DTC 117: Three pillars of conversion rate optimization
I thought good looking theme + conversion driving apps are enough to get high conversion. I was wrong. To get high conversion, the whole funnel has to work in sync. What am I doing about it?
👋 Namaste! Welcome back to Out of Singapore. Right now I am building a consumer brand in SG. The plan is to take this global, something like Charles and Keith in the wellness space. Before we move forward, tell me this -
While building this supplement brand, the website has been a major pain point. We couldn’t build on Shopify because
It has its own rules and regulations on supplements. The storefront can be shut down any day. It doesn’t respect local laws around regulated supplements.
Shopify payments is not open to supplement brands. It is the only way to collect payments in local currencies on Shopify. Big restriction for us.
Shopify charges commission on every transaction. Apps are expensive. Overall, Shopify is supremely expensive for new brands.
So, we chose Shopline, a Chinese replica of Shopify, which solved most of the problems. But then - almost no developer understood it’s code and almost no apps were available on Shopline. We suffered for a few months and then chose BigCommerce over Shopify. Again, it seemed like a great choice to begin with. Soon the challenges with BigCommerce dawned on us. The biggest problem with BigCommerce - It is at least 15 years behind Shopify features. However, after the migration we couldn’t have spent another 2-3 months into another Shopify migration. So we stuck with it and slowly built the web store from ground up. This lay the foundation of of our CRO work, which we are now going to talk about.
Today’s structure will be -
Why is CRO important?
Three pillars of CRO.
What are we doing?
I will aim my best to be crisp. Let’s get started.
#1 Why is CRO important?
There are a few ways you can increase your store revenue -
Increase traffic (more footfall)
Increase AOV (avg order value)
Increase conversion rate (more orders from the same traffic)
The last one is most important. Before we start buying more traffic (more advertising and SEO) or try to increase AOV, conversion rate must be fixed. Once conversion rate of a website is optimal (let’s say ~2-5% depending on industry, positioning and scale), it stops being a leaky bucket.
A high conversion rate is a sign of product market fit. It also means you scale fast and profitably.
#2 Three pillars of CRO
While traditionally CRO is all about website, my take on CRO is different. I believe these three pillars work together to give you the best conversion rate -
Pillar 1. Campaign design - The marketing theme and concept, messaging and how it works. This is stage 1 of CRO. This puts you in front of interested customers. This campaign could be a Facebook/Google/TikTok ad, a search, a blog, a social media video or post or a QR code.
Pillar 2. Website UI/UX Design - Stage 2. How easy and fast it is to find information on the webpage? How much information a user gets in the first scroll? Does it address all the fears and concerns of the user? Can the customer act quickly? This is the layout and flow of the website.
Pillar 3. Copywriting - The messaging used on the campaign and the website. Beside design, the copy is the key to convert consumers. Copy needs to fairly simple and direct. The copy needs to predict all the doubts a customer will have and address them fair and square.
Website UI/UX should not be treated as an independent activity for conversion increase. The best website won’t give sales if it doesn’t emphasize the messaging on campaign ads.
#3 What are we doing?
I am not going to say that we are the best website or have the best conversion. Nevertheless, I believe our conversions will get stronger over next few months. It will be easier to get sales when we advertise in new markets (I hope). Let’s see what have we done and doing for next months.
Campaign design
We launch a new story every month. For example - Anniversary Sale, New Product Launch, or Summer Sale. I didn’t change the campaign story in April (continued the March story) and the sales remained stagnant. Wouldn’t repeat this mistake again. Campaigns have to fresh and relevant.
New ad creatives are tested each week. Depending on the performance and need, 3-8 new creatives are launched each week. Shout out to team at Adbuffs, who have been our marketing partners for almost a year now. The ad creatives can be video, images or GIFs.
Promotion based campaign architecture. Starts with “upto 50%” and then goes on to “free product on purchase”. This goes further with “free shipping”.
Website UI/UX design
Key things to note about UI/UX design
Discovery should be simple.
Navigation should be simple and easy.
Information should be easy to understand.
It should be easy to act (close banners, switch pages, make a purchase, any and all actions).
I am planning to do a complete breakdown of our current website next week, with details of why each element exists. For now, let me give you a reference of how the website looked before and after. The “after” is also a work in progress. We have had 3 incremental versions and right now we are working on the 4th version. Have a look for yourself.
As you notice, the before snapshots have so much of empty white space all over the pages. Look at the third image, thee logo is so big!
We focused on improving the first scroll. This is the best place to convince users to buy.
The announcement bar still bugs me - the text is small, unreadable and there is no excitement there. We are updating this in next update.
Beyond the visual changes, you will notice that copies have seen significant change. Here are some examples
Product title - Shoden Ashwagandha 480 mg (60 capsules) > Shoden Ashwagandha 480 mg (Moved 60 capsules to product images)
3 key benefits - Quantifiable benefits in the copy
Short description - Look at difference between image 2 and 3. Image 3 is punchier and confident about the product.
Finally navigation - Look at image 3, top part. There is “NMN | Magnesium | Health bundles”. NMN is our top seller. Now wherever the customer lands, they find the NMN page easily on first screen.
Copywriting
This is lagging big time! While product pages may have seen significant change, there is a lot of work left on the ads, home page, about us page and popups. This needs to be extended to social media posts as well.
High converting copies have a few common features
They talk to the user
They are easy to understand
They are fast to comprehend (few and clear words)
They are confident about the products and the company
They drive action (or urgency to act)
I will stop here now. I am about to thrown out of this cafe. In the next writing, I will focus on showing examples of changes implemented along with the thought process.
Thank you so much for reading again! It feels super great that you are taking time out each week to open and read these emails. Thanks a lot! 😍
Jisoo is cute-sexy 🤭
Yesterday I claimed to a few friends that Jisoo is cute while Jennie is sexy. I will take back my words. Jisoo is cute-sexy, isn’t she? Look at her 😸
Thank you again! Have a great week ahead! Cheers 🥂