How to Optimize Your E-commerce Website Conversion Rate

When your website visits aren't converting to sales, it's beyond frustrating. The key to improving your sales conversations is making strategic decisions based on the data found in your website analytics rather than relying on gut instinct.

In this episode of The E-commerce Revolution podcast, Ramin Ramhormozi and Craig Connelly discuss conversion rate optimization (CRO) and how to turn your website's traffic and keyword data into a CRO strategy that drives sales.

What is conversion rate optimization?

Ramin: So let's explain to the audience what conversion optimization is and what it means.

Craig: Most people have a website and think that putting a website up and getting a designer to design it and make it look pretty, then whacking up a few ads that add a bit of traffic, the world's going to be perfect.

And it's very far from that because a lot of these sites don't convert, and there are all sorts of reasons for that. And I don't think anybody knows when they first do a landing page or if they build a website if it's going to convert or not. So that's what I do. I get involved and find out why they're not converting.

We try different testing mechanisms and different ads and all different stuff to get it converting and fix the basics of the sites, such as the speed. It's a pretty involved little area, but I've got some tips listed here. A lot of it is very simple. You don't have to be intelligent. But you need a little bit of time to look at the data.

Get The Basics Right in Your CRO Strategy

Ramin: What are you exactly looking for if we're talking about one of the category pages or collection pages on an e-commerce site?

Craig: I'm mainly looking at drop-off rates and just getting a bit of a feel and trying to work out what that page is ranking for.

The first thing we do is get the basics. So more often than not, a lot of these sites that I get involved in are running very, very slow. I did one yesterday where Shopify was running slow because there are about 20 YouTube videos on the front page. But speed never seems to be an issue with Shopify, but a lot of the other sites that I get involved with are custom built, and the speed is a big issue.

So we always start with that to answer your question. So once the foundation has been placed, we are doing things and then measuring it, so doing one thing and measuring it. We might be doing four things at once in different areas and measuring them all.

Diagnosing Your E-commerce Conversion Rate Problems

Ramin: Can you see where the problems are on a site right away?

Craig: Not necessarily, no. I'll tell you a little story. I did a course recently, which was $5,000, on conversion optimization. And the main thing I learned from that $5,000 course is that they have no idea what's going to convert or not convert. And they had a campaign that was generating $20,000 a day. They gave that campaign to somebody else, same ads, same landing page, everything identical, and it flopped with paid traffic.

Ramin: So why is that? Because with testing, you don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work.

Craig: No idea. About three weeks ago, a fellow who was a professional copywriter set up his own business selling heart defibrillators. And he wrote the copy for the page, and he said, all right, let the traffic go. So we let the traffic go. We've spent nearly 5K on traffic. He got one sale. You never know. You've got to keep mucking around and trying and testing things.

4 Free Tools for Conversion Rate Optimization

Ramin: Outside of Google analytics and search console, what tools do you use for conversion optimization?

Craig: I use SE Ranking. I mainly use it to look at the competitors to see what they're into and check the strength of their sites. But I spend most of my time in Google Analytics and Google search console.

I think that with those two platforms alone, you could spend a year learning them properly.

I use WriterZen for writing content. Pretty much what they do is they go out and take the top 20 websites ranking for the term you want to rank for and give you all the information you need to know about what is required to rank and what you need to put in your content and that sort of stuff.

And the other best free tool out there is people. And I think the best advice is: don't listen to the close people around you because they are not your target audience. Go out and find the target audience.