Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an essential element for any Shopify business that wants a strong and successful conversion strategy.
What most businesses fail to account for is that an effective digital marketing strategy shouldn’t finish with SEO.
The elite eCommerce companies know the secret ingredient that is CRO. Businesses that overlook this opportunity risk missing out on significant business growth.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the key steps to implementing CRO on your websites to achieve excellent results.
If you’re here to generate faster results, increase your conversion rate, and grow your business… then let’s go!
What is CRO?
A business’s conversion rate is the number of visitors to their website and complete a desired action on the site.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of analyzing and optimizing how visitors interact with your website to determine how to increase the completion rate of desired actions you want users to take.
e.g. A desired action may be completing a web form, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase.
A higher conversion rate means that your website is well-designed, working efficiently, and it appeals to your target audience.
It is done by strategically improving various aspects of your website, including the website’s overall design and the content within it.
The end goal of CRO is to increase value from leads turning them into conversions, grow your business, and overall increase your revenues.
5 Amazing Ways to Improve your CRO for Shopify
#1 – Conduct a CRO Audit
First things first, we need to have a look at the starting point. It’s a good idea to look at where your CRO is at right now so you know where to start improving. Maybe you’ve never had a CRO strategy, that’s completely fine, but now is the time to build one.
I suggest taking a deep dive into your Google Analytics.
GA is full of useful information about your website visitors. It categorizes the visitors into different segments so that you can examine any page on your website and identify the conversion rates.
By doing this you could identify an opportunity to strengthen your conversion rate or an area (i.e. mobile) where conversions are low.
Expert Tip: You should only have one single call-to-action (CTA) being mindful to know exactly who your customer is and what they want.
#2 – Explore your User Journey
I’m sure you’ve heard of the conversion funnel.
It is the various processes a visitor undertakes from the initial visit to your website until they complete the action you want them to. There are many different avenues that your visitors can go through from the initial landing page to the page where they’re finally converted.
The goal of the conversion funnel is to efficiently move visitors through your website in an optimized and structured manner.
Why is it called a funnel? Well because at the top of the funnel there are the largest amount of visitors. As visitors drop off, the funnel narrows until the endpoint. To get more visitors down the funnel you have to really understand their journey and the path they take. Knowing the specific problems that a group of visitors is facing also you to display how your products can help them. If you are unable to provide customers with what they want, then you don’t get to convert them.
Your user journey is the most important aspect of your conversion funnel, and can always be improved. Having a predetermined path for your visitors that leads to one action only should help achieve higher conversions!
Expert Tip: Understanding your market is so important! For example, busy pop-up pages thrive in Japanese markets but vastly underperform in US markets.
#3 – Take Advantage of Optimization Technology
Technology is there to help, so let it.
Now that you’ve assessed your conversion funnel for each goal on your website it’s time to get smart. Using optimization technology will enable you to identify the problem areas faster, and solve the issues more efficiently.
There are endless amounts of data points companies can analyze when executing CRO strategies. In our recent Optily Radio Podcast – CRO Toolkit: Maximizing cart value & minimizing abandonment with Navah Hopkins, Navah identifies issues with accessibility, “rage-click” moments, and general navigation confusion as useful data points signaling pain points for customers.
With optimization technology, you can look for barriers to completion, misplaced calls to action, or other bottlenecks.
Take a look at your Google Analytics account. What percentage of visitors are converting? What percentage of visitors use mobile devices?
CRO strategy should follow a scientific process, backed by data and lead by tech. If you want to increase conversions, use smarter technology that takes into consideration your customer’s situation.
Expert Tip: Software such as LogRocket, InVision, Fullstory, or Justuno can be utilized for UX, DX, and front-end monitoring to bring your tech game to the next level!
#4 – Incorporate Live Chat
If there’s one thing customers always want, it’s fast service.
See the Optibot in the bottom right corner of your screen? Give him a wave 
That’s our way of being there for you as soon as you need us. Using live chat software allows you to actively engage with your website visitors in real-time. When visitors run into a problem, instead of leaving you can offer instant support and guidance as needed.
Add these messaging features to your high-performing web pages to increase conversions. By being present on product pages, potential leads can get the information they want in real-time eliminating any delays.
You should also make the chatbot actionable. This can be done by incorporating a live chat feature to support the bot, as customers don’t really like automated replies to important issues.
#5 – Test, Test, and Test Again
Now that you’ve built a CRO strategy, identified potential issues, and decided on your targets it’s time to test.
You should always be running A/B tests to constantly learn how to improve conversion rates. A/B testing has been proven time and time again to increase the traffic you get to your website and significantly boost conversion rates.
Your landing page is the first impression customers will get of your business, you want it to be perfect. A/B tests are what powers a landing page to drive customers down the funnel to conversion.
Most landing pages fail at converting because businesses build them based on assumptions of what they think customers want. By changing simple things, such as the color of your CTA or images, you can identify what resonates better for your target audience.
Conclusion
With these 5 easy steps you should be prepared to reap the benefits of a strong, long-term CRO strategy.
CRO as a concept is easy to understand, however, it requires some hard work to achieve your conversion goals. Companies, such as Optily, offer cutting-edge ad optimization to bring the customer to your site, after that you must ensure your CRO strategy is ready to maximize conversions.
If you are intimidated, don’t worry. Utilize these tips to come up with a strategy and just start testing it out.
You might be surprised to know that the global conversion rate is just:
- 1.82% on mobile
- 3.90% on desktop
Not that daunting after all, and by following this guide you could be well on your way to being one of the first businesses to smash them numbers out of the park!
