June 18, 2025
Marketing channels exist like a family. Each channel serves a purpose, finding its individuality and place in the world. But none exists without the other. Each channel is threaded together into a conglomerate that creates a picture of experiences, leading to several snapshots to form a picture book of growth.
In that family picture is a middle child - the one that acts as a mediator between other channels, threading them together and pulling them apart as needed to make sure the user experience is seamless.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), is the center of the family that makes all the difference. CRO takes your website and turns it into a feasible, brand building, conversion driving machine, all so you can scale your business.
The strategies used with CRO are designed as an all-in-one space for the user experience, creating a lifecycle of the following:
* Create User Awareness. Paid ads and emails with those that are new prospects are lost without the center. CRO makes sure your brand receives the recognition it deserves. It tells the story of who you are, what you offer, and what differentiates you in the marketplace. This supports every other channel to create deeper layers of brand recognition.
* Engage Users Into an Experience. The experience of eComm doesn’t take place in any other channel as much as it does on site. This is where users spend the majority of their time when they are looking at the possibility of a purchase. If the experience isn’t pleasant, the results are minimized. CRO takes the idea of the experience and maximizes it to be a true representation of who you are as a business.
* Drives Higher Demand. Paid and email can do the lifting when it comes to “buy now” tactics. But if those experiences don’t have a streamlined story when someone gets to the site, the measurements drive down, leading to lower CVR on email (sessions to demand), as well as higher CPAs on paid (targeting returning users who leave the site). The more your website can lift conversions, the better it drives final results across other channels while increasing ROI.
For every step of the funnel, CRO is the driving force to mediate the decision someone makes to buy. Without the proper storefront and landing space from other channels, the possibility of scalability is minimized.
Ever walked into a storefront, looked at the layout, dug your heels into the ground, and moved into a hard 90 degree turn out of the store?
The wrong representation of how things look creates fast disengagement. It highlights whether you have quality, beneficial products, and brand trust. The representation and layout of a store is so important, that many larger businesses spend thousands (if not millions), to determine what the experience should be when someone enters and interacts with the store. All the way to the scent put in place to grab attention when someone walks by.
Storefronts that have an online presentation require the same calculations. First impressions are responsible for someone engaging on site or clicking the X on the left hand side of their screen.
The measurement interrelated with first impressions tell you exactly how to alter your site. Three KPIs can be used as central signals:
* Bounce Rate: This should fall below 40% of your sessions, showing engagement by the majority of your audience.
* Time on Site: The bounce rate equates to the amount of time someone spends on your main site. If the majority spend less than 20 seconds, then optimization needs to take place.
* Pages Viewed: If the majority of pages viewed is one, then there isn’t enough engagement from first impressions. Prospects are looking at your site and clicking out, even if they stay longer on site. Getting them to the second and third pages will support a higher likelihood to purchase.
Where do we start with first impressions? Here’s what to optimize:
Header: Your header should pull your audience into the site and immediately showcase your brand. CRO tells the story through best practices of font, style, coloration, and format, combined with optimization tactics to dress your site up to the best first impression.
Top Banners: Clear, concise, and designed to drive action, top banners have several ways of optimizing for best performance. Considering placement and optimization tactics for first impressions is a heavy driver for engagement and demand results.
Go Where the Eye Goes: Layout of your website as a first impression changes everything. Behaviors of most first time visitors are defined with a to scroll or not to scroll mentality and series of instantaneous decisions. To get your prospects to stop scrolling, you will want to lay out your page with a hierarchical structure. The more you optimize your first impressions, the less scrolling and the more engagement you will get.
CRO’s first impressions are able to mediate barriers to entry and engagement of a site. It holds the designated space of translating the brand to prospects with deeper strategies.
The natural reaction of anyone who visits a site is to scroll and to size up the site. At this point, prospects make an immediate judgment. CRO is the key translator that showcases everything to drive decisions. It gets prospects to their first “yes” and to show interest in the site.
CRO creates the experience of your brand. By looking at the presentation of who you are, it ensures that prospects stick around to get to know you.
Your KPI at this stage is the CTR, identifying how deeply engaged prospects become when they are on the site. Return sessions are also a key signal to see how engaged someone is over time.
The optimization at this stage bundles up first by pages. Home, collection, and product pages are all treated differently, maximizing the experience of visitors. These areas allow the prospect to walk away and commit to seeing you again.
Here are some considerations for each page:
Follow a Hierarchy. Nothing tells better than a story that is in order. CRO will take your pages and translate them through a hierarchical structure that states the right message at the right time. This immediately answers questions of prospects and creates deeper engagement.
Support Through Content. Showing products then showing more products often leads to an overwhelm of your brand without supporting materials to create a deeper experience of your brand. Placing things like social proof or testimonials support and lift your content while letting the prospect know they’ve landed in the right place.
Status Clarity. If someone is deep enough in your site to visit products and collections, then consider a combination of status with sales showcases. For users, this builds trust and transparency, one of the leading factors in making a final decision to purchase.
Want to see if you’re on the right track?
Conviction to make a purchase is supported with an action that pushes the final yes. Getting prospects to make a final commitment is filled with optimization strategies, all which finalize the story - prospects can trust you, have transparent information, and they are confident in their final commitment.
CRO stays in the center at this stage, mediating that final point for prospects to draw the conclusion you desire - it’s time to finalize your purchase.
KPIs at this stage are signaled around conversion rate, identifying how many prospects get to the final order instead of abandoning their cart or the site. CRO can lift this and develop incremental increases, lifting demand generation through better checkout and purchase experiences.
The final push to a sale, attention during consideration stages, and giving the right display of information all works together to redefine purchase behavior.
Want to see results? Here’s how we maximized Rise Bar’s checkouts, increasing the conversion rate by 101%. By overhauling their experience to checkout, we found key ingredients to get the results we wanted.
Want to see how you’re adding up?
See all
© 2025 Structured. All Rights Reserved.
