Conversion rate 2.0 – how analytics increases conversion?

It all starts with designing businesses and services based on the customer's perspective. To implement such an approach in your e-commerce, you must begin your journey with user behavior analysis. Why? Of course, to finally discover the true customer journey. And "true" in this case doesn't necessarily mean planned. It's one that includes not only the path but also all its stops, such as comparing products in different tabs, returning to the shopping cart, checking shipping costs, stepping away from the computer to answer the phone (session time), and a bunch of other small scenarios.

What is conversion in e-commerce?

You probably already know that conversion is that wonderful situation when a user performs an action that you desire. Although there are many examples of conversions, in the world of e-commerce, it's common to think of conversion as a single event, meaning a completed payment.

However, in reality, a conversion can consist of many different events, such as filling out a form correctly, going through several points on the website, signing up for a newsletter, etc. Therefore, even small improvements to the website or customer journey can translate into improved results.

Can intentions be measured?

Measuring the conversion rate for sales is rather trivial, and most analytics tools can do it for you. The problem usually arises when you want to measure... purchase intent. Because can something as elusive as intent be a conversion?

Yes! If we treat the conversion as a goal fulfillment, determining the moment when a customer has a purchase intent can be crucial for further optimization.

Measuring purchase intent as a goal in cux.io

Capturing visits where purchase intent appeared (but no actual sale occurred) gives you extremely valuable information – potential customer problems that prevent them from completing the purchase. With such an approach, your optimizations should lead to acquiring more valuable traffic and attracting more and more satisfied customers to your store.

New approach to conversion - Conversion 2.0

To optimize the "real" customer journey (i.e., one that is broader than the one we planned), we cannot think of conversion as a narrow path. Hence, the concept of Conversion 2.0, which includes not only sales (checkout) but also marketing and product.

When you think about conversion optimization, don't just focus on sales, but on all points where the customer comes into contact with your store.

Marketing activities are everything that should lead the customer to the ultimate conversion, which largely includes traffic from referrals (external links). In this case, we often focus on quantitative statistics such as CPC (Cost per click), CPA (Cost per action), ROI (Return on investment), bounce rate, clicks, etc., to test the quality of the campaign.

However, to properly optimize marketing activities, it is worth looking at them as part of a larger picture – conversion 2.0. Because these first points of contact can turn out to be the most important determinants of the final outcome of your sales.

Product optimization involves everything that is related to your store from a technical point of view. Changes in forms, better CTA (Call to Action), redesign of product pages, easier customer journey, streamlining the payment process, and more.

How do we optimize the customer journey in the context of the product? We shorten it! Why? Primarily because customers are not always strongly motivated to make a purchase. It's not uncommon for a momentary and fleeting whim to lead them to your e-commerce site. Therefore, the longer the path to conversion, the more time there is for them to change their minds!

The full view of the customer journey enables you to find more places to optimize and increase the satisfaction of your customers.

As Paulina Walkowiak, CEO of cux.io, says:

Your biggest competition is not other companies, but your customers' problems.

Therefore, remember that conversion optimization is not just about the last steps of the sales funnel (cart, checkout). To make optimizations meaningful, step back a few steps and look at the entire customer journey – from marketing communication to product interaction. This is the best way to optimize conversion 2.0.