitor’s clicks, mouse movements and scrolls - allow you to step into your users’ shoes and observe their navigation paths in real-time, which may deviate from your pre-designed pathways. These insights are crucial to identifying and resolving any roadblocks preventing visitors from completing the desired call-to-action (CTA), be it making a purchase or filling-out a contact form.
Google Analytics’ suite of tools provide another layer of understanding. This comprehensive data set, which ranges from traffic sources and bounce rates to general user behaviour and conversion funnels, provides a holistic view of your website performance and its CRO shortcomings.
Identify and prioritise issues
Investing in a CRO audit is pointless if you don’t take advantage of the findings. It’s not a one-and-done effort but a guide that can lead you to CRO salvation - provided you can tell the difference between minor inconveniences and critical issues that demand immediate attention.
Falling into the ‘urgent’ category are problems related to mobile optimisation (covered below), page load speed and user experience (UX) enhancements.
In an era where convenience is the ultimate differentiator, slow loading times can be the final nail in your website’s coffin. Analyse whether your pages are inundated with excessively large or unoptimised images. Check whether your server can handle the level of traffic. Be wary of third-party plug-ins, as these can be a major drain on resources.
From a UX perspective, don’t be afraid to keep things simple. Implementing new menus that lend themselves to seamless navigation, crafting easy-to-read copy with plenty of page breaks and making CTAs identifiable (potentially through bold colour schemes) can all make a positive impact.
Align with the customer journey
Every customer is unique. Or at least, that’s how they should be made to feel when interacting with your brand. More than four-in-five customers prefer businesses that deliver a personalised experience.
This starts by keeping your content tailored to each stage of the customer journey. The awareness stage should be populated by informative and engaging copy - perhaps conveyed by blogs - that speaks to customers’ pain points. During the consideration stage, look to peel back the curtain to help users make more informed decisions. Strategically deploying testimonials and detailed product information can help move the process along.
With the decision stage all about closing the deal, your CTA should be simple and easy to follow. Limited-time offers and exclusive discounts are excellent incentives to help the user transition from prospect to paying customer.
Implement data-driven testing
In the words of Mark Zuckerberg: “The biggest risk is not taking any risk.”
Experimentation is the most important tool in the CRO arsenal - it’s essential to validate your assumptions before making any changes and you need to be able to measure the impact of any website tweaks.
A/B testing is one of the most effective data-driven testing methodologies. Although more simple than multivariate testing, using different versions of your web pages enables you to compare integral elements, such as headlines, images and CTAs, and identify which are best at moving the conversion needle.
Multivariate testing allows you to go deeper still; these complex experiments uncover which factors work together to positively influence user behaviours. This could involve altering the copy, button colour and image placement on the homepage. Alternatively, you may optimise your contact form via changes to layout, labels and number of fields in order to bolster incoming queries.
Optimise for mobile users
Mobile is no longer taking a back seat when it comes to ecommerce and their role has evolved from that of a basic browsing tool. The UK’s mobile commerce market is forecast to be valued at £96bn by the end of 2024, almost double the market’s value in 2019.
Creating a mobile-friendly website is a must for any ecommerce business looking to improve customer satisfaction and capitalise on an ever-growing revenue driver. From optimising images and leveraging browser caching to reduce loading time, to maintaining a simple design with easy-to-tap links to aid navigation - there’s no shortage of ways to deliver a seamless mobile experience.
More information about the role that mobile plays in creating premium customer journeys - and how to tap-into its discovery capabilities - can be found in our recent blog, How can ecommerce brands deliver best-in-class mobile and desktop experiences?
Do you want to discuss your existing CRO strategy and the techniques that can help it get back on track? Reach out to us set up a call - we’d be happy to help.
