Us digital marketers are a paranoid bunch. Or perhaps I’m just projecting. Either way, if you’ve had your ear to the proverbial ground over the past 6 months you’ll have no doubt heard the rumblings that conversion rates are plummeting across both geographies and industries.
But do the facts support the fear?
Let’s take a look.
So are conversion rates dropping?
Yes they are. I didn’t build much suspense there did I? Since Q2 2021, conversion rates have dropped an average of 8% globally. If we get a touch more granular, that’s a 20% drop from all social traffic and 12% fall from search traffic. My source? Kibo’s Q2 Benchmark Report. But it doesn’t take much scratching beneath the surface to find this echoed across a multitude of varied sources. If you’re an SEO, Paid Search or CRO marketer responsible for the conversion performance of a large number of sites, you may have been noticing the downward pressure yourself.
Here are the global averages by funnel stage and how they’ve fared over the last 12 months.
This trend is not looking great!
But it’s not all bad news… kind of. Average Order Values and transaction volumes are on the rise, so Ecommerce is still growing. It’s just that it’s getting more difficult and return on ad spend (or ROAS) is declining. Of course, these are sweeping averages, there are always exceptions that buck the trend, and the real gold lies amongst the details (we’ll get to that).
What’s causing it?
Take your pick of macro forces. Inflation turning more customers into value shoppers? A post covid return to an in-store shopping preference (or at least making the final purchase decision surrounded by good old brick and mortar)? Heighted customer expectations due to increasing sophistication of competition? Stock outs from global supply chain chaos? Clearly there is no shortage of possible culprits.
And I’ll admit, it can be tempting to either fall into a funk of resigned hopelessness when these forces seem overwhelming and beyond one’s influence, or worse, to throw money at the problem, deploying tactics and tech without developing a disciplined, fully informed strategy.
What can you do?
conversion rate, now is the time to pause and revisit your strategy from the ground up.
Quick recent case study of a client that bucked the trend.
A recent client in the fashion industry made 5 simple but strategic recommended changes to their site – based on our research – and went from a 0.72% conversion rate to 1.46% within 2 months – that’s a 202.8% increase from the same amount of traffic. Were we surprised? Not at all.
Back to it. Revisiting your strategy should include steps such as eliminating technical bugs across devices, ensuring your analytics data is truthful and helpful, keeping up to date with best UX/UI and Conversion practices, updating your customer research, A/B testing, and deploying personalisation and customer engagement strategies. By not skipping any steps, you’ll be able to buck the trend and maintain a high converting experience that delights your customers, and keeps you ahead of your competitors.
That may sound like a lot to do, and it is. And that’s why we are here to help. Our team has focussed on pure CRO since 2014. We’ve run over 350+ major CRO programs, conducted over 10,500+ tests and completed over 8,500+ hours of customer research. We’ve delivered industry leading results across all major verticals, with major global and Australian brands.
If you’re concerned about your falling conversion rates and are not sure where to begin, have a chat with us. We’d love to learn about your current situation and help you understand how you can achieve your growth targets without increasing ad spend and improving your return on ad spend. Simply email me at neill.m@crobar.com.au or book a time to chat here.
