by Tom Shackleton

Conversion rate optimisation can be a transformative tool for growing eCommerce stores - making your store more efficient, driving additional revenue and cutting wastage. But when is the correct time to invest in CRO?

Conversion rate optimisation can be a transformative tool for growing eCommerce stores - making your store more efficient, driving additional revenue and cutting wastage. But when is the correct time to invest in CRO?

It can be difficult to know just when to start investing in CRO. After all, any marketing activity requires careful planning, thorough data collection and objective analysis to succeed.

Here’s how to know when your eCommerce business should invest in CRO...

1. When Your Sales Growth Hits a Plateau

You always want to see an upward trend in sales, so it can be disconcerting when your store’s revenue seems to hit a plateau. This can be the perfect time to start a conversion rate optimisation project.

It may be that there’s a blockage somewhere in your store’s conversion funnel that’s stopping you from continuing to scale.

Maybe your cart page has become too complex? Perhaps your product page doesn’t communicate information clearly enough? Starting a CRO project when your sales plateau will help you to identify why, and keep your store growing.

2. As Customer Behaviour Changes

The way that customers use your site is always changing and evolving.

As you grow your brand and your customer base evolves, so will the way visitors interact with your site. If you haven’t addressed your user journey in a long time, a CRO project could be the perfect way to identify how customer behaviour has changed and adapt your store to match.

The world of eCommerce moves fast, and if your store doesn’t match customer expectations from design to shipping and payments, your conversion rate will drop.

Just because a particular design, tactic or tool has worked well in the past, that doesn’t mean it always will.

3. When You’re Investing in Paid Advertising

Paid advertising campaigns like Facebook ads, Google AdWords or Instagram advertising can be a great way of generating demand and driving sales, but if your conversion rate isn’t as strong as it could be, you’re wasting money.

As you’re paying for each and every visitor, getting the best possible CPA is vital, and a CRO project can help to streamline the purchase funnel for your advertising traffic, increasing the number of orders and cutting the amount you’re paying for each transaction.

You should always run paid advertising campaigns hand in hand with CRO to make sure you’re squeezing every penny out of your budget.

4. When You Make Significant Site Changes

Have you recently redesigned your site? Maybe you’ve introduced a new landing page design or changed your cart?

You should always conduct a CRO project to assess the impact of these changes.

Conducting a CRO project around your site redesign will help to identify any issues with the new site, protecting your store’s revenue and making sure the redesign fits with how your customers like to use the site.

After all if your site redesign doesn’t improve conversions, it hasn’t been a success.

5. When You See a Significant Uplift in Traffic

Finally, any CRO project requires strong site traffic in order to produce reliable results. That makes an uplift in traffic the perfect time to start a CRO project.

Your store’s higher visitor numbers will allow you to gather more data, run shorter testing periods and make decisions with the assurance that any positive changes will have a real impact on your store’s revenues.

As your traffic grows quickly, CRO is also important for ensuring you’re making the most from all of these extra visitors. Huge amounts of traffic that’s never going to convert won’t help your store grow.

Your Next Steps...

Investing in conversion rate optimisation at the right time is key.

If you plan, develop and execute your CRO projects effectively, you’ll be able to make lasting changes to your store’s conversion rate, and a higher conversion rate means both higher revenues and a lower CPA.

If you’re able to use CRO in the right way as your store grows, you’ll always be catering to the needs of your customers, providing an engaging and simple experience that keeps on converting.

If you’re considering a CRO project for your eCommerce store, feel free to get in touch and a member of our team would be happy to help.

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