Conversion Rate Optimisation, or CRO, is the process of optimising your website to increase the number of sessions that have a conversion. A conversion occurs when a user responds to a particular call to action or event. This could be anything from purchasing a product, to creating an account, submitting a form, signing-up for emails and more.
At its most basic level, CRO is finding out why visitors aren't converting and solving the problem. By identifying the issue, breaking down barriers and simplifying the user journey, you will effectively be enhancing your website to improve your conversion rate.
You can calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions (whether that be transactions, button clicks, sign-ups or any tracked event) by the total number of sessions on your website and multiplying by 100.
For example, if in one day you had 1,200 visits to your website and 15 transactions, your conversion rate would be 1.25% ((15/1,200) * 100).
The truth is conversion rates vary from industry to industry. What may be considered a strong conversion rate for a business that sells office furniture may be below average for a fast-fashion brand. A typical conversion rate will sit between 1.5% and 4%. However, this number is influenced by a number of factors from how well your channels are performing, how new or well-known your brand is, whether or not your products are a more considered purchase or the current situation in a given state or country.
The Pattern Ecommerce Benchmark Report that was released earlier this year reported an average conversion rate of 2.18% for FY21. This conversion rate is based on data amalgamated from a number of ecommerce sites from varying industries across Australia. This result was +18% year on year, driven by the impacts of COVID-19 and lockdowns with customers shopping from home.
Part of a good CRO program includes benchmarking your own:
Other key metrics such as time-on-page may also need to be identified based on your CRO goals. Once you have benchmarked key metrics, you will now know which of these levers can be pulled to improve performance and aid in achieving revenue targets.
The short answer is yes, but how effective it will be is yet to be determined. The process of CRO involves identifying how users navigate your site, what actions they take and what is stopping them from converting. This process is time consuming and would benefit from a dedicated consulting resource to analyse, test, review and report on their findings.
Recruit some support from another department or a staff member unfamiliar with your website that can look at the user journey with a fresh set of eyes. Challenge them to find a certain product and make a purchase while screen recording their behaviour. Being familiar with the website experience can often camouflage issues that customers experience regularly.
Some conversion rate optimisation best practices you can initially consider are:
The above recommendations are by no means a comprehensive list and may or may not be relevant to your site but can quickly help you hypothesize what conversion blockers may exist on your website and help you to understand if you are capable of performing CRO yourself.
In its most basic form, a CRO program can be broken down into 3 steps.
Once you have established a baseline conversion rate and set achievable growth targets, it's time to start gathering your data.
Start by gathering quantitative and qualitative data to understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ to your CRO problem. Free tools such as Google Analytics allow you view the customers journey in a funnel and identify at what stage of the journey your users are dropping off. Paid software such as HotJar, WVO and Crazy Egg are cost effective and easy to implement, allowing you to view heatmaps of what your users are clicking on and viewing, watch recordings of your customers browsing and how they use your site, and also allow you to request feedback through pop-ups.
Use this data to develop a clear sense of what is happening on your site and what changes can be made to improve the Conversion Rate.
The most effective way to test changes on your website is through split testing or A/B/C testing. Split testing is comparing two versions of the same page against a control group to see which produces the strongest result. After a period of time you can take these learnings and implement them for all customers. Split testing requires a high volume of traffic to ensure you generate statistically significant results. Tools like Optimizely or Convert can be used to test different variations of your pages.
Some split tests that are often run on product pages include:
A CRO program should be considered as an always-on activity. It's an ongoing process to help you learn more about your users and improve your conversion rate. Set yourself a realistic goal and continue testing until you reach it, and then start again.
Try not to test pages that are dependent on the same results, for example testing an alternate location or colour of your ‘add to cart’ button at the same time, as you will be unsure which change is driving the result. Test one element at a time to help narrow down which aspect is improving or reducing the conversion rate.
There is only so much you can do to identify barriers and solutions in the customer journey without the aid of experts or technology. If you would like some help identifying opportunities to improve conversion rate or to determine whether a Conversion Rate Optimisation program is suitable for you, get in touch with our industry-leading consultants at Pattern now.
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A top issue we see with brands struggling on ecommerce marketplaces is a loss of brand control due to disjointed sellers—those that aren't following your brand policies and guidelines when selling your products online. Disjointed sellers can be gray market, unauthorized, and rogue sellers, as well as 3P and other sellers that are noncompliant with your branding, pricing, and other forms of representation online.
It can be very easy for brands to lose control of their ecommerce strategy when they can’t get a handle on disjointed sellers. Typically, these brands are either stuck in a game of whack-a-mole or just ignoring the warning signs of bigger issues and hoping for the best. But, when disjointed selling isn't handled right, the consequences can be devastating to profitability. A loss of brand control doesn’t happen overnight, and the factors that contribute to it are long-standing.
Before the advent of ecommerce, brands favored a wide distribution. It was the easiest way to get products to as many distributors as possible. But wide distribution, when left unchecked, leads to leaky distribution—allowing your excess products to end up in the hands of unwanted sellers.
So brands that continue to operate with a wide distribution strategy are losing brand control and are damaging their brand equity and product performance. Why? You’re unable to monitor your products’ pricing, performance, or quality. You can’t dictate how you’re represented by each seller, creating an inconsistent and false representation of your brand to your new and existing consumers. These issues often lead to poor reviews and erode opportunities to build trust with future customers.
In today’s ecommerce landscape, marketplaces and digital platforms connect people and sellers to make online shopping simple and seamless. They also provide customers complete price transparency. Google, for instance, allows consumers to access any of your products on virtually every ecommerce channel and retail location and posts them side-by-side for you to comparison shop.
Now, everyone from your D2C distributors to large marketplace sellers, legitimate 3P sellers, and rogue and unauthorized sellers are on a level playing field—they’re all presented to the searching consumer, and that consumer has the purchase power.
Disjointed sellers have just as much power and authority to represent your brand as you do, without the same quality, pricing strategy, and customer focus as you.
In most shopping scenarios, consumers will choose to purchase a product from whichever seller offers the lowest price. Marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart know this, and optimize their product selection based on all retail offers to serve consumers the lowest price for the same item.
This means that as one seller drops the price of your product, the next will follow, and then the next, etc. Everyone gains access to the product at or below MSRP. This opens the door for unauthorized sellers to purchase inventory during promotions or at discounted prices and then turn around and sell the same product slightly below competing sellers’ prices—for profit.
As customers search for your product, they notice the cheaper price and purchase from the unauthorized seller, rather than paying the price you’ve established with your retail teams. Simultaneously, as Amazon monitors their product listing against other available channels, they notice they don’t have the lowest price. So Amazon, and other marketplaces, in service of the consumer, drop their price to match the lower price offered by an unauthorized seller. To stay competitive, your other channels follow suit. The cycle, also know as the profitability death spiral, continues to drive down the price of your product, grinding away your margins and profitability.
This doesn’t sound like much of a problem if your brand isn’t actively selling on ecommerce marketplaces, right? Unfortunately, it causes big issues for your brick-and-mortar sales, too. Large retail chains like Best Buy and Macy’s noticed this potential loss of sales from ecommerce and needed to defend and protect their profit. Retailers started telling brands that, in order to keep their products in-store (which accounts for 80% of most brands’ sales) they would need to lower their prices to match online prices. Which led to the concept of price matching. If a customer could prove the price of a product was lower somewhere else, Best Buy would match the lower price and charge the brand for the difference.
As other brick-and-mortar retailers jumped on the trend, brands started to see large losses in their margins.
The danger that disjointed sellers pose to brands is enormous—without a way to control all of a brand’s distribution points on ecommerce, your brand spins farther and farther down the profitability death spiral. Using custom technology and data-driven insights, Pattern can identify disjointed and unauthorized sellers for your brand and develop a custom strategy tailored to your specific needs to address these big issues as soon as possible. Then, Pattern partners with the econtrol law firm, VORYs, to enforce take downs and save brands who find themselves caught on any stage of the death spiral.
With the right resources and expert help, we’ve helped hundreds of brands to regain their footing and control on ecommerce, win the buy box, and grow their sales.
Contact us today to regain your brand control.
Since most brands only sell about 20% of their products online, it’s common for executives to turn a blind eye to their poor ecommerce performance—issues there are probably a small problem, right? But if you can pinpoint the lackluster ecommerce profitability to poorly-performing listings, then you can take care of issues now that would snowball to greater losses as your brand grows.
As an expert in ecommerce and the world’s foremost ecommerce accelerator, Pattern has unparalleled expertise in managing brands across global marketplaces. Partnering with Pattern gives you access to data, technology, and top teams across multiple disciplines that help you prioritize great product listings in your overall ecommerce strategy and provides the resources to improve underperforming listings.
We've highlighted three ways poor listings impact your Amazon marketplace performance.
If your listings aren’t optimized for SEO and strategic ad placement, they will not be found by customers. And if your products aren’t found, your traffic, conversions, and overall profitability drop significantly. Pattern’s Amazon data and trends suggest that only the top four products listed in an Amazon search result drive more engagement with a brand's listing. So, optimizing your products for organic discoverability needs to be a priority for your ecommerce efforts.
Typically brands find it tempting to underestimate the power of SEO and paid ads, but the stakes are too high to ignore their impact for long. To put it into perspective, Amazon’s ads are clicked 42% more often than Google ads. And, the data shows when people search for products, 74% of them search Amazon first.
Another reason Amazon search is so valuable is because of where your consumers are in their buying journey. Ads on social media and Google can be valuable, but on Amazon, you have the advantage of knowing your audience’s search intent. Appearing in front of consumers wanting and ready to buy a product that aligns with their search query is a huge opportunity that you can’t miss.
So, you need to be putting the right resources into creating and testing your listing titles, product descriptions, search filters, and backend search terms. (We’ve listed some of the best practices for brands here.) As you find what works, Amazon’s algorithm will be able to better identify your products and serve them in front of consumers ready to buy.
Pattern’s expert SEO teams know the best practices and how to optimize your product listings for the right audiences to improve your rankings for better traffic and conversion wherever you sell your products online.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of brand affinity on ecommerce marketplaces. One of the key reasons you should be establishing a strong brand presence is to build a consumer base of loyal, repeat customers.
Repeat purchases from repeat customers are a true sign of a healthy, thriving brand. And when you can establish a great relationship and deep trust with the people you’re selling to, you’ll naturally build positive momentum with their reviews and word of mouth endorsements. In short, it’s easier to reduce buying friction, the cost of conversion, and the cost of acquisition with people who already have an enthusiastic opinion of your products, leading to more conversions and overall success for your brand.
Clearly, it’s valuable to find your brand advocates, but how do your listings help you do that? The first is by claiming the buy box.
Many brands struggle with disjointed sellers—3P sellers who have acquired your products, (for example—after buying them on deep discount) and now “pose” as your brand to sell those products to consumers. They often sell your products below their MAP price in order to claim the buy box, attracting more traffic and conversions.
As those customers are drawn to those listings instead of yours, they experience a disconnect in what they normally associate with your brand—often, the copy, media, and even the grammar are ignored for profitability for unauthorized sellers. They often focus on keyword stuffing and quick turnaround to capture traffic and end up poorly representing your brand.
Issues like losing the buy box can hurt your brand long-term, especially if 3P sellers are selling returned, damaged, or fake products in your name. When you have a true understanding of how to optimize your product listings to outperform your competition, you can win the buy box and reclaim your brand presence for your repeat and future customers to ensure better long-term success.
Pattern knows the dangers of disjointed sellers leading to poor brand representation. We have both legal partnerships and listing optimization strategies at our disposal that are proven to help you get ahead of disingenuous sellers and reclaim your brand’s presence wherever you sell online.
In order to achieve long-term profitability and growth on ecommerce marketplaces, it’s important to keep your conversion rates as high as possible. Pattern’s experts have found that a low conversion rate signals to Amazon your products aren’t worth showing to customers, significantly lowering your sales potential. But a great conversion rate helps improve your organic rankings and raises your ROI for paid ads—making it easier and less expensive to sell your products in the long run.
So, how do listings affect your conversion rates? Consumers searching for products on Amazon are more likely to purchase from a brand they trust. And without being able to physically sample your product, they have a short window with limited information to decide whether or not they’ll purchase from you.
We know from extensive data analysis and research there are a few key components of your listing that help in building trust with your consumers. One of those components is the quality of your images.
If your images are blurry or you only post 1 or 2, customers will have a hard time understanding what your product is and its potential value to them. So, they’ll keep searching instead of purchasing your product. Things like the images’ lighting, background, the quality of your equipment, and your editing process shouldn’t be left up to chance.
Partnering with an ecommerce product photography expert is a way to make sure you get the best photography for your products, and your images are optimized for both your brand and your marketplace.
When it comes to optimizing your ecommerce strategy, Pattern has all of the resources you need to achieve long-term profitability. Not only do we have the data and technology to analyze a brand's current performance and opportunity on marketplaces, Pattern has all of the necessary teams to optimize your success from end to end. As the world’s top ecommerce accelerator, Pattern knows the key drivers for boosting listings, conversions, and profitability for brands.
Ready to improve your product listings? Contact us.