How to Remove Friction in Your Customer Experience

Seemingly minor enhancements in your customer experience can have a considerable impact on your conversion rate and lead to sizable revenue growth. Our UX Strategists will tell you that tweaking the size, placement or behavior of the ‘add to cart’ button, for example, can affect conversions significantly. So if you have issues in your purchase funnel you’re unaware of, you’ll have a difficult time converting visitors regardless of how enticing your marketing campaigns and products are. That’s why it’s important to conduct audits frequently. The ideal approach is to have an ongoing program where experts are constantly monitoring checkout performance using specialized tools that complement foundational analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.

PERFORMING A digital experience AUDIT 

Corra’s Digital Experience Audits examine a 360° view of the customer journey. We have our own methodology that’s backed by extensive research in human-computer interface (the study of how people interact with computers) that incorporates a combination of innovative tools. Our process uncovers technical and usability issues that affect shoppers in the product finding and consideration phase, in the purchase process, and the re-engagement phase. If these issues are left undetected they have the potential to greatly reduce your conversion rate and subsequently the ROI of your marketing campaigns. 

Using Google Tag Manager, we set up tracking tags for our third-party tools (heat mapping, form analysis, session recordings, etc.) across all key pages of the site and we ensure that Google Analytics is set up properly to track fundamental metrics, behaviors and micro-conversions (small steps in the purchase path). We then triple test the performance of the site to make sure speed hasn’t been compromised. 

Corra’s UX team generally uses both qualitative and quantitative evaluation to raise a hypothesis and then data and research to verify it. For example, if an offer for 10% off is placed on the right sidebar but only 5% of users are clicking on it, a Strategist may assume this is due to “banner blindness.” Users’ eyes are desensitized to that area of the screen because it’s traditionally where ads are placed. A UX Designer may suggest moving the offer to a more prominent area of the site and A/B testing various locations for this content block.

When we conduct Digital Experience Audits we’re analyzing and recording sessions from a substantial sample size of visitors (upward of 50,000 depending on the client) to ensure the accuracy of our findings. Our team gathers data and conducts research on all key pages and functions across desktop, mobile, and tablet viewpoints. Google Analytics is used to develop foundational insights across all key shopping pages and high-priority user segments, and to search for anomalies in the conversion funnel. 

We then sort the issues we find in order of priority and type (design or technical) and include our recommendations for how to address it. Urgent and high priority findings being the ones that are the best candidates to drive conversion and revenue in the near-term. 

An example of a high priority item might be that the checkout button in the shopping cart isn’t taking users immediately into the checkout flow on mobile due to a Javascript error. Or the search function has no typo tolerance so that easily misspelled keywords or phrases do not generate search results, leading to frustration and abandonment.

Corra’s Conversion Accelerator is designed to be platform agnostic. It’s essentially a bundle of strategic audits intended to help you quickly grow revenue. The accelerator is completely customizable, so merchants can pick and choose audits to suit their needs. 

THE CONVERSION ACCELERATOR 

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE AUDIT
Eliminate friction from your customer journey.

TAG AUDIT
Build a solid tag architecture. 

OPTIMIZATION AUDIT
Serve smarter recommendations to your segments.

UGC AUDIT
Incorporate UGC where it’s relevant and effective.

SITE SPEED AUDIT
Boost site speed by at least 20%.

TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT
Increase traffic through better content indexation. 

Researching and gathering insights that translate into actionable improvements requires an integrated team of diverse disciplines, ranging from customer experience to optimization strategy and SEO. Very few of our clients’ internal teams can cover all the bases. Corra’s cross-disciplinary SWAT team – including UX Designers, SEO Experts, Data Analysts, and Optimization Specialists – join forces to thoroughly analyze your business through both a customer experience and technical lens for 30 days. The outcome is a set of actionable insights and recommendations that can drive immediate revenue growth as well as long-term strategic planning. 

Learn more about our Conversion Accelerator.