News

How Brexit could make conversion rate optimisation the essential focus for your business in 2019

26.11.18

Deal or no deal? That is the big question right now. It might be time to get Noel Edmunds on the phone to ask for a swap deal…

For businesses across the country, retail especially, the uncertainty surrounding the EU withdrawal agreement is creating a tough proposition going into 2019.

There is also a potential rise in interest rates on the horizon, looming large over consumer spending. Many eCommerce businesses have enjoyed good growth in the past few years and it’s been a fairly safe bet to increase investment in marketing spend to see a solid return on investment. Will the wider economy make it difficult to grow sales in 2019 and is your business prepared for every eventuality?

It is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to maintain acquisition costs without a watertight re-engagement process for returning customers and that’s weighing heavily on overall profitability. The proactive solution is now to realign the marketing strategy and turn your attention into making the most out of your existing traffic and user base.

How to grow sales without increasing traffic to your website

Developing your 2019 marketing strategy will inevitably involve re-budgeting and re-forecasting from 2018 but have you set aside budget for improving the conversion rate on your website?

Whether your key aim is to drive sales, generate leads or increase brand awareness, the user experience aspect of your website is going to be critical in maximising future return on investment.

Defining micro-goals (the minor actions taken on a site that improves the chances of converting a user) is vitally important and assessing the user journey in detail will give you greater visibility on both small and large areas for improvement that will increase conversion rate on your site.

When the market you operate in becomes harder to achieve growth in new sales, looking after your existing traffic base becomes imperative and that starts from the first point of interaction with your brand, all the way through to post-sale communication, service and re-engagement/re-purchase drives.

Key areas of improvement for your website & sales funnel

The most common areas we see across websites where sales are lost are:

  1. Poor checkout experience
  2. Slow site
  3. Poor experience on mobile

Once you identify and fix the problem areas, the process of increasing your conversion rate is continual improvement. Understanding the stage in the buying cycle the user is at when they visit a page, or considering the information they see based on their route to site are all factors to consider, the overarching aim is to make each engagement with your site as easy and enjoyable as possible to give a user no reason to look elsewhere.

You may look to introduce a raft of changes on site, implement post-sale service processes, increase engagement with your customers or improve the onsite help experience; it’s finding the blend between data-led A/B testing, common sense improvements and working with your customers to give them the best possible experience on your website.

As an agency working with a large number of clients over different industries, we see both the similarities and differences in how the digital landscape is affecting them. One of the clear trends that all businesses have seen is that there is more variation in routes to purchase and more visits from the same user via different mediums i.e. organic search, social media, email marketing etc. than ever before.

What this has done is make conversion rate optimisers call on marketing managers and teams to greater align the core messages and USPs across all touchpoints a user might make with the business because their engagement with your business is getting longer and longer before they even make their first purchase or enquiry.

What could improving the overall conversion rate do for my business?

Over the course of 2018 Google had been reporting that the overall cost per visitor via their advertising was costing 20% more than last year, mainly due to increased competition in the marketplace.

The search results have also been changing to prioritise their paid adverts, predominantly on mobile devices, where we are seeing proportional traffic share grow across the majority of industries we work with.

If that route continues, “free” traffic will continue to be harder to achieve and paid advertising routes will become more expensive, putting pressure on key metrics such as the cost of bringing a visitor to your website and also the cost to achieving a new sale.

Focusing efforts on improving the user journey, improving the on-site experience and also answering the “why us” question across the website will deliver more revenue/leads without having to invest further in delivering more traffic to your website. The conversion rate of your website is directly linked to your overall return on investment so the importance of maximising every opportunity is imperative to delivering the best result possible on your marketing activity.

 

 

Share
How Brexit could make conversion rate optimisation the essential focus for your business in 2019

Related News

All