Ecommerce CRO
Convertica's ecommerce conversion optimization starts with a free CRO audit of your store. We find where shoppers drop out between the product page and payment, and what to fix and test. Your team builds the changes, or Convertica's team builds every fix with a one page rebuild or a full site rebuild.
Turn visitors and AI agents into customers. More than 2,000 clients since 2017.
Ecommerce conversion optimization is the work of turning more of an online store's visitors into buyers, and more buyers into bigger or repeat orders. It finds where shoppers drop out between landing and payment, works out why, fixes what is clearly broken and A/B tests what is uncertain. Convertica starts it with a free CRO audit of your store.
Ecommerce conversion optimization is the work of turning more of an online store's visitors into buyers, and more buyers into bigger or repeat orders. It finds where shoppers drop out between landing and payment, works out why, then fixes what is clearly broken and A/B tests the changes nobody can be sure about.
You will also see it called ecommerce conversion rate optimization, ecommerce CRO or, in British spelling, ecommerce conversion rate optimisation. The job is the same. What makes a store different from other sites is that the conversion has a price attached: every test can be judged in revenue, not just in clicks or sign-ups, and a change that lifts the conversion rate while shrinking the average order is not a win.
Convertica has done this work for online stores since 2017. Today it starts with a free CRO audit that checks your store pages for shoppers and for AI agents, then offers a one page rebuild or a full site rebuild, where Convertica's team builds every fix the audit found. This page covers how ecommerce CRO works, where stores usually lose sales, and how to choose help with it.
The offer
Start with the free CRO audit. Then your developer, agency or in-house team builds the changes, or Convertica's team builds them with a one page rebuild or a full site rebuild.
| Service | What it does for a store | Price | Who delivers it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free CRO audit | An app that reads a product, collection or landing page the way a shopper and an AI agent would, and ranks what it finds. Enter your store's address and your email, and watch it run live on your page. | Free | An app |
| One page rebuild | One page. Convertica's team builds every fix the audit found on it, on your site, whatever platform it runs on. | $497 | Convertica's team |
| Full site rebuild | Every page on your site. Each one is audited and Convertica's team builds every fix the audits found, on your site, whatever platform it runs on. | $1,997 | Convertica's team |
Online stores lose sales at six points: the first page a shopper lands on, product discovery through collections and search, the product page, the cart, the checkout, and after the first order. Each stage has its own warning signs and its own number to watch, so ecommerce CRO looks at them one at a time rather than at the store's overall conversion rate.
| Stage | Common problems | Number to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page or homepage | Unclear what the store sells or why to buy here; a slider nobody reads; an offer that does not match the ad that sent the visitor | Bounce rate and product page views per session, by traffic source |
| Collections and search | Too many products with no useful filters; search that returns nothing for common misspellings; best sellers buried | Search exits, filter use, clicks from collection to product |
| Product page | Missing answers on size, fit, ingredients or delivery; variant choices that confuse; reviews and guarantees far from the Add to Cart button | Add-to-cart rate per product template |
| Cart | Shipping cost revealed late; a discount code box that sends people hunting for codes; no reassurance before checkout | Cart to checkout rate |
| Checkout | Forced account creation; long forms; missing payment options; errors that wipe what the shopper typed | Checkout completion rate, split by device and payment method |
| After the first order | No reason to come back; subscriptions or bundles that are hard to understand; slow answers to delivery questions | Repeat purchase rate, subscription take rate, average order value |
A store's weakest stage is rarely where the owner expects it. That is why the work starts with measurement, not with a list of best practices. The ecommerce CRO audit guide walks through each stage page by page. Once you know the weak stage, the ecommerce CRO checklist lists what to check on it.
Ecommerce conversion rate optimization follows seven steps: make sure analytics match real orders, map the store funnel by device, find the templates that leak the most revenue, research why shoppers leave, rank the fixes by revenue at stake, fix what is broken and test what is uncertain, then roll out winners and start again on the next leak.
Compare purchases and revenue in your analytics with the orders in your store platform for the same dates. Test orders, refunds, payment methods that skip the thank you page and checkout on a separate domain all cause gaps. If the numbers disagree, fix the tracking before deciding anything else.
Record how many sessions view a product, add to cart, start checkout and buy. Split every step by device, traffic source and new versus returning visitors. A store average hides the problem: a checkout that works on desktop can be the step losing most phone shoppers.
A store is built from a few templates: product, collection, cart and checkout. A problem on the product template appears on every product, so rank templates by traffic and by drop-off, and work on the busiest leaky one first.
Watch session recordings of shoppers who left at the weak step. Run a one-question poll on the product or cart page. Read reviews, return reasons and support emails for the questions people ask before buying. Every repeated question is a gap on the page.
Write each finding as a hypothesis: the change, the result you expect, and why. Score it on impact, confidence and effort, and weight impact by how much revenue passes through that template. The CRO audit guide explains the ICE and PIE scoring models.
A broken discount field or a payment option that fails on one browser needs fixing, not testing. Changes to product page layout, offers, defaults and copy go into an A/B test, with the sample size worked out before it starts.
Read each test on revenue per visitor and orders, not only on conversion rate or clicks. Stop at the planned sample size. Build winners into the theme properly, write down what losing tests taught you, and move to the next item on the list.
With Convertica, the free CRO audit covers the page-level part of steps 3 and 4. To plan a test, use the A/B test sample size calculator. To read one, use the statistical significance calculator.
Optimize revenue per visitor first, and read conversion rate, average order value, add-to-cart rate and checkout completion rate beside it. Conversion rate alone can mislead a store: a heavy discount or a cheaper default option can raise it while revenue falls. Revenue per visitor captures both how many shoppers buy and how much they spend.
| Metric | How to calculate it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate | Orders divided by sessions (or visitors), times 100 | How many visits end in an order |
| Revenue per visitor | Revenue divided by visitors | The combined effect of conversion rate and order size: the best single test metric for a store |
| Average order value | Revenue divided by orders | Whether bundles, thresholds and upsells change what people spend |
| Add-to-cart rate | Sessions with an add to cart divided by sessions that viewed a product | How well product pages persuade |
| Checkout completion rate | Orders divided by sessions that started checkout | How much friction the checkout adds |
| Repeat purchase rate | Customers with two or more orders divided by all customers, over a set period | Whether the first order turns into a relationship |
There is no single good ecommerce conversion rate. It changes with what you sell, how much it costs, where your traffic comes from and how many shoppers use a phone, so a published average says little about your store. Compare your store with itself over time, split by device and traffic source, and treat a sudden drop you cannot explain as the signal to audit.
To work out your own numbers, use the free conversion rate calculator, which shows the formula and a worked example. For the repeat purchase side, the customer lifetime value calculator turns order value, purchases per year and gross margin into what a customer is worth over time.
JustThrive, a health supplement company based in Illinois, wanted more auto-ship subscriptions and a better return on its ad spend. This case study used to live at this address; the full write-up is now on its own page, the JustThrive case study.
Convertica's audit of the product page concluded there were two big things to address:
The first variation reduced visual clutter around the product images and replaced social media icons near the Add to Cart button with a 30-day guarantee, secure payment and shipping icons. The second, tested against the first winner, made auto-ship the default option. The two split tests ran one after the other, from 7 December to 24 March, and the gains compound.
The lesson for any store: the audit found a trust problem and a choice problem on one template, and both were tested rather than assumed. The dScryb case study shows the same approach on a membership store's search results.
eCommerce
A health supplement store wanted more auto-ship subscriptions and a better return on ad spend. Two split tests ran one after the other, the second against the first winner.
+101.82%
Revenue, cumulative across two sequential split tests, 7 December to 24 March
Source: JustThrive, revenue, two sequential split tests, Dec to Mar
Read the JustThrive case study: JustThrive: two sequential split tests on a supplement store
Membership eCommerce
A membership store showed locked content in its search results with no clear next step. Adding calls to action and access levels to the results was A/B tested on desktop and mobile.
+49.4%
Paid membership sign-ups, 17-day A/B test
Source: dScryb, paid membership sign-ups, 17-day A/B test, 98% confidence
Read the dScryb case study: dScryb: more paid membership sign-ups from search results
Hire a done-for-you ecommerce CRO agency if nobody on your side can design and build changes in your store theme. Choose a CRO consultant if you have a developer, an agency or a page builder, and what is missing is knowing which change to make next and reading the results honestly. Convertica's own route is a free audit, then a fixed-price rebuild where its team builds every fix the audit found.
| Done-for-you ecommerce CRO agency | CRO consultant (your team builds) | Do it yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who decides what to change | The agency, with your approval | You, with senior direction | You |
| Who builds tests in your theme | The agency's developers | Your developer, agency or team | You or your developer |
| What you need in-house | Someone to approve work and give store access | Someone who can ship theme and app changes | Time, CRO know-how and the tools |
| What you keep afterward | The results, and whatever the agency documents | The results and the skills your team builds | Everything you learn |
| Suits | Larger stores with no design or development capacity | Stores that can build but need to know what to build | Smaller stores, or owners learning CRO |
Be wary of any ecommerce CRO agency that quotes a guaranteed lift before seeing your analytics, declares winners after a few days, or reports clicks and engagement without orders and revenue. For the full picture of how CRO providers work, see conversion rate optimization services, and for the consultant model, hiring a CRO consultant.
The method of ecommerce CRO is the same on every platform: measure, find the leak, research why, fix or test. What changes is what you are allowed to change, how fast the store loads and which tools can run a test. Here is what to know for the most common store platforms.
Shopify stores are built from theme templates and apps. Most of the checkout is controlled by Shopify, and every app can add scripts that slow the storefront. Conversion work centers on the product template, the cart and the choice of apps. See Shopify CRO for the Shopify specifics. If you are still working out how to improve your Shopify store, start with the ten essentials every store needs.
WooCommerce conversion rate optimization starts from more freedom and more risk. WooCommerce runs on WordPress, so you control every template, including the checkout. The cost is weight: each plugin can add scripts and database work, and the cart and checkout cannot be fully cached, so they are often the slowest pages on the store. Typical WooCommerce findings are slow product pages caused by plugins, checkout fields left at their defaults, and payment options that load late on a phone. The free WordPress theme detector shows which theme and plugins a store page loads.
Amazon conversion rate optimization is a different job, because Amazon controls the page layout. The levers are the listing itself: title, images, bullet points, A+ content, price and reviews. Amazon reports a listing's conversion rate as Unit Session Percentage in Seller Central, and brand-registered sellers can A/B test listing content with Amazon's Manage Your Experiments tool. The checkout and trust signals are Amazon's, so the work is about answering the shopper's questions in the listing.
Platforms that give you full control of the templates behave like WooCommerce: more freedom, and more ways to slow the store down. The audit order does not change. Check tracking first, then the busiest leaking template, then the checkout.
AI shopping agents can only recommend or buy what they can read, so a store needs its product facts in the page itself: name, price, currency, availability, shipping and returns. Some AI assistants now research products and act for the shopper. A product page that converts people well can still fail an agent if the price loads by script or the returns policy is only a footer link.
Agent readiness is one of the eight checks in Convertica's free CRO audit. This is a young field with little long-term data, and we say so.
Convertica offers online stores a free CRO audit, then the one page rebuild and the full site rebuild, which covers your whole site.
Many past clients hired Convertica to run split tests on their stores, as these reviews describe. The same research and prioritization now go into the audit and the work after it.
Ayumi and the team at Convertica have worked swiftly and diligently to improve our e-commerce store's conversion with great results! They provided frequent check-ins of the stats and were always helpful to resolve any code issues. Great work!
I was very impressed by how specific and to the point Convertica was in their audit. They really don't beat around the bush and they provide you with clear objectives that will improve your conversion rates and provide you a return on your investment.
Related
Guide
How to audit a store page by page, from the first screen to the order confirmation.
Platform
What changes when the store runs on Shopify: themes, apps and the checkout.
Free tool
Your store's conversion rate from visitors and orders, with the formula.
Ecommerce conversion optimization is the work of turning more of an online store's visitors into buyers, and more buyers into bigger or repeat orders. It finds where shoppers drop out between landing and payment, works out why, then fixes clear problems and A/B tests uncertain changes. It is also called ecommerce conversion rate optimization or ecommerce CRO.
Ecommerce CRO services usually include checking that store analytics match real orders, mapping the funnel from product view to purchase, researching why shoppers leave, reviewing product, cart and checkout pages, ranking the fixes, and designing and reading A/B tests. Convertica provides a free CRO audit, then a one page rebuild or a full site rebuild of the whole site, where Convertica's team builds every fix the audit found.
An ecommerce CRO agency researches why shoppers leave a store without buying, turns what it finds into ranked hypotheses, and designs, builds and reads A/B tests on product, cart and checkout pages. Done-for-you agencies build every test in your theme. Convertica starts with a free audit, then its team builds every fix the audit found, on one page or across your whole site.
Convertica's CRO audit is free, the full report is $27, the one page rebuild covers one page and the full site rebuild covers your whole site. Other ecommerce CRO agencies price per month, per project or per test, so ask each one exactly what is included and who builds the tests. The Convertica pricing page explains how its pricing works.
There is no single good ecommerce conversion rate. It changes with what you sell, its price, your traffic sources and your device mix, so a published average says little about your store. The useful comparison is your own store over time, split by device, traffic source and new versus returning visitors, read alongside revenue per visitor.
Revenue per visitor, in most stores. Conversion rate ignores order size, so a discount or a cheaper default option can raise conversion rate while lowering revenue. Revenue per visitor, total revenue divided by visitors, captures both how many people buy and how much they spend. Track both, and judge tests on revenue.
The free CRO audit reads a page the way a shopper and an AI agent would, so the platform behind it does not matter: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento or a custom build. Amazon listings work differently, because Amazon controls the page layout and the levers are listing content, images, price and reviews. Shopify specifics are on Convertica's Shopify CRO page.
Yes. After the free CRO audit, the one page rebuild has Convertica's team build every fix the audit found on that page, and the full site rebuild covers your whole site. Both are paid by card through Stripe Checkout, at the end of an audit report or straight from this site with no audit first: Convertica runs the audit after you order.
It depends on your traffic and the change. A fix to a broken checkout step can show up in orders quickly. An A/B test has to run until it reaches the sample size set before it started, which takes longer on smaller stores and on pages deep in the funnel, such as checkout. Nobody can honestly promise a result or a date before seeing your data.
It moved to its own page. The JustThrive case study, two sequential split tests on a supplement store's product page with a 101.82% cumulative revenue increase from 7 December to 24 March, used to sit at this address. It now lives at convertica.org/justthrive-case-study/.
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