Happy Sunday! Today I want to talk about some quick and dirty conversion rate optimization tips that I have seen make a big difference. I'll refer to it as CRO to keep it short and sweet. I don't really believe in CRO "hacks" like fake urgency and scarcity with things like countdown timers and the like. I prefer what I call "brand first CRO" where the aim is to improve clarity of messaging, customer experience, and financial outcomes. Here are some things we have done or I have seen that have made a big difference.
1. Added A Returns And Exchanges Page To Our Nav
This was on of the bigger swings that we've had. I saw someone else do this and loved the thought of it. Most brands try to sell more of their stuff by selling the features and benefits harder. Once you do enough "selling", you need to overcome objections or barriers to purchase by educating and doing risk reversal. Many will try to overcome uncertainty by focusing on only the positive. I actually think you should focus on the negatives. What happens if they don't like it? Make them believe there is virtually zero risk from buying. We want them to see that they can get their money back with no hassle if they don't like it. Only about 2% of makeup purchases happen online; for many of our customers, this will be their first time. So they need to know that if they don't like it or if they don't like their shade, it's all good. Check out our page here. This lifted CVR by almost 15%.
2. Offer Amazon Like Shipping Options
Prior to last year, we only offered 1 shipping method if under our threshold, and free shipping over it. Last year we made a change and had some tests that will net us over half a million dollars. We started giving customers the choice of paying extra to get it there faster. What is really cool is that based on a user's IP or address, we can personalize the shipping times we recommend. So instead of having it say xx day like most stores, ours looks like Amazon's where it actually says what day it will arrive.
Now, customers can choose between standard, Faster, and what we call Fastest shipping. We first started offering them, but called them confusing names like Express and Priotity Who knows what that means? But we still saw a lift. So then we decided to give them customer-friendly names and saw an even bigger lift.
This simple feature has led to a massive revenue per session lift for us us, ultimately generating over 500k in contribution margin in a year. When running Meta ads, the offer is always a bigger lever than your ads or ad account, and the same is true for your website. You should be spending a lot of time optimizing your checkout, and shipping price and methods are a huge factor. But unless you have an in house tech team, you'll need some help. We run all of this with Pretty Damy Quick, which I highly highly recommend.
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3. How You Do Social Proof Matters
Not all social proof is created equal. Customers are getting numb to a lot of it, so I implore you to test it. One interesting test we've done recently is testing how we display our number of reviews above the fold on landing pages. Should you display how many reviews you have, the average rating, or both? It's not going to be a one-size-fits-all all. You will need to test it for each product. On one of our top products, we found that showing the number of reviews performed best. But we realized on another landing page for a different product, we were showing the average rating of the reviews. Instead of switching it over to the previous winner, we decided to test it just to be sure. We actually found the opposite worked for this one, and it was significant.
A lot of brands just slap on social proof because they assume it works, but you can be more thoughtful about it. Test different types in areas. Do press logos do better or do customer quotes? It may depend on your demographic, as well as how good your quotes are. Does a wall of customer testimonials or a wall of influencer/ celeb endorsements do better? You've got to test to find out.
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I hope you had a nice and relaxing weekend. And if your Meta performance has been down, know you are not alone! Thanks for reading and supporting.
-Cody