Conversion Rate Optimisation did not do this

I’ve been doing the rounds amongst retailers this week and I was being asked a common question from many of them: “Do you do CRO?” Well, no. And kind of yes as well. You can improve your Ecommerce Conversion Rate by simply pulling one of the levers at your disposal. We have other ways.

What I learned

• CRO is a major focus for retailers
• It’s easy to adjust with traffic changes
• Why paid has a better ECR
• What’s stopping your visitors from purchasing?
• How SEO affects paid

Transcript

Hey, welcome back Rankers. New look because the image wouldn`t work that I normally use. So I`ll be just backlit today. I`m doing the show on the Sunday today. Busy. Cup week this week in Melbourne. I hope you go well on the ponies if you`re into that sort of thing. And if you hate them, I hope your protest goes well.

Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about Conversion Rate Optimisation, because I was asked about it during the week. So I`ve been talking to a lot of retailers, trying to get feedback on the new model. I`m just going out and just speaking to retailers about their business, what their main concerns are, where the problems are with online, all those sorts of things. And one guy said to me, `Oh, so you do CRO?` I said, `Well no.` He said, `Well sounds like it.` I said, `Well…`

People when they say CRO, Conversion Rate Optimisation, not to be confused with a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, what they`re talking about, usually, is trying to get a higher e-commerce conversion rate. I mean we all do, right? The problem with that is, is that all you really have to do is drop your traffic. Your conversion rate goes through the roof. Right? Because quite often, when you get a good traffic increase, conversion rate can start to go down as well. Makes sense, right? User experience, right? Because the conversion rate stuff is… Well here`s one, I`ll show you this one.

This is an ECR that we did for a client just recently. So you can look at the ECR there and you say, `Wow, 212% that`s awesome.` Now this is a paid campaign, right? Now, quite often when you compare your paid to your organic, your paid is going to have a higher e-commerce conversion rate typically. We find that a lot, and the reason for that is very simple. It`s that with a lot of retailers, they`re using AI campaigns or they`re taking people directly to the product, so that the user gets to find things quicker when they`ve clicked on an ad than what they would in an organic result. Makes sense.

So when I look at this, you can say, `Well, you`ve only had 23% more clicks, but you`ve got 417% more revenue. And the cost is only 2% more.” So for an extra 2% cost, or for an extra $493 I think that is, it made an extra $21,000.

Now, you might say, `That`s pretty good.` The client did. But that had nothing to do with us focusing on the e-commerce conversion rate. That came about from us focusing on the things that were stopping users from buying on the site. Fixing those things that were roadblocks. And also obviously doing a review of the Google ads and seeing where they were wasting money. Removing nonperforming campaigns, starting new ones, switching on AI. All that sort of stuff.

Plus then we also did a couple of SEO tasks on this site, like we`re doing for everyone now, and we know that those SEO tasks actually affect paid. So if your agency, you`re like one of these clients who likes to split your SEO and your paid, you know, keep everyone separate. That`s not great for the SEO guys. Because they`re doing a lot of work that`s making the paid guys look great, and similarly the paid guys are doing a lot of work that makes them look great but makes the SEO guy look bad. Because as soon as you switch on a brand campaign, then all your organic traffic drops, as we`ve seen before, as I`ve demonstrated on this show.

So you can have them in separate agencies, but make sure you have them talking together. So you know as a business owner where the best revenue`s coming from. Otherwise, if you`re looking at it in these little silos of, `I need some CRO, I need SEO, I need…` It doesn`t work as well. That`s what we`ve found.

Hopefully that`s helpful. We`ll see you next week. Thanks very much. Bye.

Jim

Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.