CRO: eCommerce site improves conversion rate and increases its revenue by ~2.5 times
An e-commerce site was converting well and was producing consistent revenue. After a bit of research we found that we can improve conversions by working on user experience in the checkout process. On implementing the proposed new and improved checkout process, site gained an overall win of 147% in the funnel conversion rate. Scroll down to read the detailed case study.
Profile
Client: Publisher
Products: Books / eBooks / CDs for competitive exams and Olympiad exams
Product value: Rs 30 to Rs 2,695
Average Product Value: Rs 297
Traffic Stats
Visits per month: 91,000 app.
Unique visitors per month: 44,000 app.
Page views per month: 5,20,000 app.
Result
The conversion rate went up by 147%
Before
The funnel Conversion Rate was 16.57% (i.e. Out of every 100 people who shall click on add to cart, 16.57 people shall complete the transaction. This means that 83 visitors were leaving the shopping cart.
People were adding the products to the cart but were not completing the transactions. We analyzed the abandoned carts and discovered some very peculiar things in those abandoned carts. Some carts were way too big to be real!
Possible reasons for 82% abandonement
- People are non-serious/just checking the system/are having fun (there were some abandoned carts with values of Rs 100,000/- to Rs. 18,000,000/- indicating that the visitor is not serious).
- They do not have credit cards/debit cards/online banking enabled.
- They find it difficult to transact on our site.
What we improved
If people were non-serious or just checking the system or were having fun or if they didn’t have credit / debit cards then there was not a lot that could be done so we focused on the 3rd reason ‘what if they were finding it difficult to complete the transaction for some reasons?’.
We analyzed the user experience of shopping cart and found that there were 3 steps that a visitor had to cross before he could checkout and complete the transaction. We focused our attention on this part and designed the improved checkout process and combined these 3 steps into 1 single step. We called the new system ‘1-page checkout’ where all the checkout related processes could be completed on one single page and in the next stage the visitor can pay and complete the transaction.
This change alone made the entire system so simple to use that the abandonment rate dropped from 83% to close to 59% and funnel conversion rate jumped to 40.89% rising up by 147%.
After
Funnel Conversion Rate jumped up to: 40.89% (i.e. Out of every 100 people who click on add to cart, 41 people shall complete the transaction. The funnel conversion rate jumped up by 147% by optimizing the user interface and improving the user experience.
