Conversion rates affect your cost per acquisition
While analysing a client’s Google Analytics data, we noticed the conversion rate for one acquisition channel had been decreasing very slightly each month.
This began a conversation not only about that specific channel, but about conversion rates as a whole.
Decreased conversion rate impacts your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), which you use to determine if your marketing spend is providing a suitable ROI.
The source of the acquisition channel limited the ways we could increase this value at either campaign or channel level, however we needed to improve the CPA. Conversion rates weren’t something this client had paid much attention to before, having always had a favourable rate.
The nightmare of conversion rate problems at the busiest time of year
When experiencing a drop in conversion rates, it seems that to counteract this issue, you should increase marketing budgets and buy more orders. However, this increases the CPA and affects overall profitability of every order. Growth through this increased marketing spend isn’t effective or sustainable.
In this client’s case, we had to look at changes that could be made on the site. After all, any change that increases conversion rate is always welcome, even if the site already converts well.
With the pressure of seasonality in the approach to Christmas, we quickly decided to conduct a CRO Website Audit of the site and produced a report on ways to increase the conversion rate.
3-steps to increased conversion rates
We implemented a simple 3-step method, based on a structure that Robert has developed over more than ten years working with conversion rate optimisation.
1 - Identify problem areas
The initial step needs to reveal any challenges users are encountering that prevent a sale. To do this, we needed to analyse user behaviour throughout the site.
Fortunately, Google Analytics was already installed, so we implemented funnels to highlight which pages were causing users to exit the site.
Additionally, we installed Hotjar. Hotjar provided insight into how users behaved on specific pages through visual heatmaps. This revealed which individual elements were catching users’ attention, and which important parts they may have been missing altogether.
Both sources of data combined with our knowledge of the user journey and user psychology provided a comprehensive understanding of how the user journey could be improved. We produced a report for the client including detailed suggestions for ways to improve performance.
2 - make a plan
With more than 50 items of suggested improvements from the report, we faced a new problem – where do we start?
When producing reports, we assess each suggestion on its own merit and potential impact. We needed to consider the potential value a change would provide, the confidence we had in it, as well as the ease with which this could be rolled out.
Using this process, we organised the steps into a hierarchy of actions. This prioritised list forms a roadmap for the site’s improvement.
On this occasion, we approached the roadmap in a slightly different way. Diverting from the typical rule book which requires testing everything for potential improvement, we decided to chase a couple of obvious quick wins directly on the live site. Being able to make changes on a shorter timescale made a significant impact on the client’s site performance in the crucial pre-Christmas season.
It’s fair to say, there were moments we questioned “What if it doesn’t work and we make a live site perform worse?”.
To be safe, we built in a safety net to ensure no permanent changes were rolled out that would create a negative effect.
3 - implement change
Sometimes you just need quick results
We are very structured in our approach to CRO, advocates for thorough split-testing and vocal about the necessity of making very informed decisions. However, with such a busy season for the client approaching, this process had to be sped up to achieve their desired returns.
Throwing the rule book out the window enabled us to get results very quickly while maintaining a safety net that would enable us to act quickly if any of the changes caused an unexpected downturn.
Impressive results are made even better through the compound effect
We were able to show a 45% uplift in conversions in just 2 weeks!
Because it is sensitive data, we can’t discuss the monetary value involved, but we can guarantee that the impact was seriously impressive.
Improved conversion rates often have a knock-on effect. When your conversion rate goes up, marketing campaigns work better, and CPA’s drop substantially.
This means you can afford to invest in more traffic, which also converts at the new conversion rate. This is what we call the compound effect, and it results in a serious increase in sales!
What would a 45% uplift in conversions do for your business?
If you want to reveal your website’s true potential, get in touch.