This is from the AdNews December issue. To get it hot off the press download a digital version of AdNews or subscribe to the premium print edition here.
Growing an online e-commerce business is something many brands and marketers are navigating carefully as competition is rife and multiple tools are required to implement, monitor and optimise costly multichannel marketing campaigns. With all of this happening at once, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is often overlooked as brand owners regularly just accept low conversion rates as standard. However, this shouldn’t be the case and those at the forefront of adoption of CRO are the ones getting the competitive edge.
Together with Ashley Wales-Brown, the Sydney-based ANZ MD of global CRO and tech firm Ve Interactive, we bring you the top 10 CRO upgrades you can implement today.
1. Know what you are trying to accomplish
CRO means maximising revenue from your website traffic. You need to be able to set measurable KPIs and implement a solution which adapts in real-time, based on the behaviour of each unique customer.
2. Test and learn
First off, ensure you have clear goals set up to measure the different stages of the customer journey. Do you have the resource to change your website structure regularly to improve results, or if not, do you have the right partner in place to optimise your conversion rate on your behalf?
3.Get the ball rolling
To kickstart your CRO strategy you can use a combination of changes to your website from content, structure and layout as well as third-party plugins and email.
4. Is it crucial to an overall digital marketing strategy?
Yes. When marketing teams spend so much time, effort and money growing the brand, finding and engaging new customers and bringing them to the site, it is essential that the maximum number of customers complete their purchase.
5. Common CRO techniques
Aside from actual website changes as mentioned above, specifically relating to plugins, most effective techniques include:
- Offers: showing a relevant offer to a customer to get them to buy now or increase their spend.
- Increasing urgency: featuring exclusive, sought after and short supply products or services.
- Email or display remarketing/retargeting: customers can easily come back to the site when they’ve had to abandon a purchase.
- Save and send basket: enabling customers to finalise a purchase on any device.
- Exit intent: advanced technology to anticipate a visitor leaving your site enables targeted messaging to keep customers engaged.
- Relevant content and products: browsing and comparing products gives customers options.
- Reducing clicks to purchase.
6. Easy CRO wins for the taking
Finding an off the shelf solution which helps to address multiple CRO challenges keeps setup time to a minimum and means you can get straight into the optimisation phase.
7. Beware of the trap door
Not considering the full path to purchase is a CRO pitfall. It’s easy to get fixated on one element and neglect the rest, but each stage of the journey has to be tracked and optimised to ensure best results.
8. Busting CRO myths
Despite some myths, CRO is not only about offers, it goes far deeper than that and there’s a huge amount of artificial intelligence and strategy behind each CRO move.
9. Damned if you don’t, but do it right
Some CRO tactics can harm your business if not done correctly. That’s why you need to have a clear vision and goal as to what you are trying to achieve.
10. The future
Despite Ve Interactive having data from over 10,000 clients’ websites to optimise its tools, machine learning is still being invested in heavily to bring the maximum benefit from this data to all customers. In a nutshell, it’s the investments that CRO firms are making alongside their clients that are setting them up for future success and growth.It’s a fast-spinning digital marketing world. in the blink of an eye tech is outpacing brands, but there are key ways to stay ahead.
Keen to know more? Check out Ve's website or drop them a line. Also check out "Aggressive' market push planned by new Ve Interactive MD".
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