Understanding CRO for eCommerce

Understanding CRO for eCommerce

Did you know the biggest mistake majority of eCommerce marketers do is to contradict the difference between incoming traffic and comparison traffic? Most website owners think that the be-all and and-all of website success lies with the traffic that they get. But it is not that simple. It is not only how much traffic you get, but what kind of traffic you get that will dictate a website’s success.

Bradley Long of Conversion Rate Academy has stated in a webinar with Convert, how this applies to most websites. In the webinar, Long stated how more and more people concentrate on SEO and forget the rest of their marketing. As such, this trend causes many websites to lack the potential to maximizing their profits. Well, SEO will increase visibility and accuracy, but it will not do much for the value of your cash.

Understanding CRO for eCommerce

Long presented James and Johnson as examples. James and Johnson, who are partners, came into a conclusion that they needed to expand their business. They tried everything in their book but it did not do much. Actually, they ended up using a lot of cash doing this. It came to a point where they needed to think out of the box and come up with a great idea that will drastically improve their business and distinguishing the wall with their marketing budget.

CRO for eCommerce

After going through CRO information at Conversion Rate Academy, they came to understand that many eCommerce marketers think having traffic will increase sales. This is a big misconception that does not really work. The truth of the matter is that you need both SEO and CRO. However, when you are doing this, you should focus on CRO. All in all, at the end, James and Johnson grew their business into a big store with the help of CRO being applied to their marketing. In the process of CRO, they ran some tests to make the most of their campaign.

“The technical term for this test in regards of CRO is known as A/B or Split Testing” – Qualaroo

The Basics of CRO

Below is the first big takeaway for a CRO mindset shift, which will really make a big difference for your website. Therefore, in order for you to fix your website, which may be losing money, you have to find out firsthand what is broken from your visitor’s point of view. In other words, you have to find a way to ask your clients or customers what they like and what they did not like about your services or products. Do not make this test straightforward. But rather try and make it interesting. Remember, you are trying to make each and every customer give you their honest answer. Well, how do you do this?

  1. Make it short
  2. Improve on what your customers would want
  3. Compare the 2 or more results with the aim of improving your services
  4. Ask your customers questions such as:
    • How they came to know about your store
    • What services made them come back or they loved
    • What are the services they did not like or love

The information which you will get will be priceless. You will never get them anywhere apart from your customers. It is also one of the best ways that you can learn about your target market, and about casual visitors of your website. This way, you can make your marketing campaigns to either cater to your target audience, or to casual traffic for conversion.

[Tweet “With a good split test and trust pilot review, your profits will increase in a matter of time”]

If you don’t know what trust pilot is, it can be defined as a third party review platform, or an independent review platform. According to statistics, your profits will increase revenue up to 26% and conversion rate up to 17.35%. The information has been provided in detail in the webinar, which you can view in full here.

Originally published February 05, 2015 - Updated April 15, 2019
Dennis van der Heijden
Co-founder and CEO of Convert.com, Dennis is a passionate community builder and out of the box thinker. He spends his time innovating to make Convert Experiences better. Learn about his journey as an entrepreneur and leader on the SaaS Club podcast.
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