The number of e-shops has grown immensely over the past 5 years, because turnkey solutions have made it easier to set up and run a shop on the internet. In 2015, 12 million e-commerce shops generated €1.3 trillion in revenue. Wow! But, these overwhelming numbers hide a much harder reality: the vast majority of these e-shops do not make more than €1000/month. And a lot of them are just not making any money at all. 

Retail is a long-living trade, publicity and marketing came along the way to form a very well-performing eco-system. It is still the case, but the internet introduced a new dimension. Compared to many other domains (like film distribution, books publishing, etc.) retail was one of the first to embrace the change and to see the internet as an important place to be. As a consequence, they have now built a very sophisticated way to sell online, with a refined set of principles: customers’ journey, funnels, segmentation, remarketing, automation. But the one that probably matters the most and that is the most difficult to achieve is CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization.

Whether you are the proud owner of an independent small online shop or the manager of a big brand e-shop, your website is at the core of your business. That’s where your customers find your products and buy them. That’s where you, as owner, want to optimize your conversion rate. 

Time and resources are used to make changes to the website, often with mixed or negative results.

To improve conversion, you use analytics tools to measure conversion, to get an accurate picture of your funnel and know where to improve. Marketing expenses (Banners, Ads, Facebook ads, SEO & SEM investments, etc.) help you get traffic to your website. Customers go through the funnel and you get a certain number of conversions. CRO means that you optimize the funnel to open it up and have more conversion, right?
analytic-tools-funnel

That’s where things get shaky.
That’s where time and resources are used to make changes to the website, often with mixed or negative results.

The outcome of the changes is never known in advance because the changes were mostly based assumptions and guesses. Analytics tools tell you where and how many of your customers drop off,  but they do not tell you WHY.

If you want to make significant changes, if you want to know WHY your customers are dropping off and decide on changes based on that knowledge, you have to observe your customers. Just like in a real shop: watch them browse the alleys, touch your product, hesitate, turn around, stop and wonder.

Observing your customers interacting with your website will unveil problems and give you answers that analytics can’t provide.

Here is Annie, she’s trying to buy a plane ticket. In 1’30 minutes time, you can already spot at least 3 easy mistakes that Easyjet could have avoided. Analytics does not tell you the WHY of your users.

Observing your customers interacting with your website will unveil problems and give you answers that analytics can’t provide.

Simply observing your users shopping on your site doesn’t have to be difficult or mostly. Use a tool like UXprobe to set up a user test. In a few minutes, your users can take a test, anywhere (at home!), any time (after the kids are in bed!) and you can review the results as they come in (first thing, with your morning coffee).

Stop pouring more money at the top of your funnel to increase incoming traffic. If you really want to optimize your conversion – observe your users to find out their WHY.

And turn that skinny funnel into a big fat one.

Spend more money to increase incoming traffic in order to get more conversions

 

Keep your expenses as usual but optimize the UX to get more conversions

Keep your expenses as usual but optimize the UX to get more conversions

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isabelle Dro Digital Marketer

Isabelle Dro
Director of Communications