The eCommerce Guide to

Conversion Rate Optimization

7 Steps to Improve Conversion

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Why should your eCommerce company

care about CRO?

Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of

your users who perform a desired action. The ultimate conversion is often a
sale, but the conversion event you’re interested in may be any step along the
way: creating an account, downloading an ebook, signing up for a newsletter,
or filling out a form. (Among many others!)

CRO helps you get the most out of your users Ready to get started? Here are the seven
by pinpointing what drives conversion and key steps you can take to reliably improve
where people drop out of your funnel. You can conversion, over and over.
then use this information to reduce friction in
your product and target the users most likely to
convert. Prioritizing CRO will increase retention,
engagement, and marketing ROI, while lowering
your acquisition costs and reducing churn. In
short, you’ll have more happy customers signing
up, and fewer unhappy customers leaving.

Purchase →

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 1:

Define your primary conversion event

Figuring out what to focus on may depend on your business goals. Get clear
on what matters most to your team and product. What’s the critical action
you want visitors to take?

eCommerce companies typically use CRO to

encourage users to add more items to their carts, The ultimate eCommerce conversion, of
then move them along to the next step in the course, is making a profitable sale!
buying process.

Some more common primary PRO TIP: The steps along the path to conversion
are called micro-conversions. Marketing teams
conversion events: should look closely at these for potential
campaign opportunities.

View Cart See all your selected items

Add to Cart →

Browse featured products

Contact Chat Engage with your online chat

Check relevant reviews

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 2:

Create a funnel by mapping the steps to

your event

The primary goal in eCommerce is making it easy for visitors to find the
products they want to purchase, and then to purchase them. Funnels let you
see how users navigate all the steps that lead to these goals.

After getting clear on what primary event or Example of an eCommerce funnel:

macro-conversion you hope to produce, map Land on homepage
out the steps that lead to it. Create a conversion
funnel to visualize the ideal flow of leading your
site visitors into becoming paying customers.

Learn More →

PRO TIP: Your conversion

funnel should have between
4 and 6 steps, no more.
Browse products
Read reviews

Add to Cart →

See Review →

Add items to cart Add Items

Complete purchase
Review Order→

Purchase

Purchase →

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 3:

Identify and analyze dropoff points in

your funnel

Dropoff points are a major opportunity. By dropping off, users are telling you
exactly where they’re losing interest. If you find out why, you can change that.

Once you’ve identified the major dropoff points, you can use a
PRO TIP: Isolating dropoffs
funnel analysis tool to break down this information into any
is easier when you have
number of behavioral and demographic segments, so you can an analytics platform
compare completion rates at each step across all groups. that automatically tracks
customer actions. Otherwise,
you’ll have to manually track
For example, if you’re experiencing varying conversion rates every single event in the
between your desktop and mobile experiences, dig in to figure funnel. This not only makes
the task far more tedious,
out why:
it also means you (or your
busy team members) are less
Are your users more mobile-focused than desktop? likely to bother doing it.

Is your mobile experience not as well-optimized?

Can visitors move easily from desktop to mobile

while shopping?

You know that online shoppers want the experience

to be seamless, fast and convenient. Product 1

If customers can’t find answers to their questions,

consider adding a chat feature. Unanswered
questions lead to conversion loss since many
shoppers won’t call customer support.

Purchase Chat

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 4:

Use path analysis to get granular

Now it’s time to focus on problem areas. Path Analysis reveals the actions
people tend to take before and after converting or dropping off. Are users
following your ideal conversion flow, or doing something else instead?

In path analysis you’re doing two things:

PRO TIP: By targeting
users that dropped off at
1. Looking for small fixes that yield big dividends a particular step, you can
2. Trying to understand how the typical user navigates your site create specific marketing
campaigns to entice them
back to your site.
Examine each click around the dropoff points:

Which ones cause most users to leave?

Are there any specific places people get stuck?

Is the issue a technical breakdown, or is it the UX flow?

You may discover hurdles that you were previously unaware of, or
glitches that consistently blocked users from reaching the next step
in the funnel.

User Sessions

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 5:

Segment by behavior with cohort analysis

Behavioral segmentation is an incredibly powerful CRO strategy. You do it by

segmenting your users into groups (known as cohorts) based on actions they
take or haven’t taken on your site.

Behavioral segmentation can uncover correlations like:

PRO TIP: Track and analyze
your cohorts incrementally
Do users who receive promotional emails return to the site? over time to gather the
most actionable insights.
Does leaving a review correlate with conversion?
You’ll discover new ways to
Does offering free shipping affect their order size? strengthen interactions and
build customer loyalty.
Look for behaviors that predict conversion, so you can orient
your product around encouraging those behaviors. The
possibilities with segmentation are limitless:

• Identify (and reward) your most loyal customers

• Find the customers who almost convert, then target them

with re-engagement campaigns

• Personalize user experiences based on their unique

path to conversion

22%

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 6:

Consider your sources: who’s visiting?

In addition to improving the overall site experience, CRO will indicate which
user groups are the best bets for conversion, so you can better target them
and meet their needs.

Are you personalizing your ad campaigns? Once you have your

segments clearly defined, you can hone in on those customers’ PRO TIP: The only limit
to segmentation is your
interests. Maybe it’s time to stop marketing to that segment that imagination — the more
isn’t getting any traction and appeal to new audiences. ways you can slice up the
data, the more likely you
are to stumble onto an
Are you encouraging repeat purchases? Teams often focus
underserved segment. Here
so much on the initial conversion that they overlook enticing are some ideas to get you
customers to come back. When users return to your site and see started:

things that interest them, they are more likely to purchase. • By demographics: title,
industry, geography
• By behavior: documents
Are you creating relationships with customers? A personalized
downloaded, time on site,
web experience is vital to building brand trust with the customer FAQs read
and ultimately, increasing conversion rates. Identify similar items • By marketing channel:
they may like, then send offers or special pricing. social media, search
engines, partner sites

Product 1

Purchase →

View Product→

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Step 7:

Hypothesize. Test. Measure. Repeat.

The guiding principle to data-driven CRO is to use data to make informed

hypotheses, and learn as much as you can from each test. After all, there’s
no better way to improve your product than to learn everything you can about
how people use it, where they‘re coming from, and what problems they have.

Be a good scientist. Ask creative questions. Probe the information

PRO TIP: The secret to CRO:
you have to figure out answers. Then make improvements geared
the more you measure, the
towards meeting your larger business goals. easier it becomes.

CRO is an ongoing process. The beauty of it is that even the

smallest change can lead to increased revenue.

Purchase → Purchase →

Conversion Rate Over Time

Run Query

A 22%
B 36%

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Customer Example:

Huel offers nutritionally complete 100% vegan meals that place minimal
impact on the environment. An ever-growing variety of products, popular in
over 100 countries, demands precise funnel analysis.

Heap’s ability to make granular detail actionable

in minutes — not days — has enabled Huel to “Customers are at the center
of everything we do, and
perform super fast funnel conversion and traffic
Heap plays an important role
analysis, drilling down by country, product type,
in tailoring our website to
and marketing channel. With insight on customer
give them the best possible
behavior coming from Heap, Huel adapted their
experience. Having everything in
product merchandising strategy — and in some
one place and with information
markets achieved an increase of over 30% in
that’s easy to pick out is crucial.”
new customer conversions!
Mario Tarantino,
Senior eCommerce
Manager

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THE ECOMMERCE GUIDE TO CRO

Final thought

Every business has a strategic responsibility to do CRO, and the key to building
a great product is to keep asking questions. We hope that after reading this
guide, you’re convinced that the scientific approach is the best method for CRO.
Experience shows that diligently applying these seven steps will lead to significant
improvements in conversion.

If you have questions or thoughts, or simply want to know more about Heap for
eCommerce, visit us online or reach out to us at [email protected].

Best of luck with your optimization!

About Heap
Heap’s mission is to power business decisions with truth. We empower
product teams to focus on what matters — building the best products —
not wrestling with their analytics platform. Heap automatically collects
and organizes customer behavioral data, allowing product managers to
improve their products with maximum agility. Over 6,000 businesses
use Heap to drive business impact by delivering better experiences and
better products. To learn more, visit us at heap.io

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