You’re already driving traffic to your website, right? Through SEO, paid campaigns, social media, all that good stuff.
But here’s the question: how much of that traffic actually converts? If your answer isn’t “enough,” then it’s time to talk Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).
CRO isn’t about driving more visitors. It’s about getting more from the visitors you already have.
By analysing user behaviour, removing friction, and testing small but powerful tweaks, you can dramatically improve the performance of every page on your site.
Think of it as upgrading your store layout online, not by adding aisles, but by rearranging what’s already there so people buy faster and happier.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the systematic process of improving your website and user experience to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired action like making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a form.
In other words, it’s about understanding why your visitors behave the way they do and using that insight to remove friction and motivate action.
It blends behavioural psychology, data analytics, UX design, and copywriting to guide users toward the outcome you want, while giving them a smoother, more relevant experience.
The formula is simple:
Conversion rate = (Number of conversions ÷ Total number of visitors) × 100
If your website generates 300 purchases from 10,000 visitors, your conversion rate is 3%.
Tracking this metric is crucial because it’s the baseline for all your CRO efforts.
You can measure it through Google Analytics, GA4, or your ecommerce CMS dashboard. Each tool allows you to define specific conversion events, such as “add to basket,” “form submission,” or “checkout completion.”
Analysing the conversion rate across different channels (SEO, social ads, or email) helps you see where visitors are most likely to take action and where your funnel needs work.
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The average ecommerce conversion rate is typically between 2.5% and 3% (source: Shopify).
That said, benchmarks are relative. A luxury brand might be happy with 1%, while a fast-fashion site expects over 4%.
It depends on product type, price sensitivity, and customer journey complexity.
More revealing still: according to Sébastien Tortu (Boost Conversion, Loyoly Talks), 50% of visitors never see a product, and only 12% of those who do add it to their basket.
This means that half of your traffic never even reaches the product stage, a glaring gap and a goldmine for CRO. The lesson? Before chasing new visitors, make sure your existing ones actually see what you sell.
CRO is the easiest lever for profitability. Instead of pouring more money into ads, you get better results from the same traffic.
Improving your conversion rate by even 0.5% can translate into thousands in additional revenue per month, especially for high-volume sites.
This makes CRO one of the most efficient ways to increase your marketing ROI and protect your P&L in a volatile acquisition landscape.
Every user session costs you, whether through ad spend, organic SEO, or email marketing. CRO ensures those costs pay off by maximising the value of each visit.
A visitor who bounces is a missed opportunity, but one who converts represents full ROI on your acquisition effort.
In a world where attention spans are shorter than ever, CRO helps ensure that users see something relevant, fast, and frictionless, so they stick around long enough to buy.
When your site conversion rate improves, your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) decreases automatically.
That means your business earns more per visit without raising spend.
The budget you save can then be reinvested in loyalty programmes, post-purchase engagement, or SEO content, compounding your results over time.
Put simply, CRO doesn’t just make traffic more profitable; it makes your business more sustainable.
👉 Want to learn more about the CAC ? Read this.
CRO doesn’t stop at the “Buy now” button. A smooth, personalised experience increases the odds that your customer will come back.
Post-purchase emails, loyalty rewards, and UGC collection are natural extensions of a well-optimised funnel.
Each of these touchpoints strengthens brand trust, extends customer lifetime value (CLTV), and builds a loop of repeat conversions that continuously fuels growth.
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You can’t optimise for everyone, and you shouldn’t try.
Knowing exactly who your ideal customer is (demographics, motivations, buying triggers) allows you to shape both your copy and your design around what truly matters to them.
Using segmentation tools in your CRM or Google Analytics audience reports helps uncover key insights: where users come from, how long they stay, and what content drives their attention.
Once you understand their journey, you can tailor every detail, from CTAs to page layout, to guide them smoothly toward conversion.
Your website copy is the bridge between curiosity and conversion.
Each sentence should reduce doubt, reinforce value, and inspire confidence.
Avoid vague promises or marketing fluff; focus on clarity, benefits, and relevance.
Text-based CTAs like “Get my offer” or “See how it works” often perform better than generic buttons, especially when placed near high-attention zones.
And remember: every popup or banner adds friction. If it doesn’t serve the user, it probably hurts your conversion optimisation efforts.
A good layout tells a story. It guides the visitor’s eye, highlights value, and leads naturally to action.
Think of your website layout as an invisible salesperson: the order of images, text blocks, and CTAs must match how users make decisions.
Use whitespace strategically, keep visual consistency, and test different CTA positions (top vs. bottom).
Even small tweaks, like moving a product image closer to a CTA, can create measurable conversion uplifts.
And never underestimate accessibility: a confusing layout alienates users faster than slow loading times.
A clear conversion funnel visualises the path from awareness to checkout.
By analysing where users drop off (home page, product page, or cart) you can identify friction points to fix first.
Tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Microsoft Clarity are perfect for this.
They highlight exit rates, session durations, and click maps that reveal hidden UX issues.
Once you’ve mapped the funnel, prioritise high-impact areas, the 20% of pages driving 80% of lost conversions.
Numbers show you what happens; behaviour analysis tells you why.
Combine quantitative data (bounce rate, time on page) with qualitative insights (user recordings, on-site polls).
If many users abandon after reading reviews, maybe your delivery info isn’t clear.
If they scroll halfway down and exit, your CTA might not stand out.
Understanding user intent helps you craft better hypotheses and more meaningful tests.
Each CRO test should be built on a specific, measurable assumption.
For instance: “Reducing checkout fields from 8 to 4 will increase conversions by 10%.”
A good hypothesis links a friction point to an expected behavioural improvement.
Document each test clearly : what you changed, why, and how success is measured.
That’s how you build a scalable CRO process instead of a series of random experiments.
A/B testing is the core of any CRO strategy.
Test headlines, button colours, imagery, and page structure, but one variable at a time.
Complement this with landing page experiments (for campaigns or specific audiences) and personalisation tools to adapt content dynamically.
Modern platforms like Optimizely, VWO, or Convert allow you to deploy and analyse tests quickly.
Done right, these experiments don’t just boost conversions, they teach you how your audience thinks.
👉 Discover how to create effective landing pages.
Once your experiments are live, measuring performance is what turns data into action.
Tracking results isn’t about vanity metrics; it’s about identifying what actually moves the needle for your conversion rate optimisation strategy.
Here are the 5 essential CRO KPIs every ecommerce brand should track and understand, not just monitor.
ARPU measures the average revenue generated per visitor over a specific period.
It’s calculated as:
Total revenue ÷ Total number of unique visitors.
This KPI reveals the monetary efficiency of your traffic.
If ARPU rises after a CRO experiment, it means your users aren’t just converting more, they’re spending more too.
It’s particularly useful for comparing the impact of different campaigns, audiences, or acquisition channels.
For example, if your paid traffic has a lower ARPU than organic, you may be overinvesting in ads that don’t attract high-value buyers.
A solid CRO strategy doesn’t just increase the conversion rate, it lifts ARPU by improving upsells, cross-sells, and AOV.
The product page view rate measures the percentage of visitors who actually reach a product page during their session.
It’s a key visibility metric, showing whether your navigation, search, and category pages effectively lead users to what they’re looking for.
If only half your visitors see a product (as Sébastien Tortu points out on Loyoly Talks), that’s a major leak in your funnel.
By improving filters, product discovery features, and homepage CTAs, you can increase this rate, which directly impacts your site conversion rate.
Think of it as the “entry ticket” to conversion: no product view = no sale.
The add-to-cart rate shows how many visitors who view a product actually take the first tangible conversion action, adding an item to their basket.
It’s a strong proxy for purchase intent.
If this rate is low, the problem likely lies in product perception : poor photography, weak descriptions, unclear value proposition, or lack of reassurance (delivery info, returns, reviews).
By A/B testing product page elements, such as CTA placement, copy, or image layout, you can raise this rate significantly.
According to data from Boost Conversion, the average add-to-cart rate sits around 12%; anything above 15% means your page is doing its job.
Once this metric improves, you’ve effectively optimised the mid-funnel.
Your cart abandonment rate measures how many users add items but never complete checkout.
This is where most ecommerce businesses bleed revenue, often silently.
A high abandonment rate usually means something in your checkout process feels complicated, risky, or unclear.
Common culprits?
Hidden shipping costs, mandatory account creation, poor mobile UX, or lack of reassurance about returns and delivery.
Reducing friction here, through guest checkout, clear progress bars, or trust signals, can drastically improve final conversion rates.
It’s also worth setting up automated cart recovery emails or push notifications to bring those users back.
This KPI is the heartbeat of your bottom-of-funnel CRO efforts.
This KPI tells you which entry points actually generate money, not just traffic.
It combines both acquisition and conversion insights by measuring how much revenue each landing page contributes.
Calculated as:
Total revenue generated by sessions starting on that page ÷ Number of sessions that started there.
It helps you identify your real top performers, the pages that attract qualified visitors and convert them.
If a page drives a lot of visits but low revenue, it may rank well in Google but fail to meet user intent.
Conversely, a high-revenue landing page is a perfect candidate for SEO expansion, CRO scaling, or paid campaign duplication.
In short, this KPI bridges the gap between CRO and SEO, showing how search performance translates into actual profit.
Once you’ve analysed these 5 KPIs, document everything: what worked, what didn’t, and why.
CRO isn’t a one-off sprint, it’s a continuous process of testing, learning, and improving.
👉 For French speakers: watch this Loyoly Talks extract where Sébastien Tortu explains these 5 CRO KPIs in detail
Successful CRO relies on the right tech ecosystem.
Your stack should help you observe, measure, test, and automate improvements.
Together, they help you build a continuous improvement loop, where insights from testing directly inform UX design, copywriting, and acquisition strategy.
Your value proposition must answer three questions immediately: What do you offer? Why is it valuable? Why should I trust you?
Place it above the fold, using short, direct language and clear visuals.
Behavioural insight: users decide in under 8 seconds if a page is worth their time, clarity beats creativity.
Test different formulations and measure scroll depth to find what resonates.
👉 For French speakers: here’s a Loyoly Talks excerpt on how to find your brand’s unique value proposition.
People trust people. Displaying reviews, testimonials, and UGC close to CTAs adds emotional reassurance.
Include trust badges (secure payment, free returns, delivery guarantees) where users make decisions.
Behavioural insight: uncertainty is one of the top 3 reasons users don’t convert. Social proof removes it instantly.
Combine text-based testimonials with photos or star ratings for maximum impact.
If users can’t find what they need, they’ll leave, fast.
Simplify menus, use clear labelling, and reduce the number of clicks to reach a product.
Behavioural insight: frustration is fatal; every extra step increases bounce rate.
Heatmaps can reveal dead zones and confusing elements. Fix them to increase site conversion rate without adding new content.
CTAs are your digital salespeople, they must be obvious and persuasive.
Use verbs that indicate value (“Get my discount”) rather than generic ones (“Submit”).
Behavioural insight: contrast and proximity matter, users click what stands out visually and contextually.
Regularly test CTA colours, wording, and positions to uncover what triggers the most conversions.
Your checkout flow can make or break your revenue.
Reduce the number of steps, enable guest checkout, and make error messages helpful.
Behavioural insight: when users sense effort, they abandon. Fewer fields = higher conversion rates.
Include progress indicators and upfront shipping info, transparency reduces anxiety and boosts completion.
Over 60% of ecommerce sessions come from mobile, yet many checkouts are still desktop-centric.
Ensure your mobile experience is fast, intuitive, and thumb-friendly.
Behavioural insight: a 1-second delay in load time can cut conversions by 7% (source: Google).
Regularly test your mobile layout, buttons, and pop-ups, small friction points there often explain large conversion gaps
Show customers the loyalty points or rewards they’ll earn if they buy.
It gamifies the experience and increases purchase intent through perceived added value.
Behavioural insight: people respond strongly to immediate, visible rewards. Even small ones can lift conversions significantly.
Right after checkout, reward customers with discounts, early access, or bonus points.
It transforms a simple purchase into an engaging experience and encourages the next one.
A post-purchase reward system turns transactional relationships into emotional ones, the essence of loyalty.
Your happiest buyers are your best marketers.
Encourage referrals through incentives (discounts, credits, gifts).
Referrals drive high-intent traffic, converting at 3 to 5 times the normal rate.
They also create a positive feedback loop: more engagement → more trust → higher conversion optimisation.
Encourage customers to leave reviews, photos, or testimonials after purchase.
Then, showcase this content directly on product and category pages.
Authentic social proof reassures visitors and strengthens credibility, both crucial for conversion rate optimisation.
Brands that display UGC see conversion lifts of 10–20% on average.
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CRO doesn’t end at checkout. Post-purchase data feed back into your CRO loop. And we can probably help. Check out our platform !
Conversion rate optimisation and search engine optimisation reinforce each other.
Better CRO reduces bounce rate, increases session time, and signals to Google that your content satisfies user intent, all core SEO ranking factors.
Meanwhile, a strong SEO strategy brings qualified visitors into your optimised funnel.
The result? Higher visibility and higher revenue from the same traffic.
CRO doesn’t end at checkout, it evolves with your customers.
Post-purchase data (loyalty points, referrals, reviews) feed back into your CRO loop.
By analysing this data, you refine your messaging, offers, and timing for future interactions.
That’s how brands create self-improving conversion ecosystems. Where every purchase teaches you how to convert the next one better.
To sum up, Conversion Rate Optimisation is about understanding user intent, reducing friction, and continuously improving the experience, to convert more visitors and grow sustainably.
Don’t stop at the sale. The most effective brands use post-purchase engagement as part of their CRO strategy : rewarding, collecting UGC, and encouraging referrals. That’s how you create a virtuous conversion loop that keeps on giving, for both your customers and your bottom line.
Loyoly est une plateforme d’engagement post-achat qui orchestre des parcours via +40 mécaniques pour booster la LTV et la preuve sociale, tout en réduisant le CAC.
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