The Top 5 Places to Find Revenue Hiding in Your Ecommerce Conversion Funnel

Updated: August 10, 2023

Could there be money hiding in your ecommerce business? Is there potential revenue being missed that you have yet to uncover? In all likelihood, yes. You just have to know where to look and what to test.

Most successful ecommerce businesses monitor their website’s conversion rate and are undergoing some sort of conversion rate optimization to try to improve it. As they should— increasing your conversion rate even just a small amount has a huge impact on your overall business performance.

However, it can be difficult to get it right. You could test your homepage design elements and CTA buttons, your site navigation, your product detail page’s structure, and more only to come up empty.

How can you be sure you’re not wasting your valuable time on aimless testing and optimizing?

It’s important to understand that conversion rate optimization extends beyond your site experience. While investigating and optimizing each step in your on-site funnel is a critical component, your website is only one piece of the conversion puzzle. Potential revenue is likely hiding in other places too.

In this post, we’ll discuss the top five places to start optimizing in order to uncover the money hiding in your ecommerce business.

Paid Advertising

Optimizing how you acquire traffic is a huge opportunity. If you’re sending the wrong audience to your site or sending people to your site using misleading information, there is no amount of on-site conversion rate optimization that you could do to really move the needle.

Questions to Ask About Your Audience

Look at your acquisition strategy across each channel and campaign. Whether you’re running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, TikTok, or YouTube, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is coming to your site? What do you know about the audience you’re targeting?
• Why are they coming?
• What have you told them to make them click through to your site?
• Have they been misled in any way or are they coming to your site for the right reasons?
• Are they primed to buy as much as they can be?

We ask these questions because the quality of the traffic you send to your site will have a major influence on your conversion rate.

Tests to Consider in Your Ad Campaigns

Once you’ve answered those questions, here are some things to consider to help your ads perform better from a metrics perspective, as well as send more qualified traffic to your landing pages:

• Messaging: Test ad copy that approaches selling in a variety of ways. For example, test the use of logic vs. emotion, long form vs. short form, sales-oriented vs story oriented, emojis vs. no emojis, etc.
• Media: Most ads include a piece of media whether that be a photo, video, or gif. Test these media types against each other, keeping in mind what platform algorithms favor at the time. For example, Instagram currently prioritizes video content very heavily. Within the media format you choose, test other elements such as captions or text overlays.
• Ad Goals: On the technical side of running ads, test different ad goals. Optimizing for different objectives (such as clicks vs. video views vs. conversions) will affect your overall ad performance.
• Ad Types and Placements: You may also want to test ad types and placements. Ads running in the Facebook newsfeed may perform differently than in the Instagram stories section. Typically we find that using Facebook’s automatic placements works best. However, some brands like to tailor their creative to different placement types, in which case you would want to manually select your placements.

Landing Pages

The landing pages that are linked to your ads also have a huge impact on your conversion rate. We often see brands sending people who click on their ad to the homepage or a broad collection page. Don’t do that. That essentially sends users off on their own to shop without direction. The chances they’ll make it to the cart or checkout are low. Instead, make sure that the page your users land on matches the content of the ad they just clicked.

Plus, the page should be intentionally designed to help visitors purchase as quickly as possible. Test the hero image and the headline, along with the information displayed throughout the page. Sometimes the customer needs more information about your brand and product to make a purchase decision. Other times too much copy gets distracting, so less is more. For more information on constructing a landing page that converts like crazy, check out 10 Best Practices for Ecommerce Landing Pages.

Email Marketing

Did you know that a healthy email marketing program can contribute to 30% of an ecommerce brand’s revenue? Email should be one of the primary ways that you connect with your audience and highly prioritized in your list of things to optimize.

Here are several tips for how to get on the right track for seeing more revenue from your email marketing:

• Make sure you are on a great email marketing platform that shares data with your ecommerce store and allows you to do split testing of every element within your email. We highly recommend Klaviyo for this.
• When building emails, A/B test your subject lines for each email. This will allow you to test the subject lines on a small portion of your list to determine which captures the highest open rate rate. Then, the platform will automatically send that winning subject line out to the remainder of your list.
• When you’re not testing subject lines, you can A/B test email content (equally as important). Test different CTAs, types of images used, email length, and messaging style within your emails to determine what captures the most clicks.
• Keep in mind this applies to both one-off email campaigns and automated sequences. Don’t just set and forget these email flows; improvement over time requires consistent testing and optimizing.
• Audience segmentation also plays a role in conversions. The more targeted you can get with your audience, the higher your conversion rate will be. Consider creating a segment of unengaged names to exclude from regular promotional emails, and run a separate re-engagement campaign to win them back. You can also segment your list based on interests or past purchases, and then email these audiences based on products and content they are most likely to find relatable. For more ideas on segmentation, check out 9 Easy Email Segmentation Strategies that Increase Conversions.

On-Site Optimization

While we have illustrated a few other places to look for money you might be leaving on the table, on-site optimization is still a key component. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) really comes into play.

One recommendation to kick-start your website’s CRO is to identify the problem areas first. Identify leaks in your funnel and patch them intentionally, rather than spending time fixing things you’ve guessed need work.

A few examples could be:

• A high bounce rate on your homepage or landing pages
• A low number of visitors clicking “add to cart” from your product detail pages
• A high drop-off from your cart or checkout page.

The only way to know where customers are leaking from your website’s funnel is by looking at the data. Simple fixes such as making product descriptions more compelling or the checkout easier to navigate might help. But typically, CRO requires a deep dive into your site’s analytics which will inform a plan of action. If you’re looking for a team of experts to help with this, reach out to us here!

Quick tip: If you see an issue with customers abandoning their cart or checkout and you can’t diagnose why, try popping a brief survey that asks if there’s something stopping them from checking out. This can be a simple yet effective way to quickly gather customer feedback.

Upsells and Cross-Sells

Are you currently using upsells and cross-sells on your website? These can be a great way to increase your average order value (AOV), but they can also create friction when a customer is on-track to check out. If that’s the case, it could be hurting your conversion rate. Be careful with upsells and cross-sells, making sure to test both the offers and the placement (whether it pops up at the add-to-cart or at checkout).

The least distracting way to accomplish upsells and cross-sells is post-purchase. There are a few apps out there now that allow you to pop an offer after the initial conversion has taken place. This is a great way to ensure that your upsells and cross-sells don’t tank your conversion rate but still have the potential to increase AOV.

Where is Revenue Hiding in Your Business?

Utilizing conversion optimization to find money hiding in your ecommerce business extends far beyond your on-site experience. Using the tips above, you’ll be able to look at the entire customer journey as a whole and search for places to improve your conversions.