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DEEP DIVE WITH IBRAHIM

_{Does CRO matter? And should you care?}

Happy Wednesday!

Hope you’ve been having a great week so far. I just returned home last night from Goa, so still on a jet lag as I’m writing this early morning, but I had a lot of fun for 5 days!

So today’s email is all about conversion rate optimization, also known as CRO. As a reminder, much of the insights in this email come from the work I do for Peel Away and some of the other brands I’ve worked for or work with currently. Every brand is different, but I do my best to make sure everything here is applicable to you. You can always reply to this email or use this form if you have further questions or want to keep jamming on CRO!

Alright, let’s get into it..

Why Does CRO Matter?

First, I want to start by talking about why CRO really matters. Ask yourself, if you could only change one metric about a DTC business that’s not contribution profit or ROAS (return on ad spend), what would it be? I’d vote for higher conversion rates.

Think about it this way. Most of your marketing dollars in DTC are likely going to be spent on ads and acquisition. If you spend 50% of your total annual budget on driving traffic to your website or LPs, wouldn’t you want the highest CVR possible? Let’s say you are a brand that spends $1M per year on digital ads. With a $2 CPC on a $1M in spend, you would drive 500K paid visits to your site.

If your site had a 1% conversion rate from that paid traffic, you would have acquired 5000 customers from paid ads that year. But, if you could find a way to increase your CVR to 2% or 5%, you would 5X your orders without spending a single dollar more on ads. You could drive the exact same amount of traffic, but achieve double, triple, or more in total sales.

To me, spending time trying to improve a brand’s conversion rate is one of the few levers that can dramatically change the trajectory of a business overnight. I have personally seen this happen so many times. Especially for brands with higher amounts of traffic, a small improvement can mean an extra 6 figures in revenue in just a few days.

This is why I’m so nerdish about CRO. However, It’s all part of the “TRACE framework” for CRO, which I’ll talk more about below. It was just obvious to me that whatever a brand could do to increase CVR, was worth it and that every fraction of a percentage point increase in CVR really matters for every brand, unless your ad spend budget is too low.

Think of it this way—If your CRO expenses would give you better net returns, it makes sense for you, but if your ad spend budget is too low, such that, even after improving CVR, your returns aren’t enough to cover the investment in CRO, it’s not the right time yet to invest money in CRO, but you can definitely do what you can yourself or use the existing resources to keep improving your CVR bit by bit.

The Importance of Data in CRO

The other thing that I want to talk about when it comes to CRO is the importance of data. Basically, every “best practice” or tactic that someone says that they believe can increase your conversion rate has to be backed up by data. That “data” might also not accurately represent what specifically works for your brand. One test that failed with Brand 1 may have very successful outcomes for Brand 2.

At the end of the day, CRO is all about making educated guesses regarding what might improve conversion rates, running the A/B test, reviewing the data, and allowing the results to speak for themselves. Like everything else in marketing, it’s a constant game of testing and iteration and then refreshing your tactics and trying again once performance declines over time.

When doing CRO on an existing brand, the first place I look is typically heat maps (ideally using Microsoft Clarity, for free) since they provide the most valuable information for what to change on a brand’s site or LP. Shopify will tell you your sitewide CVR as well as CVR by traffic source, device, product, and page, but only heatmaps from a service like Microsoft Clarity can show you detailed analytics of real user sessions and what’s actually happening when users visit your page.

The Benefits of Heatmaps

As I’ve written about before, I love heatmaps, and I’ve probably watched thousands of user session recordings from Clarity at this point. Some things you can see right away for improvement, and others you just watch as a user tries to make sense of a section or can’t seem to understand how to move forward, and you can pick up ideas for tests.

Within heatmaps, you can see:

• Click Maps: These show where users are clicking on your page. They show you what sections of your site or what buttons/CTAs are attracting attention, what a user considers clickable, and whether they're finding what they're looking for. Remember, high click areas can also reveal what is called a “dead click,” or areas where users might be confused or trying to navigate to something that is a broken link or broken piece of the flow.

•  Scroll-Depth Maps: Scroll maps display how far down the page users are scrolling before they click or bounce. This helps in understanding how much of your content is actually being seen. As a rule of thumb, I find that most users from cold or ad traffic only scroll 30-50% down the page. This is why making your offer super clear upfront is so important. Also, you use the scroll map data to see where users typically bounce, which also tells you what you might need to change. You can remove or change that section or re-write the copy to increase average session time and hopefully, CVR.

•  Mouse Movement Maps: For desktop, these maps track where the mouse moves on the screen, which basically shows you where the user’s attention is focused. Mouse movement maps often closely resemble eye-tracking studies, providing insights into what users are looking or reading on your LP. I typically find that mouse movement maps follow an F-shaped pattern going from left to right, down, left to right, then down again. It tells me how to structure the page and where I should place key info and CTAs.

• Heat Maps for Different Devices: Heat maps can also be segmented by device type (desktop, tablet, mobile), allowing you to understand how user interaction varies across devices. This is important for optimizing your responsive designs.

• Individual Session Recordings: While not a heat map in the traditional sense, tools like Clarity also offer session recordings that show individual user journeys through your website. IMO, this provides the most context to the patterns you see in the heat map analytics. It’s always super interesting to see how someone navigates your site. Watching these will give you tons of data-driven and intuitive insights on what part of the flow might be broken that you need to update or fix.

Heatmap and user session data are the best places to look when making site changes for CRO.

The TRACE Framework and Considering The Full Funnel Experience:

The next thing to discuss when it comes to CRO is what I like to call the TRACE framework. This stands for:

• Technology

• Reporting

• Audience

• Creative

• Experience

It’s my last macro principle for this email before I dive into some tactics below. The main takeaway is that the real CRO is about the full-funnel customer journey. It starts with the audience and who you are targeting. Then, it progresses to the creative/ads that you are serving to that audience, which then leads to the experience (typically your landing page or PDP) that drives the final sale.

The best CRO experts don’t just look to optimize a website. They look at the full funnel experience from who you are targeting, on which channel, with what creative and copy, that leads to which landing page, to sell what product, that is explained or presented in what way, to achieve the sale.

It’s all very interconnected, and each piece of the funnel from TRACE can make a big difference to CVRs. My general rule of thumb is that the more specific you can be across the TRACE funnel, the higher your CVR will be.

For example, instead of targeting everyone, try a campaign targeting 40-60-year-old men, in a specific geo, with a specific offer and ad creative that will be relevant to that audience. Then match the landing page to that ad creative to give the most seamless and targeted experience possible.

For the record, it’s typically not possible/realistic to do this for every product, but you could start with optimizing your TRACE funnel for your top 2-3 best-selling SKUs based on the audience, creative, and offer to see if it increases CVR.

Testing multiple different campaigns and angles for the hero SKU that all follow their own ACE framework is typically the best way to increase CRO. At the end of the day, as I said above, it’s all about making a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis, and seeing if it works. My opinion is that the TRACE framework is the best way to think about CRO, and then A/B testing with that in mind is how you achieve a higher CVR.

General Best Practices

Now here’s where I want to drop a bunch of CRO best practices to end the email. As a reminder, these are helpful tips and tricks that might improve CVR, but until you run the test for yourself, you won’t know. That said, these are typically good places to start.

1. Optimize your entire campaign across mobile first. Write copy for mobile, optimize the video or static ad for mobile, and optimize the LP experience for mobile (primarily focusing on the above-the-fold offer and CTA). The reason for this is that the majority of paid social traffic will be coming to you from mobile. It’s just a good rule of thumb when thinking about funnel design and CRO.

2. Focus on page speed load times. I use Replo and Nostra to ensure near-instantaneous page load times. There have been many, many studies that show that every second a user has to wait for a page to load, the more likely they are to bounce.

3. Use heatmap tools. As I mentioned above, click and scroll depth maps are the best source of truth to understand where users are bouncing and what on your site might be confusing to them or what you need to change. It’s the first place I look for an existing brand before making changes to their LP. If you use Microsoft Clarity, then you’ll also get all the insights from watching user session recordings.

4. Use the TRACE framework. Whenever you think about CRO, start with the audience, then the creative, and then the site experience. Make it as interconnected and seamless as possible to increase CVR. Run the test, analyze the results, and figure out how to move forward.

5. Include social proof. Reviews and testimonials are one of the biggest levers imaginable to increase CVR. A positive review is just one form of a risk reversal. If other customers are happy, then a new visitor feels like they will be happy with the purchase too.

6. Use other well-known risk reversals. These are things like a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, free, no-hassle returns for orders over $50 dollars, etc. This gives customers more peace of mind to click the buy button.

7. Reduce the total number of clicks to purchase. Again, there are many studies that show every new click dramatically increases bounce rates. Aim to have every product on the site be purchasable in 2-3 clicks or less.

8. Lead with your best offer first. If you are running an important promo or discount, feature it front and center on your site or LP. Additionally, if your hero product has 1000+ 5-star reviews, feature it first on the site! Give yourself the best chance to succeed by leading with the highest and best offer on your site or LP.

9. Start with copywriting. It’s really amazing how much copywriting affects performance across the entire funnel. Changing the copy on your ads and LP can be the biggest lever to increase CVR. You might not need any other changes beyond just updating the copy, angles, and positioning itself.

10. Use large product images with bright colors to draw attention. This is pretty straightforward. You typically only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention and lead them through your on-site journey to make a sale. Produce the best creative possible to get this done.

11. Make discounts visible. If you have a product description, highlight the discount so that a consumer sees it immediately. Don’t bury the lead.

12. Try an off-brand “add to cart” button. You don’t need to go overboard here, but try a button color that will stand out from everything else on the site. It may incentivize more clicks. That said, to know for sure, you just have to run the test.

13. Declutter your collections pages. Simplicity wins in marketing and advertising. My general framework is that a 10-year-old or your grandma needs to be able to navigate your site successfully. Keep this in mind when designing the UI/UX. Make it as simple as possible for them to browse and buy.

14. Have a global checkout button that follows you around on site. Always make it seamless to add to your cart or check out in one extra click, no matter where you are on the site.

15. Treat the cart page as its own landing page. Include the same risk reversals, reviews, testimonials, etc. This is your final challenge for conversion, and adding all of the same tactics to the cart can increase CVR.

16. Use icons to explain complex info quickly and save space.

17. If you have a video on your site, look at the heat map and click map data to see if people are actually watching it! If they aren't, consider a well-designed image or simple animation instead.

18. Use before and after comparison charts. The goal of CRO is to answer all of the questions a potential customer might have so they feel confident in buying. Using comparison charts is one of the best tools I’ve found to get visitors over the edge.

19. Speak in benefits. Not just value props. Value props are features like a product being non-GMO or organic. Benefits are how this product changes your life, like telling you it will help you achieve clear skin or make you more confident to approach the man/woman you like, etc. Benefits sell more than value props and features do.

20. Lastly, measure everything. Look at each CRO optimization as a test. Measure to see if it works over a defined period. If it doesn’t, be willing to follow the data and move on to the next experiment to raise your CVR.

These pointers should be a great place to start with.

What are some of the go-to optimizations that you like to make when it comes to CRO? How do you know if/when a new test is working, and what do you define as statistically significant for a good result? I’d love to know! You can use this form to share your responses.

Alright folks, that’s it for today!

PIXII

Pixii AI creates compelling ads and social posts in 1 minute. Unlike other tools, its designs are editable and on-brand.

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