In recent years, the cost of acquiring new customers has increased from $9 in 2013 to a staggering $29 in 2022 (SimplicityDX Research 2022), with companies spending only $1 on CRO for every $92 spent on customer acquisition (eConsultancy CRO Report).
In today’s economic climate, how can businesses see growth? Brands who deploy marketing tactics based on guesswork risk failing to meet their customers’ evolving expectations and miss out on the growth opportunities that CRO can provide. In an article from Venturebeat, it is stated that marketers with robust CRO strategies see uplifts of 223%.
Our latest webinar, Who Dares Wins takes a deep dive into the experimentation and CRO landscape. Our panel explored the challenges and opportunities within CRO and discussed insights from our report, Getting the Most out of CRO.
Tommi Kerr, Digital Experience Lead at NatWest
Jessica Sperry, Senior Optimisation Specialist at Currys
Simon Culley, Digital Customer Experience Manager at Mazda
Jonathan Kelly, Experience Director at Candyspace
Simon shares, “I think that one of the biggest challenges in terms of the growth opportunities that we see, is how we optimise from a mobile perspective, with 60% of our traffic coming from a mobile environment.”
Indeed, content placement is a strong factor in driving engagement across your website. Simon continues, “I think certainly from our point of view, one of the examples of what’s really helped us is that we noticed that we weren’t getting the scroll depth on our dealer websites. So we weren’t exposing users to core conversion points, either to various parts of the website or to contact opportunities to convert into leads.”
A benefit of experiment is it frees you to test and validate different ideas. In Mazda’s case, this meant taking a mobile-first approach to their dealer websites and using CRO to increase engagement by adding quicker links higher up the page. “We created a hypothesis that ‘how can we drive users to different parts of the website?’” Simon continues, “ We were able to increase exposure rate by up to 50% in some cases.”
Tommi highlights, “To put it quite simply, it’s helping people to think like scientists. Through experimentation, you’re being curious, you’re building hypotheses that you will then create evidence for. You’re considering problems in a scientific way in terms of proving the value from them.”
But experimentation isn’t always about finding the best option to drive ROI. Tommi continues, “A lot of the time, it’s about stopping the things that should not be in front of customers, validating them in a different way and actually taking joy in saying ‘pats on the back all round’. It wasn’t a linear, old school win, instead we found something that actually can have commercial impacts.”
Jessica says, “I think people love to throw around that something is ‘best practice’ or ‘this is a no brainer’, but I think anyone in CRO can tell you that you never know how a user is going to react to something. That’s why A/B tests fail all of the time.”
For the team at Curry’s, they’ve found that sometimes failed tests can be the greatest lessons. “There are things that might seem like an obvious winner but then the results say that the users completely reject it.”
Experimentation allows businesses to tailor their digital products to meet the needs of their user base. “If these changes were one size fits all, then we’d all have exactly the same website, and it’s not just about that.” Jessica continues, “If you want to be industry leading, you’ve got to go above the standard of what all your competitors are doing.”
Jessica said, “I think it’s unrealistic to expect a single CRO team to facilitate building a culture of experimentation. I think we do need an environment where everyone wants to be data driven and learn and grow, share insights and collaborate.”
Jessica notes that developing this culture requires support from leadership, “The buy-in needs to be there from the top down to encourage and support that.” She continues, “We work with so many teams that there are so many different points where conflict can happen and I think we need to build those relationships, encourage collaboration and just show the rest of the business the benefits that we can bring.”
Jonathan shares, “Depending on what the culture of the business is, the different stakeholders and the make up of that business, will depend on what type of tool is best for you.”
For businesses just starting their experimentation journey, Jonathan recommends starting small, “I think starting small and proving it out and actually having a couple of experiments that don’t have to be intense in terms of budget etc. but being able to prove it out through real data and taking them through the journey.”
Watch the webinar in full for more insights on how your business can benefit from CRO.