14 Common CRO Mistakes eCommerce Brands Make

On a global scale, improving conversion rates in online stores has become tougher.

Today, there are more eCommerce brands competing for traffic and revenue.    

Therefore, online stores are turning to conversion rate optimizations to increase the efficiency of their marketing spend. 

However, there are many CRO-related articles on the internet. And this has made CRO more of a buzzword than an effective strategy.   

We have listed 14 common CRO mistakes eCommerce brands make and debunked some CRO myths along the way as well. 

The Most Costly CRO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

1. You think CRO is only about increasing traffic 

A lot of companies think they don’t need CRO as they are already doing something about SEO.

Here’s the fundamental difference: SEO is about ranking higher on search results so that when someone searches a related keyword, your website is among the first ones to be visible.

This helps in getting more people to your website. In a nutshell, SEO has to do with increasing your traffic.

At its core, CRO is not about increasing traffic. It is about getting more out of your existing traffic.

It is about making all the necessary improvements on your website so that a larger percentage of your visitors actually complete the purchase that got them to your website in the first place.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

The primary way to do this would be to consider a combined CRO and SEO strategy that can nurture existing traffic and also target new visitors—here’s what we’d recommend:

💡Target high-intent keywords—while “cat food in Georgia” will set you up against many competitors, optimizing for “cat food near me” will certainly give your CRO efforts an upward push

💡Align on-site content with meta descriptions & tags—while this is more applicable for landing pages, how you describe your site in your paid ads need to reflect across your whole store

💡Make your product content as original as possible—this is one of the ways to cut out the noise from competitors and stand apart both in terms of SEO and CRO efforts

2. You assume CRO is ONLY A/B testing

While A/B testing is definitely a very important component, there is more to CRO than just that.

A/B testing ensures that the changes made on a website are based on data, not on opinions or whims.

But there are other crucial stages that must precede and follow A/B testing. Any optimization exercise must begin with funnel analytics.

Based on that, you formulate hypotheses which are then A/B tested. The hypotheses that work are implemented. The ones that don’t work are re-formulated and subjected to further testing and so on. 

What’s being tested is as important as the testing itself. Testing alone isn’t optimization.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

To prevent your business from relying only on A/B testing as a CRO initiative, here’s what you’ll need to:

💡Research to arrive at a hypothesis—look at what action a certain part of your storefront is receiving as clicks, views and scrolls, which can further help you arrive at the elements that may need tweaking and finally zero down on one aspect to define the problem with it and propose a new solution

💡Define customer behavior clearly—since your CRO efforts are essentially about altering current customer behavior to nudge them towards newer actions, you’ll have to define which elements / actions are doing positively and which are performing negatively and why

💡Glean insights from heatmaps & surveys—these methods are crucial in catching customer behavior unfold across key junctures like on the product page, in the cart, post purchase, and look at aspects that enable shoppers to continue on their journey and points of friction that make them fall off

FURTHER READING: 153 A/B Testing Ideas for eCommerce (Homepage, PDP, Cart, Checkout)

3. You expect CRO to be a quick-fix, one-time thing

CRO is a process, it is not a one-time tactic.

The essence of conversion rate optimization is to continuously improve the website’s experience based on data & experimentation.

It is not about changing the color of the CTA button or adding a spin-the-wheel feature.

It is about systematically learning why your visitors are buying (or not buying) and then optimizing your website based on what you learn.

The tactics must be guided by an overarching framework and not be implemented in isolation.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

To make your core CRO efforts successful, your process has to touch the following steps & reiterate where required:

💡Set a clear goal for testing—are you looking to convert more first-time visitors? Or are you trying to optimize micro-conversions so that more macro ones eventually happen as well? Or is the intent to figure out if the multiple touchpoints of customer service are working well or not?

💡Test the parts that can potentially convert the best—be it the pages that have consistently worked or the sections on a page that seem to have received more clicks on others - sometimes it’s about optimizing what’s already working well instead of reinventing the wheel

💡Ensure you’re aiming for statistically significant results—statistical significance reveals if the multiple variants have enough difference to drive conversions - the higher the % of statistical significance, the more confidently you can rely on the rest results

FURTHER READING: Why Are People Adding To Cart But Not Buying?

4. You don’t think failed tests are worth anything

Different hypotheses are A/B tested and the ones that succeed are implemented.

But the ones that fail serve a purpose as well. You get to learn what doesn’t work.

It’s like when Edison found 10000 ways not to make a bulb to arrive at one correct way to do so.

Every failed test is an opportunity to learn.

You come back with a different hypothesis that is to be tested further. As mentioned before, it’s a cyclical process of continuous improvement.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

The way to not make this core CRO error is to look out at some crucial elements across failed tests and see how you can apply the learnings in subsequent ones:

💡Figure out improved variations (than the ones you’re testing)—the point is to look at the variants of your failed tests, measure them against customer behavior and see how they can be made better for later tests

💡Test on fewer pages / more limited audience—while most CRO agencies won’t agree with this, we think after a failed test, a segmented A/B test is what you need - start with larger segments that naturally get better traffic but move towards smaller segments slowly

💡Compare positive & negative A/B test results—since false negatives and positives are very real in eCommerce A/B testing, checking for skews will help you set more reasonable expectations from future tests

5. You presume what works for one website will work for all

Every eCommerce business is a unique brand. The opportunities for optimization, therefore, are unique.

Make sure you keep in mind what is your company about, what is the story you are trying to tell, what is your brand identity, what your goals are etc. while optimizing your website.

You should focus on core principles (e.g. the Call to Action button must stand out from the rest of the page) rather than on tactics (e.g. change the CTA button from green to red).

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

For starters, many eCommerce businesses believe if they test the most high intent elements across their site (including CTAs, hero headers and notification bars,) they’ll be able to improve conversions—since this is untrue, you’ll have to look deeper into:

💡Business goals that are making the test important—for example, while one A/B test may be the need of the hour to help retain return customers, another may target selling more during the peak season 

💡Choose your key testing metrics carefully—without this, the results of the test may seem misleading because you won’t know which metrics to draw insights and inferences from - for example, if you’re an eCommerce brand selling durable products, you may want to consider cart abandonment rate more than a new nutrition brand, which may want to study a metric like scroll depth

💡 The questions the test is supposed to answer—these include what are you trying to find out from the test? Where on your site do you need to conduct the test (and why)? When should the test run that it brings you the most relevant results? Which segment of your audience do you want to study through the test?

FURTHER READING: The Founder's Guide to Customer Journey Map (eCommerce)

6. You don’t know which metrics to track

It’s tempting to think the hard numbers will reveal everything that you need to improve about your optimization efforts.

After all, visitor count, click-through rate, length of visitor session have all been such ever-present phrases, that CRO can be confused to be only this kind of numerical data. 

However, nothing can be farther from the truth.

When CRO is flatly confused to be numbers generated by heatmaps, A/B tests and surveys, another crucial aspect is missed out on. 

Qualitative data. 

The asking of relevant questions and trying to go beneath patterns and trends in numbers represented by quantitative data.

Why one-time buyers don’t come back, why the checkout process is difficult and why many customers abandon their cart all point towards qualitative data. 

And CRO is about quantitative and qualitative data working hand in hand to get a fuller picture on where a business stands, why its customers are behaving in a certain way and what its competitors are able to (or not) achieve & why. 

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

Since your core CRO efforts depend heavily on measuring the right metrics, you can’t afford to go wrong with this—instead do the following to help identify the right metrics:

💡Align with the shopper journey—which stage of the journey and which part of the website you’re running the A/B test on will decide which metric will need to be followed - for example, if you’re running an A/B test on the homepage on non-transactional pieces of content to create trust for TOFu, you may pick a metric like average session time to be measured

💡Track metrics that will inform next steps—while conversion rate is a universal metric tracked across A/B tests, there may be more nuanced metrics like returning customer rate and page views per visit that will offer a more wholesome “big picture” about customer experience and preference

💡Give vanity metrics a miss—while the whole world may be raving about metrics like bounce rate and time on page, the truth is as an eCommerce brand, you get to know nothing new about how your shoppers are engaging with your site in depth from these metrics

FURTHER READING: Seasoned eCommerce Leaders Predict CRO Trends for 2024

7. You are fine copying the websites of big brands

Think how Amazon features a “save for later” option.

Or Sephora offers rewards to join its online community.

Or even how Staples ensures its on-site navigation is top-notch. 

Each of these attributes is worth aspiring for, but copying them in isolation or without a strategy is NOT conversion rate optimization.

We realize how easy it is to think that a brand attracted more customers just because it changed the way its CTA buttons looked and worked. 

While it may be misleading to copy big brand website elements onto your own eStore, it’s not a bad idea to study why they do what they do.

Big brand case studies can offer you a glimpse into how established entities strategize to make their eCommerce brands agile enough to change with the times. 

An excellent example would be how Sephora introduced omnichannel marketing into their mix, thus uplifting how customers experience the brand across online and offline channels. 

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

The goals of no two eCommerce brands will ever be exactly the same at any given point of time, even if they operate within the confines of the same category - which means if you have to veer away from the mistake of copying, you’ll have to:

💡Get a sense of when to A/B test—while established businesses run A/B tests through the year, usually within intervals of a month or little more, you may want to do it when you launch a new product, announce an anniversary sale or actively start cause marketing

💡Learn more about your audience—this is essential to segment and then to create a sample - whether you’re going to run the test on audiences from different countries, or those who buy products from different price ranges, what motivates them will be crucial for setting up effective A/B tests

💡Prioritize what you need to test—creating a framework that sets up elements to be tested one by one is a good idea - just make sure you make the prioritization process dynamic because each test reveals fresh data that can alter the next set of priorities 

FURTHER READING: Marketing Lessons from 10 Great DTC Brands

8. You experiment with every feature

Experiments are a part and parcel of conversion rate optimization.

However, it’s a myth that core CRO is ONLY about experimenting with multiple elements, all at once. 

Testing experiments for conversion rate optimization also need to factor in the type of tests that will work best for a specific scenario.

Usually, neither split testing nor multivariate testing works well in isolation - while the former takes lesser time, the latter helps you glimpse at a greater number of changes. 

Thorough and constant testing (and not whimsical experiments) is often considered to be the key for effective CRO.

‍How to avoid this CRO mistake:

💡 Consider the scenario you’re testing under—is it to make your product page information structure more appealing for both engagement and conversions? Is it to optimize your category pages that also happen to be landing pages that get your ad traffic to visit your site? Based on the scenario, you should be able to zero in on elements that can most closely influence shopper behavior on the action you want them to take

💡 Learn what makes a “bad” A/B test—this includes making comparisons between split tests conducted at disparate times (one during Christmas & one during a winter sale in summer,) making shoppers’ behavior be motivated by different factors 

💡Figure which are the most critical pages & features—align with the customer journey to see which pages are considered most likely before a purchase, email sign-up or membership decision - also look at which aspects on these pages most need to be optimized in order for the shopper to act in a desired manner

9. You use CRO to confirm already formed opinions

All businesses perform to the tunes of certain biases.

And the true role of CRO is to offer insights that can help the business move beyond these biases. 

For example, a business might be operating on a bias that their true target audience is pension-earning 70 year olds (a conservatism bias), while tests might be revealing completely different data. 

In real-time practice often, CRO is used to confirm already-formed opinions instead of transcending them to find deeper truths.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

💡Analyze secondary metrics—while the winning variant is often chosen on the basis of the primary metric, secondary metrics represent those variants that could also potentially be tested for better results - if you’ve run tests with multiple variants, check out how all of them have performed and not just the one that won

💡Perform a breakdown analysis—going by audience segments, devices and what worked with old vs. new users independently to see if it makes sense to apply the winning variant across your audiences

💡Consider other influencing factors—it’s easy to see a great result and reconfirm your original hypothesis even if it’s followed, but we recommend listing all the internal and external factors that could be affecting a test’s results positively or negatively - this could be about seasonality, competitors running better deals and for longer etc. 

FURTHER READING: Data beyond Heatmaps — that top eCommerce brands track

10. You don’t set realistic expectations

CRO is about reducing points of friction that make shoppers drop off, improving persuaders that inspire people to visit your eStore and enhancing hooks that make them engage and convert. 

However, it is commonly believed that CRO always results in dramatic changes.

Let’s say if a company pleasantly finds that their sales have gone up by 40% with their initial CRO efforts, they may believe this will happen every time. 

The crux of the problem here isn’t the belief in magic, but the avoidance that the probability of every test achieving 100% success is super low.

The way out is not to stop believing in CRO but to understand that CRO offers crucial information that then needs to be heeded timely and worked upon without pre-existing biases.

CRO is an iterative process that is constantly trying to match fine-tuned optimization efforts against a dynamic, ever-changing business environment. 

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

💡Focus on quicker wins (alongside tests that are more complex)—it’s easy to overlook the elements that are already performing well enough and put all your focus on that which doesn’t seem to be working at all - instead look for quicker tests & wins around optimizing your site for mobile, improving your product descriptions and taking out distractions from the checkout process

💡Develop a thorough eCommerce CRO checklist—since it’s easy to get lost on the appearances of what competing websites are doing well, it’s best you create a checklist of your own - at Convertcart we suggest that a checklist covers the following crucial aspects across design elements and high intent pages

• Trust
• Ease of navigation
• Ease of filtering
• Ease of change / editing
• Ease of cost calculation
• Mobile responsiveness

💡Deepen your analysis skills with each test—this includes getting a better hang of the CRO tool you use and how it tracks & measures results, getting a sense of how long you need to run a subsequent test given the nature of your audience sample etc. 

FURTHER READING: 33 Founders/Industry Experts Share eCommerce CRO Best Practices

11. You fail to take feedback from ‘real’ users 

Suggested CRO features are usually reviewed by internal teams. And we have witnessed many eCommerce brands make this CRO mistake. 

They roll out features and don’t know if the feature ‘really’ works. 

On the other hand, website visitors take around 0.05 seconds to determine whether they’ll stay or leave. 

Therefore, it’s important to understand what they like and dislike about your website layout and content.  

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

To understand ‘real’ website feedback, you can implement the following core CRO strategies:

💡 Enable a page-specific design and usability feedback form to open as a side widget or a pop-up—it can either be triggered when a visitor is going to close the webpage or when their browsing session passes a certain time limit

💡Monitor website analytics to understand how users engage with your brand—assess the following to get a grasp of what shoppers out there are thinking / doing, check:

• Which web pages are performing well?
• Which web page users usually exit the website at?
• What are the top blogs or resources contributing to conversions?
• How long does a session usually last?
• How many web pages do users visit in a single session?

12. You skip documenting the CRO implementation process

Your team ran a CRO experiment. It either brought in or failed to show any significant results. 

You moved on and tried something different.   

Now, you have a new team. And they seem to be recommending the same strategies. 

When we speak to eCommerce brands about what CRO strategies they have previously used to yield results, most provide vague information. 

In this instance, having detailed documentation can be helpful. 

On the other hand, your CRO team can also look back and see what did and what didn’t work. 

Your team can tweak some of the experiments or try a new tangent to bring more conversions. 

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

💡Create a baseline based on current performance—it’s a good idea to keep historical data as reference as well as the current metrics you’re using to measure performance - depending on these you can create a benchmark for the test to be undertaken

💡Record the insights you glean from competitor research & data—since these will help you create a hypothesis alongside your website’s past data, take a look at elements competitors may be testing often and contextualize it to the time of the year, offers being put up etc. 

💡Track how data will be collected for a specific test—figure out specifics like metrics to be considered (and what they already seem to be indicating about your website performance) as well as analytics tools that offer a peek into user behavioral flow and conversion paths

FURTHER READING: eCommerce Website Optimization: 28 Improvements You Can Make Today

13. You only rely on internal teams 

Most of the time when we speak with eCommerce brands, we get the usual question, 

‘Why should we hire a CRO specialist? We already have an in-house team’. 

When eCommerce brands go through a redesign or a site refresh, internal teams put most of their time and effort into research and design.

They are left with no time left to test and ensure their designs are actually performing well.

An external specialist can provide genuine feedback and analysis regarding the new site designs.

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

While your internal team might be implementing CRO strategies, there are a number of reasons how a specialist can help:

💡 Use a specialist to get a fresh perspective—internal teams consistently look at the same web pages. In this case, it’s easy to overlook obvious CRO opportunities

💡 Lean on a CRO specialist to offer your products in a new way—in-house teams are often well-versed in the product’s USPs and end up writing copy in the same format or using too much jargon

💡 Use external specialists as additional resources—often in-house teams aren’t equipped to handle a store with growing traffic or demand and need an extra set of hands

14. You’re not hiring the right CRO specialist 

Most of the time, eCommerce brands hand off their CRO activities to a third party and only want to see the results and how much revenue was generated.

This is a common CRO mistake across industries. 

However, some agencies implement standard strategies across industries and gain insignificant results.   

How to avoid this CRO mistake:

Asking the right questions will help you avoid this core CRO challenge. 

Here are some questions we recommend:

• What is the conversion optimization process you follow for your business?
• Do you have industry-specific case studies that highlight the results?
• How many experiments do you launch per month?
• How do you handle mobile website optimization?
• Who will handle implementing the test on our website?
• What type of commitment do you require from the internal team?
• How do you determine the success of the project?

FURTHER READING: Hiring a CRO agency: 12 key considerations (and expert advice)

Here's why you need a CRO audit:

98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.

Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.

And this is the problem Convertcart solves.

We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.

How we can help you:

Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.