Effective conversion rate optimization is built on a foundation of deep and thorough research. Before any experiments can run, it is crucial to understand where your efforts will have the greatest impact.
Identifying the right areas to focus on requires a comprehensive approach to research, blending data-driven insights with an understanding of user behavior. By starting with a solid research framework, you set the stage for experiments that are not only strategic but also capable of driving significant improvements in conversion rates.
Understanding which areas to optimize is not just about recognizing obvious flaws—it is about uncovering subtle opportunities for enhancement that might otherwise go unnoticed. This requires tapping into a variety of research methods, each providing a different lens through which to view your website’s performance.
From quantitative analysis to user interviews, each method contributes to a holistic understanding of your audience and their interactions with your site. By integrating these insights, you can create a roadmap for experimentation that is both data-informed and user-centric, ensuring your optimization efforts lead to tangible, meaningful results.
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Types of Research
1. Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative analysis forms the backbone of data-driven decision-making in CRO. You can identify patterns, trends, and areas of concern by analyzing numerical data on your website. Tools like Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics are indispensable in this process, providing a wealth of data to guide your strategy.
Start by examining your sales funnels to track user movement from the homepage to the checkout page. Identifying points with the highest drop-off rates can reveal where your site might be losing potential customers.
Additionally, analyze your top-converting pages and landing pages to understand what’s working well and why. Dive into metrics like average products per session and frequently bought together items—this data can help you craft effective upsell strategies.
Pay close attention to site search data, as it often highlights unmet customer needs or interests. Always remain vigilant for anomalies in your data, as these can be indicators of underlying issues that need attention.
These suggestions only scratch the surface of what is possible with quantitative analysis. The capabilities for data research are virtually endless, offering insights that can continually refine and improve your conversion strategies.
2. Qualitative Analysis
While quantitative analysis tells you where the problems are, qualitative analysis helps you understand why those problems exist.
Tools such as Clarity, Hotjar, and FullStory provide deep insights into user behavior through features like click and scroll heatmaps, session recordings, and more. These tools allow you to visualize how users interact with your site, making it easier to identify friction points that quantitative data alone might not reveal.
By delving deeper, you can analyze behaviors like dead clicks, rage clicks, and excessive scrolling—actions that often signal user frustration.
Observing user navigation on PDPs can help you identify what barriers prevent users from adding items to their carts or cause them to leave the site altogether. Session replays are particularly valuable, offering a direct view of the user experience that removes much of the guesswork from your optimization efforts.
3. Best Practices
If you are seeking quick insights and actionable ideas for experimentation, best practices can serve as a useful guide. At Prismfly, we have hundreds of ideas that have worked well in the past by industry and other factors we leverage when client’s work with us for CRO services.
However, it is important to recognize that not all best practices will be suitable for your specific site or audience. Implementing these strategies without testing can sometimes lead to suboptimal results.
When in doubt, always conduct A/B testing to ensure that any changes you make positively impact your conversion rates.
4. Customer Surveys
Customer surveys are a powerful tool for gathering direct feedback from your audience. By asking customers about their likes, dislikes, and any hesitations they have before making a purchase, you can identify key areas for improvement.
Real-time feedback from actual users is incredibly valuable, providing a rich source of ideas for testing and optimization. Well-crafted surveys can capture actionable insights that significantly influence your CRO strategy.
5. Customer Support Tickets
Customer support tickets offer a wealth of information about the real issues your customers are facing. These tickets highlight pain points that may not be apparent from analytics alone, making them an invaluable resource for identifying areas of improvement.
For businesses with a high volume of support tickets, manually reviewing each one can be overwhelming. However, leveraging AI tools to analyze and summarize this data can streamline the process. By identifying the most common issues reported by customers, you can focus your experimentation efforts on areas that will have the greatest impact.
6. User Interviews
Conducting user interviews allows you to connect with your customers on a deeper level, offering insights that go beyond what quantitative or qualitative data can provide. These interviews not only reveal major areas for improvement but also uncover subtle details and emotional responses might otherwise go unnoticed.
Asking customers to complete specific tasks and then discussing their experiences can provide a richer understanding of how your site meets—or fails to meet—their needs.
Additionally, user interviews demonstrate to your customers that you value their input, which can enhance brand loyalty and improve your overall customer experience.
7. Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic evaluation is a systematic approach to identifying usability issues based on established principles or "heuristics". By scoring your site on various heuristics—such as Trust, Discovery, Anxiety, Friction, Messaging, and Consistency—you can pinpoint areas that need improvement.
Low scores in certain heuristics indicate where you should prioritize your experimentation efforts. Beyond individual experiments, heuristic evaluations are also essential for overall user experience optimization, ensuring that your site meets high usability standards.
Check out our article on Heuristic Evaluation and why it is important for a comprehensive overview.
Prismfly leverages a proprietary evaluation matrix designed for ecommerce and tailored to revenue growth. By pairing our ranking method with periodic expert human reviews, we are able to track performance overtime, measuring optimization program effectiveness, even if metrics remain consistent or drop due to changes in advertising, market conditions, or other external factors unrelated to onsite UX.
8. Competitor Analysis
In the competitive landscape of ecommerce, keeping a close eye on your competitors is essential. Competitor analysis helps you understand what other players in your industry are doing well and where they are falling short. Conducting a site audit of your competitors allows you to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses.
Applying heuristic evaluation to competitor sites can also help you identify specific areas—such as navigation, content, or user flow—where they may be outperforming you. This analysis provides valuable context for your experimentation strategy, enabling you to stay ahead of the competition.
Conclusion
Research is the foundation of effective CRO, guiding everything from identifying focus areas to implementing impactful experiments. The methods discussed—quantitative and qualitative analysis, best practices, customer surveys, support tickets, user interviews, heuristic evaluation, and competitor analysis—are essential tools in this process. Yet, these are just the starting points.
The potential for research is vast, and exploring new angles will keep your optimization efforts both innovative and effective.
A comprehensive research approach not only highlights areas for improvement but also deepens your understanding of user behavior and needs. This understanding is key to creating a more engaging and efficient user experience.
By staying curious and open to new insights, you will be better positioned to make data-driven decisions that drive lasting conversion rate improvements and overall business success.
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