Conversion 101: Learning From Mistakes
One of my first projects that I worked on as a freelancer was to help a friend's business optimize conversion on their e-commerce site. They were seeing decent traffic but a very small number of visitors actually bought something on the site (<1%). This was our first project of its kind here at Dedicated, and we identified a series of UI/UX improvements that we thought could help improve conversion.
However, three months later, conversion hasn't improved at all.
I was really bummed at first when I found this out (cue mild depressive spiral) but I think this is a good opportunity to explore all of the different (and sometimes conflicting) factors that impact conversion and e-commerce sales. That's why I'm starting the series Conversion 101.
I will be writing this series as I research the world of online sales conversion and try and figure out a better way to approach these problems in the future. Since I'm a beginner, this writing will be for other beginners and online business owners who want to convert more site visitors into successful sales. I hope you find this writing helpful!
How to Approach Conversion Projects
I want to start at a high level.
If I've learned anything my experience so far, it's that there is no "one size fits all" approach to improving conversion. Even as I started doing research on strategies for tackling this problem, all the listicles were like "20 ways to improve conversion on your site" - 20 ways??? Any problem with that many different factors is not going to have a straightforward solution.
However, does that need that you need to spend a lot of money on consultants (like me) to figure it out? I think that an effective approach to fixing conversion minimizes effort (cost) and maximizes the site improvements that matter to your customers.
My goal for this series is to learn how to identify best practices, find the biggest gaps on a site, validate that these changes will prevent lost sales, and quickly make meaningful changes.
Now if I could go back in time, here are the ways that I would have approached this problem differently with my friend:
Adjusted the timeline to test multiple changes over several months
Explored all potential conversion factors and prioritized them based on ease of implementation and effectiveness
Better understood other site changes happening simultaneously to contextualize the work
Studied best practices for each conversion factor
If you're struggling with conversion, it's important to set realistic goals - most importantly, that things are not going to change overnight. It's better to think of yourself as setting out on a journey to better conversion - and you will need to embark on a series of paths to get there. But if you can prioritize the right things, you can make a big difference without breaking the bank.
Bennett
