Oddit’s CRO Playbook: 3 Actionable Ways to Optimize Your eCom Site Experience

Oddit’s CRO Playbook: 3 Actionable Ways to Optimize Your eCom Site Experience

Improving conversion rates is hard – even for the largest brands in the world. With merchants competing to have the most eye-catching hero images and exciting packaging, it can seem impossible to get an edge. Fortunately, there are subtler ways to increase your conversion rate.

That's why the Nostra team sat down with Shaun Brandt, Co-Founder at Oddit. He headed an agency for 10 years that focused on simplifying complex user journeys to improve conversion and save time. 

Drawing on his UX and conversion rate optimization (CRO) expertise, Shaun provided tips for eCom brands to filter complex ideas into usable knowledge and increase purchases while they're at it. Here's what we cover:

• Offering the right product visuals to increase conversion
• Why site speed tools are a better investment than website design
• How to start understanding what's dragging down your site speed

3 Tactical Steps to Optimize Your Website Experience – and Boost CRO

Shaun shares a couple of business fundamentals to improve user experiences – aimed at increasing sales. 

1. Don't assume Shopify templates are the best fit for your brand

Since Shopify is such a trusted name, brands with Shopify storefronts assume their website templates are the reliable, correct choice. In reality, many of their themes aren't very fast. 

Brands that work with Nostra discover that unfortunate truth rather quickly, and they may also find that the site's user experience is slow. Just because a template looks cool doesn't mean it's designed with best practices that suit every size of eCom store. 

If you're a small or mid-sized business looking to scale and build a customer base, your site shouldn't be designed like Nike's – they have such a prominent brand name that their user journey and experience aren't priorities for them. Simply put, they don't need those things to increase conversion. 

That's why building a swift, user-friendly website is so vital for smaller brands. Doing so builds trust, which leads to conversion. 

2. Create a profoundly simple customer journey 

Every time a barrier increases user experience complexity, a customer is less likely to make it to the point of purchase. So, simplify the customer journey to keep users focused on your product. 

Sometimes, smaller and mid-size brands over-explain and use too much marketing copy. This strategy works for massive brands, but it's not what you should do. Instead, ask yourself this question about each site element, "Is this making the path to purchase simpler or more difficult?" 

3. Offer complete product visualization on your site

Shaun often finds that brands struggle to visualize their product for online shoppers. 

For example, if a customizable sign company offers thousands of variations of signs, they need to display example signs in a wide variety of situations. By enabling users to envision products in real scenarios, they broaden the use cases for their products.

This is critical because online, it's difficult for customers to imagine diverse product contexts. This tip extends to product measurements as well. From art prints to clothes, provide a comparison image of the product's size. Without a reference point, you're operating under the assumption that users will just understand your numbers – but if they navigate offsite to google the measurements, they're less likely to convert. 

Anytime you push a user offsite to find information, their chances of purchasing decrease. 

Why You Should Use a Site Speed Tool – Even If You're Already Doing Well

If you're already acing your fundamentals and pulling in serious cash, that's great. Even so, you should consider layering in a tool like Nostra to improve conversion and site speed. Here are Shaun's reasons why:

1. Centralize the user experience

When you're drawing traffic from a wide variety of locations, everyone has a different site experience. You want to ensure that's not the case and that every user feels the same snappy site speed. Shaun has seen the monetary improvement realized from Nostra time and time again.

2. Prioritize speed over visuals

Companies often don't care to invest in site speed improvements because they'd rather revamp the visuals on their site. It's human nature to do so – site speed doesn't provide visual enhancements, so understanding the difference it makes is more abstract. 

However, remind yourself that upping site speed is the number one method for driving up conversion. No matter what your site looks like, your conversion will suffer if your site speed is low. 

Invest in Your Site Speed – For an Almost Immediate Conversion Bump

If you haven't already, here are some quick steps to clue you in on your site speed (and to point you in the direction of Nostra, if need be):

1. Run Google’s PageSpeed Insights and identify the top three variables harming your site speed. Shaun notes that those three issues are most likely the JavaScript from past apps, large image sizes, and not lazy loading. 
2. Fix any processes that you find lacking. This could be resizing your images or hiring a better developer who doesn't cut corners so that the same issues don't pop up in the future. 

From there, you're ready to seriously elevate every aspect of your site's speed. To stand out in the CRO sphere, consider working with Nostra – with us, you can drastically reduce latency and improve Site Performance Scores. 

No need to hesitate! Book a free demo today. 

‍