Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)_ Basics for Shopify and Ecommerce

1. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Basics for Shopify and Ecommerce

2. Boosting Conversions on Your Website Website Speed That Converts What I will say is: the faster the speed, the better in terms of conversions. An easy way to test is by sending the website to a few friends or co-workers and asking them—does this seem quick enough? Of course, there are lots of stats out there saying the top sites load in under two seconds, which makes sense. But you should really focus on how the customer feels, which the famed Neil Patel blog supports, stating that 70% of customers say speed affects buying—your conversion. And yet, we often don’t attempt to improve the speed—instead, we add more onto our tech stacks, upload unoptimized images, and allow teams to edit freely. We should consider the impacts of these choices and audit them weekly with speed and SEO tools.

3. Education and Information That Converts What information is most important to your customer? Or let me ask it this way: What information, when your customers learn it, drives them to buy? What is the main thing? No, most sites like SEMflow will say you need ~300 words (quick demo video) on a page to rank well. But I would challenge you to consider what information is the most valuable to your customer while shopping and often gets them to take another look. Think about when you are in the store in person. Is the representative rattling off 20 facts about the product right when you pick up the item? No. You can keep your landing page or product page as an introduction and follow up with education via an email or SMS series.

4. Route Customers to Proper Store Products When I meet with both DTC and B2B customers to work on their websites or improve CRO, the first thing I look at is what I call routing. How are you routing your customers to the right product? If the customer is top of the funnel organic, they will want to see, front and center, your product and its benefits. If they are driven from an ad, then it's important the landing page closely reflects the copy and visuals of that ad to boost conversion. A few tips to support routing: - Healthy and easy-to-read navigation - Clear H1 titling and copy (don’t try to get fancy, just tell them what the product is called) - Create clear sections on the homepage to showcase best products along with social proof

5. Tracking Conversions and Behavior on Your Website Server-Side Tracking, Google Analytics, and Axeptio One way to level up your data tech stack is to use server-side tracking on your eCommerce store. Why add this? It allows you to not be solely dependent on cookies in browsers, which can be blocked by different platforms, tools, and web browsers. Think of it as a direct connection that plugs into your website's server, providing more data into Google Analytics, which can then be used for ads, pivot tables, and reporting. You can add this yourself or with a developer in Google Tag Manager, or you can use a third-party app. The ones I am most familiar with and can recommend are Littledata and Elevar. Both of these tools also have other server-side connections for paid ads like Pinterest, TikTok, and Meta.

6. Conversion Tools Like Shoplift and Microsoft Clarity Wow, great thought, Blake. Use a conversion tool. Well, I figured this is obvious, but if you haven’t installed Shoplift or Microsoft Clarity, I would jump on that today. Shoplift is a partner of Chasing Creative because it allows us and our clients to run A/B tests on product pages and their Shopify store. They have also rolled out Lift Assist™, which analyzes millions of shopper sessions to recommend what converts and automatically generates features like countdown timers, sticky carts, inventory indicators, and more. Microsoft Clarity is a tool recommended by Chasing Creative to all of our clients, and we install it on nearly every one of our projects. The best part is that it is FREE. If you are familiar with Hotjar, it is an alternative for that. It allows you to see real session recordings, scroll behavior, clicks on your page, and more. They even introduced AI summaries for many of their features that give you recommendations on things you can do to improve your website and ultimately conversion rates.