Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of Conversion Rate Optimization
By: Amelia Castellanos
Tags: Ecommerce, Conversion Optimization, Digital Strategy, User Experience Design, Web Design

You’ve heard it a hundred times — the digital marketplace is more competitive now than ever. Whether you’re a marketer, a business owner, or a CEO, we’re all reading articles, attending seminars, registering for workshops endlessly searching for answers to the same question — How do I increase my site’s conversion?

The truth is, as of June 18th, 2021 there were over 1.86 Billion websites across the globe. Here in the US, there are over 56 billion web pages indexed through Google and roughly 200 million active websites (Techjury.net). Now isolate just the online retailers and you have just under 8 Million worldwide with 2.1 million being operated within the US. So yeah, BIG competition.

Standing out in a crowded sea of competitors is hard enough but when you are investing substantial marketing dollars into building brand awareness and driving qualified leads to your site you need your site to convert to yield a return on your investment and if it isn’t, you need to figure out why and fast.

This is where my favorite acronym of all time comes into play — CRO.

The biggest mistake in CRO is action without a strategy. Successful digital strategy starts with data analysis. Even with free analytics tools, like Google Analytics, one can evaluate their conversion rate. But what is conversion rate exactly? And how do you know if your conversion is good or bad?

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

CRO is the practice of getting the maximum percentage of your site visitors to perform a specific action. In eCommerce, the main conversion goals we optimize for are — capturing email leads and ultimately transactions. Digital Marketing and Advertising activations bring the visitors to your online store but CRO is the path you design to guide those users through your sales funnel.

What are the benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization?

Deploying CRO tactics across your online store allows your team to monitor your site visitor’s behaviors, patterns and needs. Just as A/B testing your ad creative can identify trends in a content strategy that has a higher likelihood of strong engagement, CRO strategy helps you better understand how those visitors navigate your site.

This deep dive into your site visitor’s behavior will 1. allow you to identify roadblocks and 2. Give you the tool kit you need to layer on solutions to these roadblocks such as optimizing your product pages or, merchandising your landing pages — as these are the first steps to implementing on-site strategy in an effort to maximize the ROI of your marketing and advertising efforts that are driving your site traffic.

What is a good conversion rate?

Conversion rates vary pretty dramatically depending on your industry. At the GM Agency, the majority of our eCommerce clients fall under the Apparel & Accessories category. Q4 2020 data found that the average conversion rate for eCommerce shoppers in the US is 1.57% (on mobile devices), slightly lower than the global average of 1.80% percent. But how does this break down across industries?

As of April 2021, the arts and crafts industry has the highest eCommerce conversion rates of 3.21%. Next was pet care at 3.01% and after that, health and wellness came in at 2.92%.

After these three top categories, conversion rates were found as follows:

Kitchen and home appliances: 2.82% Fashion clothing and accessories: 2.19% Electrical and commercial equipment: 1.82% Food and drink: 1.76% Sports and recreation: 1.76%

Stats provided by OBERLO

When it comes to our brands at the GM Agency we set our benchmarks at a minimum of 3% conversion rate for the entire store — this is based on how much marketing dollars are being spent. We work with our brands to invest anywhere from 2% on the low end up to 6% on the high-end of their Gross Sales volume back into their marketing efforts.

It is important to note here that in order to be successful these marketing dollars need to be allocated between customer acquisition, i.e. generating new customer leads as well as customer retention, i.e. converting new customers into brand loyalists.

For us, an online store with less than 3% conversion has room for improvement and this is where our conversation rate optimization plan begins.