Historically, User Experience (UX) and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) professionals have worked independently. This can be down to different teams in charge of different channels or simply a lack of communication. However, if UX and CRO are working together the likelihood of successfully meeting business goals can be increased. Below you will find some examples of why bringing these two disciplines together is beneficial for any business.
Improving the user experience of a site
If a user has a good experience with a website (e.g. they can quickly and easily find a product they are after), then they will be much more likely to convert, compared to if they found the experience frustrating or difficult. If this was the case, then users would be more likely to abandon the site, leading to higher bounce rates rather than conversion rates. By focusing on enhancing the experience, iProspect were able to increase sales by 3% and income by over £300k for a travel insurance provider.
Understanding user needs is critical to improving conversion rates
If you have an in-depth understanding of your users and their needs, then you will be much more likely to improve the conversion rate of a site. If your business is paying close attention to UX, the general rule is to always start with trying to gain an empathetic understanding of your users. There are a number of UX research techniques that will help you to gain this understanding, many of which overlap with CRO data analytics techniques. It important to utilise them before you start to make changes to a site based on assumptions or best practices.
Conducting quantitative and qualitative user research
Quantitative tools provide insight on which areas of your site need optimising. In contrast, qualitative tools allow you to gain an understanding of why these specific pages are not performing. Perhaps there’s a problem with a checkout form for example, whatever the case, using quantitative research methods alone will limit you to only finding out the number of visitors that abandon a certain stage of the checkout process, it will not give that all important answer: ‘why they left your site’. Using both limits the amount of guesswork and reduces the chance of changing the wrong thing.
UX helps CRO not to focus on the short term
Whilst the aim of a business is to make money, if the emphasis is solely on increasing conversion rates then the tactics used to achieve this may become too forceful or intrusive, (e.g. too many pop ups, ad banners at the top of the page) that it may end up negatively affecting the experience that users have with a site. This could damage the brand’s reputation and lower retention rates. When UX and CRO work together, you start to find a happy medium between designing a fantastic experience for users whilst ensuring that they convert into loyal customers.
Actionable takeaways:
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Put your users at the heart of your decision-making process.
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Stop working in isolation and encourage constant collaboration between departments.
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Ensure your UX and CRO optimisations are based on robust research, rather than best practice. Remember, results will vary across the industry.
