Ecommerce conversion rate optimisation: how to improve your online shop with data

Ecommerce conversion rate optimisation means using your shop’s data to get more of your visitors to buy. You measure how people find your shop, what they do there and where they leave, which shows you your customers’ journey through your site and the obstacles they meet on the way. Then you change one weak spot, test the change and measure again. If you sell loose-leaf tea at brewbankteas.co.uk, the numbers show which product pages visitors leave without buying, and that’s where you start.

What is conversion rate optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation means raising one number: the percentage of your visitors who do what you want them to do on your website. In a shop, that action is usually a completed purchase. Signing up for your newsletter, filling in a contact form or booking a tasting session can count too, so which actions you count depends on your business.

Your conversion rate is that percentage. Google Analytics works it out per visit rather than per visitor: it calls it the session key event rate and divides the sessions with a key event, such as a purchase, by all sessions. Each change that helps you increase your conversion rate brings in more orders from the same number of visitors.

Which tools track data in your online shop?

If your shop is with us, it has built-in analytics, and Google Analytics gives you detail on how visitors use your site. Used together, they show you what sells and how visitors find their way to it.

Your shop’s built-in analytics

When you create your online shop with us, it comes with built-in analytics. These analytics show you:

• how many people visit your shop and where they come from
• your conversion rate and your revenue
• which products sell well and which don’t
• what your customers do on your site

In our Companion app, you can keep an eye on your website’s statistics. If you have a published Online Shop, the app also shows statistics such as your latest orders, weekly revenue and bestsellers. Which features you see depends on your plan and the website builder you used.

Our Online Shop comes with built-in analytics for your visitors, revenue and bestsellers.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics adds detail such as engagement rate, bounce rate and average engagement time. It also splits your traffic sources by channel and campaign. That tells you whether your social media ads or your newsletter bring in visitors who buy, which helps you decide where to spend your marketing budget.

Getting started is fairly easy, but expect to spend some time learning its reports.

To set up Google Analytics, you create a property in your Google Analytics account, add a data stream for your website and add the Google Analytics code to your site. The property is where the data about your shop is collected, and the data stream is the connection that sends your website’s visits to it. Google Analytics counts a purchase as a key event by default, but it only records your purchases once your shop sends that event. Check your shop system’s settings or help pages to see whether it can send purchases to Google Analytics, and switch this on before you rely on your conversion rate. Once the code is in place, check that your first orders show up. If they don’t, your shop probably isn’t sending the event yet. Ecommerce events aren’t sent automatically, and Google’s help page on setting up ecommerce events shows how to add them to your website or in Google Tag Manager.

When you add a tracking tool to your site, you need to tell your visitors about it, usually in a cookie banner. If your visitors are in the UK, we recommend asking for their consent before Google Analytics tracks them, with the cookie banner that explains what Google Analytics collects and lets visitors choose before it runs. If you use analytics tools, you also generally need a privacy policy that says what happens to your visitors’ data.

Which KPIs matter most for an online shop?

Of all the KPIs, or key performance indicators, start with the conversion rate and the average order value. Together with your traffic, they decide how much you sell, which makes them the most important KPIs for ecommerce. The other KPIs in the table show you why these two go up or down.

Ecommerce conversion rate optimisation in 6 steps

Your conversion rate optimisation strategy is a cycle of six steps: you collect, analyse and compare your figures, make an improvement, test it and measure again. Each round starts from the figures the last one left you with.

1. Collect the data

Before you change anything, note your current figures for a fixed period, for example the last four weeks. Take the KPIs from the table above from both your shop’s analytics and Google Analytics, and use them as your baseline. If the two tools show different figures for the same KPI, compare each tool only with itself.

2. Analyse one area at a time

Next, look for trends and patterns in the data you’ve collected. Focus on one area at a time, such as traffic, engagement or conversions, and follow it over time. Three questions are a good start:

• Did traffic go up or down over the period you noted?
• Did your bounce rate change around something you changed earlier, such as a new design or new prices?
• Which teas sold best, and which traffic source did those orders come from?

3. Compare with your goals and with other shops

Then compare your figures with your own goals and with similar businesses. Whether a bounce rate or a conversion rate is good depends on your industry, so a figure on its own tells you little. Google Analytics offers benchmarking, which shows the median and the typical range of a group of similar businesses next to your own figures. To see it, you switch on the setting Modeling contributions & business insights in your account settings. Then you turn benchmarking on for a metric card in your reports that supports it. A figure well below that range shows you which area to work on in the next step.

4. Make improvements

Once you know where visitors drop off, you can change what holds them back. A customer who can’t work out how to add a product to the basket will probably give up quickly and leave the page. Say the data shows that many visitors to your Assam product page on brewbankteas.co.uk leave without adding anything to the basket. When you open the page on your phone, you see why: the add to basket button sits below a long description.

The fix is a clearer button higher up the page, since a more visible button can improve both your bounce rate and your conversion rate. With enough visitors, you can try the new button out first with an A/B test (step 5), and with fewer, you make the change and compare your figures with your baseline.

Other parts of your shop affect how easily visitors buy too, from the first page they see to the checkout:

• Website speed: pages that load quickly, on a phone too, keep visitors from leaving before they see your products.
• CTA buttons: a button should be easy to see and say what happens next.
• Product descriptions: a good one answers what a buyer wants to know, such as size, flavour or delivery time.
• Product categories: a clear menu helps visitors find a product quickly.
• Internal links: links between related teas and categories help visitors find more to buy.
• Your website’s design and colours: the layout should lead visitors to the next step.
• Checkout: show delivery costs early, offer the payment methods your customers prefer and let them buy without creating an account.
• Trust: show reviews, your returns policy and your contact details where visitors decide to buy.
• Ecommerce SEO: product pages that are easy to find reach people who are already looking for what you sell.
• Web accessibility: everyone should be able to use your shop, including people who use a screen reader.

5. Test a change with an A/B test

An A/B test means showing two versions of a page to different visitors to find out which works better, before you show a change to everyone. To test a dark blue add to basket button on brewbankteas.co.uk against your current green one, you show the new button to one group of visitors while another group still sees the green one. You then keep the button with the higher conversion rate.

To run the test, you need an A/B testing tool that shows each version to its own group of visitors and counts the orders from each. Let the test run for at least one full week, so both versions see the same weekdays, and longer if they haven’t yet had enough orders to compare, and leave the rest of the page as it is in the meantime. If each version gets only a handful of orders in that time, the difference tells you little, and comparing your figures with your baseline is the better route.

Use the same method to find out whether product recommendations on your product pages lead to more orders. Test one change at a time, or you won’t know which change made the difference.

6. Keep measuring

After each change, measure the same KPIs again over a period of the same length, in your shop’s built-in analytics and in Google Analytics. Repeat the cycle regularly, even when a change has worked. Your range, your visitors and the seasons change, so a page that sells well today can sell less next year.

If you’re starting a shop, you can build your online shop with us and take your first baseline from its built-in analytics.