Back to articles

What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation (And Why Should DTC Brands Care?)

If you’re in the DTC space, it’s crucial to focus on conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

After all, the success of your business depends on your ability to convert website visitors into customers. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what CRO is and why it’s so important for D2C brands. We’ll also provide tips on how to calculate your CRO and some strategies that you can use to improve your customer experience and increase conversion rates.

What is a conversion?

A conversion occurs when a customer takes the desired action on your website or landing page. This can be anything from making a purchase to signing up for your newsletter.

First up, you need to work out what conversion means for your business.

If you’re a D2C brand, it could be as simple as conversion = a customer purchase.

But you also might want to track another outcome, especially if you’re selling a service.

You could track:

  • Contact details given
  • Survey response
  • Visits to a specific page
  • Content downloaded

To measure your conversion rate as a percentage, you need a simple calculation:

Number of conversions / Number of website visitors x 100 = Conversion rate %

For a typical ecommerce site, if you had 1000 website visitors and 20 converted by purchasing, your conversion rate would be:

20 / 1000 x 100 = 2% Conversion rate

CRO AGENCY GROWTH MARKETING

Now that we’ve answered the question “what is a conversion?”, let’s move on to discussing why CRO is so important for DTC brands and how you can help increase your percentage.

Conversion rates have a direct impact on your bottom line. The higher your conversion rate, the more sales you’ll make.

If you’re not investing in CRO, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your business. By focusing on conversion rate optimisation, you can make your DTC brand more successful than ever before and ensure maximum return on your paid media or acquisition strategy.

Make your conversion data useful

Your conversion rate only tells half the story. To improve it, you need to find out where in your funnel you’re losing users.

Out of your 1000 visitors, you might have 12 who put your product in the basket, then 10 who actually purchase. Or you could have 800 people adding your product to their basket for only 10 to buy it. 

To get this level of detail, you need to dig into your funnel by setting up goals in Google Analytics. This will allow you to track users through their journey on your site so you can work out where they might be dropping off. 

There are a few different kinds of goals you can set up:

  • URL destination goals – each time someone visits a certain URL, the goal is triggered e.g. thank you page or confirmation page.
  • Visit duration goals – these track how many people stay on your site for a certain amount of time.
  • Page visit goals – track how many pages each person sees before they leave your site

Event goals – these are a bit more complicated to set up, but they let you customise tracking to see when users do things like download something, watch a video etc.

Here’s a quick checklist to help you set up goals:

  1. Sign in to Google Analytics
  2. Select ‘Admin’ from the left-hand side
  3. In the view column, select goals’
  4. Select either “+ new goal’ or ‘import from gallery’
  5. You can also make tweaks to existing goals here

Once you’ve set your goals and let them run for a bit, look at the data. How are your users behaving on site? Where in your funnel do you need to take action?

Stop making assumptions and ask your users

Speaking to your users will help you work out why visitors do or don’t complete your goals.

User research doesn’t have to be expensive. Start with your team. Get them to test the website while you watch and take notes, and don’t prompt them! Then, go further afield to friends and family.

You could also offer to swap user feedback with other Copy Club members. Spend 10 minutes on each other’s website and you’ll be able to give each other super valuable feedback.

When you do carry out testing, don’t always just ask users to test your website. Ask them to complete a task.

Get testing to understand UX

Test things that can affect conversion. 

Start with the areas you’re losing users. If it’s the top of the funnel, what can you change to see if it improves conversion? 

Make sure you only test one thing at once so you can be sure what causes any changes to your conversion rate. Also make sure you watch out for seasonal fluctuations; if you know sales always go up at a certain time of year, take that into account for your tests.

Some things you might want to test include:-

  • The copy on your website or landing pages
  • Your CTA buttons and their colours, sizes and positions
  • Different versions of your product page
  • Changes to your navigation
  • Your checkout process – can you simplify it? 
  • The images you use on your website

A UX analyst can help identify these changes so you know where to start.

Use landing pages to improve conversion rate

You’ll convert more users if you send them to specific landing pages, rather than sending all traffic to your homepage.

Landing pages allow you to personalise a user’s experience based on where they came from. If they’ve come from a paid ad for a discount code, they’ll need different information vs. someone who clicked on a specific product link.

Your landing page should:

  • Have clear messaging
  • Give the consumer all the info they need to convert
  • Include plenty of social proof
  • Be tailored to the traffic source and the intent of the person landing on it.

You can use tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to help you track how users interact with your landing pages and make changes accordingly.

Remember, even small changes can have a big impact on conversion rates so it’s always worth testing things out.

Conversion rate optimisation is an ongoing process

You should always be looking for ways to improve your conversion rate. Just because you’ve hit your target doesn’t mean you should stop testing and making changes.

There are always going to be new opportunities to increase conversion, whether that’s through changes in technology or user behaviour. Keep an eye on the latest trends and best practices so you can be sure you’re always doing everything you can to optimise your website.

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you need some help with conversion rate optimisation, get in touch with us. Our team of experts would love to chat and see how we can help you hit your targets.

Design

Inspiring behaviour change through visual experiences. Our digital design services ensure instant clarity and visuals that cut-through in a cluttered market.

Build

Engineering intelligent solutions is what we do. Shopify experts, we have extended the capabilities of what’s possible through our suite of in-house software.

Grow

Accelerate what’s possible with media and strategy. Blending dynamic thinking with plain logic to deliver a digital marketing toolkit, tailored for growth.