13 CRO Strategies for DTC Brands
13 CRO Strategies for DTC Brands
March 2022
7 minute read
Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the number of website visitors that become customers.
This can done by making buying paths shorter, easier and frictionless. We also use the ’psychology of persuasion techniques to encourage people to take the desired action.
Importance of CR Optimisation
While boosting your traffic can generate more sales, it’s just as important to focus on turning your current traffic into paying customers.
Conversion rate optimisation is pivotal to becoming a market leader. An optimised website allows you to lower the cost to acquire a customer. The lower your cost to acquire a customer, the faster you can scale and gain market share.
How to increase Conversion Rate
Your website needs to be designed with your customers in mind.
There are a few different ways to optimise your conversion rates. In this guide we will focus on the fifteen we think are the most important, they can be grouped into the following:
Website speed and performance
Homepage design
Product discovery
Product page design
Checkout experience
Shipping and returns
Speed and performance
Make sure your website is mobile-responsive
Being mobile-responsive should be a priority. Over 54% of all web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, according to Statista. You want to provide a great experience for mobile site visitors.
If you’re on Shopify, then you're in luck because all Shopify themes are automatically optimised for all screen sizes.
2. Optimise your website’s loading times
Website performance is closely tied to your conversion rate. According to Google, 53% of mobile visitors will leave your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. That’s a huge amount of traffic you could be turning away without even realising it.
The easiest way to check how long your online store takes to load is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. PageSpeed Insights will give you a detailed report of how fast your website loads, along with any issues you can resolve to improve your load times.
Here are three ways you can increase your load times, today:
Optimise Media Files
Reduce unnecessary use of Images and Videos
Uninstall any apps you're not using
Homepage
3. Simplify the homepage
When it comes to designing an effective homepage, simplicity is key.
It only takes 50 milliseconds for a visitor to form a first impression of your website, so you need to make those moments count.
Avoid overwhelming potential customers with excessive images and text. Instead, stay on brand and on message with a simple, visually appealing design.
Take a look at Maniere De Voir, a $50 million per annum fashion brand. They keep it simple with a large hero image that occupies most of the space. The copy is simple and straight to the point, with a clear call-to-action (CTA) that pushes visitors to a collection.
If you’re not sure what to feature as your main hero, it’s usually best to go with either your bestselling or most profitable products, collections, new arrivals or current promotions.
4. Show off offers, real-time purchases, and more
If you're running a promotion or offer that you know customers will be enticed by, you want to make it as clear and obvious as possible. There are many great ways to do this.
Announcement bars - lets you share sales, coupon codes, promotions, and more as a floating bar to the top of your homepage that will instantly grab your customers’ attention.
Pop-ups - are fantastic for building your email list, by offering a coupon code in exchange for a newsletter sign-up.
Real-time purchases - Apps like Fomo Social Proof add a small notification to the bottom corner of your store, showcasing real-time purchases being made by other customers. These apps incite a sense of urgency while also giving customers social proof that other people are out there buying your products right this minute.
5. Add testimonials to build trust
Have you been featured in major publications? Are your products used by any high-profile influencers? have you got a “Great” or “Excellent” Trustpilot rating? Adding these to your home page build’s trust and project credibility. After all, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from their friends and families.
Represent, a £25 million per year fashion brand, have their Trustpilot rating along with reviews at the bottoms of their homepage.
Product discovery
6. Organise your categories effectively
For your customers, navigating your website should be easy, simple, and—most of all—obvious. Avoid separating your products into too many different categories. Instead, opt for four to six broad categories that contain more specific subcategories as a dropdown.
Order your categories in your navigation bar based on their popularity, with your most popular category at the front.
7. Use intelligent search
If your store has a large number of products, you might want to consider featuring your search bar prominently on your homepage, giving your customers the opportunity to head directly where they want to be rather than digging through categories.
With apps like Smart Search & Instant Search, you can power up your search bar with predictive results that help your customers find what they’re looking for. Intelligent search bars suggest results and products as users are typing while taking into account things like spelling errors and alternate product names.
8. Add a shoppable Instagram feed
Embedding a shoppable Instagram feed onto your website is a great opportunity to build trust through social proof and show off your products in everyday scenarios.
Shoppable Instagram feeds are perfect for displaying user-generated content, which is starting to play a massive role in the purchasing behaviour of millennials. Research indicates that user-generated content results in 29% higher conversions for sites with it than for those without.
Product pages
9. Use high-quality product images
High-quality product photos are the most important part of an effective product page. Data from Justuno shows that 93% of consumers consider visual appearance to be the key deciding factor in a purchasing decision. Try to include images that show your products from every angle and accurately represent the look and feel of your products.
As a bonus, include a video that shows your product in action. Younger consumers are actually 85% more likely to make a purchase after watching a product video.
Maniere De Voir and Gymshark have some great examples of well-executed product pages.
10. Showcase your product reviews
Product reviews are a great way to ease the doubts of hesitant shoppers and give your customers the social proof they need to click Add to Cart. In fact, 66% of customers say their purchasing decisions are influenced by reading online product reviews.
Positive product reviews can make all the difference in convincing shoppers that a product really works and is worth purchasing. Reviews also help them make more informed decisions in regard to sizing, colour, and more.
If you're on shopify, we highly Stamped Product Reviews, to embed customer reviews directly onto their product pages. Unlike others, its fairly priced and provides everything you need.
Checkout experience
11. Buy now pay later
More than 57% of British shoppers say they have made a purchase through BNPL. 41% of them said they used BNPL because they couldn't afford the purchase in one instalment.
Offering BNPL payment methods are essential to cater for this large market segment.
12. Send abandoned cart emails
Unfortunately, customers sometimes fill up their carts with products and then leave your store with no intention of returning. With abandoned cart emails, you can remind those customers of the items they’ve already expressed interest in and give them a little nudge to return to your store to complete the purchase.
Abandoned cart emails can be set up in the Settings section of your Shopify admin. Go to Checkout and then scroll down to the Abandoned Cart section. You can choose to send abandoned cart emails either one, six, 10, or 24 hours after a customer abandons a cart.
Shipping and returns
13. Offer free shipping and no-hassle returns
Shipping
Expensive shipping is a huge friction point that holds many visitors from buying. Free shipping can have a major impact on conversions, with 73% of consumers reporting free shipping deliberately influencing their decision to buy online.
Returns
Some customers are hesitant about making purchases online. When it comes to ordering things like clothing, it can be difficult to know exactly how a piece will fit in person.
According to UPS, 68% of shoppers check a website’s return and exchange policy before making a purchase.
That’s why many brands now advertise “free,” “easy,” and “no-hassle” returns and exchanges to increase conversion rates and online purchases.
To help relieve your customer’s concerns, have a clear refund policy so they know exactly what they can do if they aren’t satisfied with an order.
In closing
Your website conversion rate will have a significant impact on your profitability as well as your overall growth.
As a brand owner or marketer, your goal should be to constantly improve your sites conversion rate. As discussed in the article there are two ways you can do this. The first is to make purchasing paths shorter, easier and frictionless. The second is to implement ’psychology of persuasion’ elements in your website to encourage visitors to take the desired action (purchase).
You’ll need to decide what strategies we discussed will work best for your brand, business, and customers. I recommend testing a few methods before you settle on the ones that are best for your business.