By Adina Cruz and Brittany Gora
No doubt, businesses can celebrate traffic increases. But what about taking into account what users are doing after visiting your brand? After all, users’ follow-through with newsletter sign-ups and purchases are what bring in quality leads and revenue. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) can help organizations improve elements of their sites, and tactics are commonly applied on Amazon and websites. Below, our team compares Amazon versus website conversion rate optimization.
Conversion Rate Optimization Tools
Analytical tools specifically designed for conversion rate optimization offer valuable insights that go beyond what users’ eyes see at face value. Organizations can benefit from popularity data, sophisticated test set-up, and so much more.
Amazon
Amazon provides most of your metrics for you but there are other third party tools that allow you to look further into your listings and competitors. We currently use Helium10; this tool allows you to see keyword search volume, trending products and terms, and provides listing optimization suggestions. This tool is best used as an add-on so the product information is readily available while searching through listings but you can use the search functions within the platform, as well.
Website
Crazy Egg is a trusted conversion rate optimization tool for the Logical team. It’s a simple and intuitive solution that offers heat mapping services, session recordings, and overall, helpful website data related to conversions, purchases, and user engagement. However, we can also use other technologies, such as VWO or other client-provided tools, to glean insights about how users interact with our clients’ unique sites.
Testing Capabilities
Many folks resort to CRO tools predominantly because they offer A/B testing capabilities. Keep in mind that different platforms allow you to achieve different things.
Amazon
Similar to website testing, we can run tests on titles, main images, bullet points, and A+ content (below the fold content). Amazon does offer a new variation of testing where you can test all of these components at once but only against what is currently live. Unlike website testing you cannot run multivariate tests on the same ASIN but you can run tests back to back. Depending on the state of the listings we like to start with what will give us the most data back, being titles and imagery. Amazon will provide you the results during and after the testing, giving you data from organic and search specific. Having both versions of data helps you decipher which keywords are most helpful and convert the most.
Website
Before testing our clients’ web pages, our team will create a plan detailing the various elements we want to examine. We often test:
- Adding or removing elements, such as images or paragraphs
- Element placement, such as moving forms up or down on a page
- Verbiage variants, such as optimizing call to action messaging
Additionally, we may run multivariate tests to exhaust all possible options of a particular element to determine the best performing one for the page. Once we pinpoint the types of tests we want to run, as well as what we are testing, our team will execute them and begin compiling data. For websites, we recommend allowing the tests to sit for at least a couple weeks, though this will depend on the visitors your site gathers. For tests involving pages with low traffic, they likely need to run longer.
What to Do With Results/Post-Testing
Depending on whether your organization is prioritizing website or Amazon conversion rate optimization, you’ll need to act accordingly.
Amazon
Once the tests are complete we will review the data, pull information from Helium10 and determine if another round of testing is needed or if the changes should go forward. Since Amazon is such an endless aisle of products some of the results may come back so close that running a new set with more drastic changes is helpful.
Website
After performing A/B testing on your website, there are a couple routes you can go down. On one hand, should you have sufficient evidence from finished experiments, you can take action on relevant findings. On the other hand, you can continue to test other elements on the same pages in which you’ve previously run tests.
Embracing Amazon vs Website Conversion Rate Optimization
Though both approaches are similar, as well as what we do with the information after, there are limitations within Amazon that only let us go so far. The main difference is the “why” we should test, on Amazon we test to get the eyes of endless scrolling to stop on your product and make the purchase. When it comes to website conversion rate optimization, there are seemingly endless reasons to test, and there are plentiful options for acting on your conversion rate optimization goals.
With almost two decades of experience curating powerful digital marketing strategies for businesses across industries, Logical Media Group is ready to help you harness the power of testing and act based on your organization’s unique data and industry trends.
