Some of the best CRO wins weren’t actually CRO at all

When it comes to eCommerce, your CRO efforts can’t just be restricted to A/B testing. Some of the biggest and best CRO wins I’ve ever placed were addressing out of sight bugs that were costing businesses sales or addressing copy to better encourage customers to buy.

My point here is, good CRO goes far beyond working out which version of a page converts the best.

It’s proactively working to deliver the best customer experiences from end to end. Making your website as easy as possible for customers to use and sprinkling in complimentary convenience factors along the way.

Using data to feed decisions

When it comes to CRO, changes and refinements must be data-led to maximise returns and pin-point problem areas to uplift.

Typically onsite changes are often based on ‘gut feel’ or external factors such as competitor sites etc.

By leveraging key data points, we can work together to ensure we refine and optimise areas that are most likely to drive positive results.

Sometimes the best wins are hidden in plain sight

I was brought into Paperchase to help the digital team identify reasons for sales erosion and the ongoing fall in conversion.

All of the usual suspects were reviewed including page templates, checkout design, mobile usability etc but I was the first (and only) person to suggest auditing onsite search for conversion issues.

Low and behold, after identifying some root causes and addressing them, I helped Paperchase achieve a 40% growth in sales just from their site search alone.

In summary, and the point I’m making here is that their site search was visible on every page of the website yet no one thought to dive deeper into its experience.