How to Improve your
Website Conversion
1st December 2011
Mark Patron
Agenda
• What people say works
• What really works
• Testing
• How to reduce basket abandonment
• Segmentation
Why are conversion rates so low?
• Average retail conversion rate has declined from 8.4% to
3.8% over last five years. At same time market has grown
from £30.2bn to £58.8bn
• Due to move from “online purchasing” to “online shopping”
• For multi-channel retailers little incentive to improve
conversion of online media if online results better than
offline
• Improving website conversion is complex
• And it’s a lot easier to spend more with Google…
Source: IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index
Conversion rate optimization ROI
• Adobe Omniture estimates that the industry spends nearly
$25 billion on getting people to a site, but only $250 million
on conversion rate optimisation (CRO). In other words for
every $100 spent on driving traffic to websites, companies
spend only $1 converting that traffic into business.
• So spending money intelligently on CRO should be a better
investment than spending more money on generating traffic...
Best practices carried out by organisations
40%
20% 20% 19% 19% 18% 16% 14% 13% 11%
52%
61% 57% 57% 60% 68%
63%
59%
53% 57%
9%
19% 24% 24% 21%
14% 20% 27% 34% 32%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
We do this well We need to improve
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
10
What are the biggest barriers preventing
you from improving conversion?
Technology is no longer the major barrier it was
Down 4th to 8th place
Over last 3 years down from 3rd to 7th place
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Agenda
• What people say works
• What really works
• Testing
• How to reduce basket abandonment
• Segmentation
How to improve website conversion
• The four variables most strongly correlated with
improved website conversion are:
Perceived control over conversion rates
A structured approach to CRO
Having someone directly responsible for CRO
Incentivising staff based on conversion rates
The challenge is becoming one of people and processes
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
How to improve sales
• The top three variables most strongly correlated improved
sales are:
A structured approach to CRO…
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Do you have a structured approach to
improving conversion rates?
50%
33% 29%
15%
50%
67% 71%
85%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Large increase Small increase No change Decrease
Change in sales
Yes No
Does your organisation have a structured approach to improving
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
How to improve sales
• The top three variables most strongly correlated improved
sales are:
A structured approach to CRO
Perceived control over conversion rates…
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Perceived control over conversion rates
3% 2% 2% 4%
24%
35%
44%
65%
50%
49%
44%
23%
24%
14% 10% 8%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Large increase Small increase No change Decrease
Change in sales
How much control do you feel your organisation has over conversion
rates?
No control Very little control Quite a lot of control A great deal of control
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
How to improve sales
• The top three variables most strongly correlated improved
sales are:
A structured approach to CRO
Perceived control over conversion rates
Having someone directly responsible for CRO
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
The more ways you use to improve
conversion the better
Companies whose conversion rates have improved over the
previous 12 months are using on average 26% more methods
to improve conversion than those companies whose
conversion rates have not improved.
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
More methods also improves sales
Sales
Average number of methods
used
Large increase 4.54
Small increase 4.15
No change 3.33
Decrease 3.55
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Complimentary data helps understand
online customer behaviour
Companies with £10m+ revenues
who integrated user testing and
analytics well were twice as likely
to have seen a large increase in
sales as those that didn’t do this.
Agenda
• What people say works
• What really works
• Testing
• How to reduce basket abandonment
• Segmentation
24
Specifically for your website, what do you
test?
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Structured approach for testing
• Brainstorm ideas for tests with 4 to 8 key stakeholders.
• Test things that will really move the dial, don’t tinker around
the edges.
• Compare like with like.
• Make sure results are statistically significant.
• Test everything and assume nothing. Testing is not there to
prove an idea works, but to assess whether it works.
• Build up a knowledgebase of what worked and what didn’t.
• Prioritizing test initiatives is the number one process issue
cited by users of online testing software…
Source: Forrester
26
A simple way to prioritise tests
How valuable
High
Low Cost High
Core Journey Analysis
Business goals, Segmentation
Research & Data
Repository for quant & qual, design ideas
Prioritisation
Quantify, Predicted Uplift, Justification
Testing (A/B, MVT)
Test plans, Hypotheses, Design variations,
Implementation, Measuring success
Website Improvement
Increased Conversion, AOV, RPV, X-Sell, UX
Quick wins e.g.
Fixing issues
Optimising Landing
pages
X-Sell / merchandise
optimisation
Behavioural email
Document
Knowledge
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) process
Agenda
• What people say works
• What really works
• Testing
• How to reduce basket abandonment
• Segmentation
Ways to reduce basket abandonment
• Have a clear value proposition
• Reduce the number of steps in your checkout process
• Include a progress indicator on each checkout page
• Provide a link back to the product
• Be transparent, provide delivery costs early in the process
• Include prompts, for example free delivery when you spend
£30
• Make it obvious what to click next
Ways to reduce basket abandonment (cont.)
• Make sure your pages load quickly
• Use persuasive copywriting so visitors take action
• Implement wireframe templates to finalise page look and
feel
• Offer as many payment methods as possible
• Minimize required fields in forms
• Basket abandonment email…
33
How do you target consumers who abandon
shopping carts or ‘drop off’ during the buying
process?
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
34
How soon after a customer has dropped off a
sale do you target them to complete their
purchase?
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Test recency and frequency
Agenda
• What people say works
• What really works
• Testing
• How to reduce basket abandonment
• Segmentation
The more ways you segment the better
Companies whose conversion rates have improved
are using on average 50% more ways to segment
their visitors and customers than those companies
whose conversion rates have not improved.
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
38
In which ways do you segment your visitors
and customers?
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
39
What do you use segmentation for?
Source: Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2011
Behavioural email results
• Evans Cycles achieves over 100% year
on year increase in email revenues
• Clifford James achieve 678% ROI
with abandoned basket email campaign
• Halfords Autocentres over 5,000% ROI
from triggered behavioural email
• Monarch Airlines abandoned booking
dynamic content behavioural email
ROI 17,257%
Conclusion
• Improving your website conversion is a
major opportunity to increase sales
• But it is complex
• Technology is longer the barrier
• A structured process is key
• People make the difference
Thank You
Download the full Econsultancy/RedEye Conversion Rate Optimization
Report 2011 at
http://econsultancy.com/reports/conversion-rate-optimization-report
Download RedEye’s white paper, A Structured Approach to Conversion
Rate Optimization at
http://www.redeye.com/events/whitepapersandreports/a-structured-
approach-to-conversion-rate-optimization/econ/
Free trial abandoned basket email at www.ondemand.redeye.com
mark.patron@redeye.com
Notas do Editor
Half of the organisations who had a large increase in sales had a structured approach to improving conversion whereas only 25% of companies that had a decrease or no change in sales had a structured approach. In other words, you are twice as likely to have a large increase in sales if you have a structured approach.
Just under three-quarters (74%) of organisations who had a large increase in sales felt they had a great deal or quite a lot of control, opposed to only a third (31%) of companies that had a decrease in sales.