Any business wants to remove obstacles that stand between customers and their goals on a website – whether that is completing a form, signing up for an event, or making a purchase.
However, improving the rate at which customers take these actions, better known as conversions, can be challenging. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) involves taking a strategic look at these obstacles and using data, hypothesis and continual testing to tackle them.
Get it right and you’ll be rewarded not only with a greater proportion of customers who complete the desired action but with a vastly improved experience and journey for the customer.
In this article, I’ll explore how established brands like Oh Polly, Boots, and B&Q are applying CRO tactics and what marketers can learn from their example, along with guidance from CRO experts who gave their insights for Econsultancy’s new Conversion Rate Optimisation Guide. Dive into the guide or read on to find out how these CRO tactics can benefit your brand outcomes.
With May, June and July considered the most lucrative months for the DIY market, there are some great examples of companies in this sector setting out compelling reasons for consumers to choose them with their Online Value Propositions (OVPs).
B&Q showcases four key OVPs on its homepage: free click and collect in as little as 15 minutes; free delivery on thousands of products; a 90-day returns policy (a lengthier than normal return period) and the opportunity for customers to save up to £100 a year by joining the B&Q Club.
An OVP plays a critical role in driving conversions in that it highlights the unique benefits of a product or service. It should also provide clear competitive points of differentiation between your brand and your competitors. To maximise its value, an OVP should be displayed prominently on the homepage and on relevant pages throughout the on-site customer journey.
B&Q repeat their OVPs on all product pages, although some caveats do apply, for example with free delivery, which chiefly applies to orders over £75 (with higher thresholds for larger items or bulk deliveries), although delivery is also free for items sold by B&Q’s third-party verified sellers.
While B&Q does specify that free delivery applies to “Selected products/locations”, there is a risk that customers enticed by this OVP may feel misled when they realise that they need to meet other conditions. For brands dealing with a similar pain point, conversion data can provide an insight into what proportion of customers abandon their baskets under the set threshold; if it is too high, an adjustment could be beneficial.
It is well-recognised that as people, we are more likely to do something if we see others doing it. This behavioural bias is known as social proof and should be considered a key tool in marketers’ persuasion toolkit.
Brands can add social proof to their site in the form of customer testimonials and reviews or by sharing how many customers have brought a product already.
Colin Tate, Senior Manager – Data & CRO Insights at Lebara shared how this worked for a client who specialised in housing accessories. The client, a national company that was a household name, was facing a stumbling block in its lead generation process.
“The biggest stumbling point was the final form fill that would connect them to a sales lead. Looking at all the standard form optimisations that had been made, the uplift had been marginal,” Tate said.
“When we added a banner of people in silhouette raising their arms in celebration and the phrase “Over 250,000 people can’t be wrong”, their leads rose by over 30% overnight.”
According to Tate, “If lots of people have engaged with a website and they are happy with the product/experience, that peer-to-peer communication is vital as the user is no longer being engaged by the website asking them to do something, but with people who have done it and can tell them it was good.”
AI can play a key role in supporting the CRO process to deliver a more personalised experience to the user, for example by surfacing products that will meet their goals more readily.
UK-based online fashion brand Oh Polly, known for its dresses and occasion wear, uses AI-powered personalisation to determine the products that are shown on category pages. Using product attributes and performance metrics, they then tailor this approach to different customer segments and individuals based on their preferences.
With dresses coming in different shapes, sizes and forms, people will have their own preferences that inform what they are interested in buying. To support this, Oh Polly adopted a “two-pronged approach” to serving people what they might want to see on their website, segmenting by product affinity and price sensitivity. As product owner Lauren Muir told Econsultancy,
“In terms of product, someone who likes long-sleeve maxi dresses is not going to want to see a strapless mini dress on their homepage and at the top of their categories. …Our chance of making them convert is so much higher if we just show them what they want, or what we think that they want.”
Oh Polly also adopted a cautious approach to making changes across their ecommerce site, with as much A/B testing as possible. When rolled out to all categories, they saw their clicks increase by 270%, with conversion rate increasing by 80%.
Another good example of a website using AI to support driving conversions is Boots.com. Logging onto the Boots website, users have an option to select ‘My Boots’ to access their own personalised shopping space with relevant products and offers. Boots also offers an AI assistant, which in addition to helping customers track their orders and get further information on how to use their products can provide product recommendations to satisfy more granular queries and use cases.
To test this, I asked the AI assistant, ‘I am having problems sleeping; what product would work best?’ While emphasising that it cannot issue medical advice, the assistant produced a range of results that included calming teas and a pillow mist to potentially alleviate the problem.
Another request for lip protectors to help prevent cracking returned a number of products that offer long-lasting moisture and sun protection – something that would be more challenging for shoppers to narrow down on their own using online navigation. Using the AI chat interface, I could then to click through to a product page or add products directly to my cart.
The right applications of AI can help meet customers’ expectations for a personalised online experience, but it’s crucial for brands to also get the basics right with simple navigation and clear calls to action so that the rest of the journey can be completed with minimal friction.
CRO needs to start with the customer. There is a close correlation between the quality of the customer experience and business outcomes, as illustrated by findings from Econsultancy’s Future of Marketing Report.
The report revealed that key to creating a great customer experience is empathy for the customer and a deep understanding of their needs, cited as the top response by 86% of respondents. It also showed that those organisations who outperformed the market were more like to have higher levels of maturity across core CX areas such as customer journey orchestration and omnichannel personalisation.
Companies that will win are those that get the business fundamentals right
As Luka Nikolić, CRO Specialist at ConversionWise, explained, this means taking a holistic approach.
“Companies that will win are those that get the business fundamentals right, especially in ecommerce,” he stated, adding that a good user experience should speak to “the customer’s motivations and anxieties”, as well as offering “a streamlined cart and checkout flow, and a nice post-purchase experience to ensure they come back for repeat purchases.”
In conclusion, a good conversion optimisation programme requires a structured long-term approach which takes the following into consideration when developing a CRO strategy:
Gather quantitative and qualitative insights to understand what is preventing customers from achieving their goals and where opportunities exist for optimisation.
Identify use cases for optimisation and generate hypotheses around what to test.
Some practical examples include:
CRO is an ongoing process and should be supported with a culture of testing and experimentation, reviewing performance, and making iterations and retesting.
Econsultancy’s Guide to Conversion Optimisation provides guidance and actionable tips for analysing performance and optimising customer experience and conversions.