CRO analysis and improvement for brick-and-mortar retailers is a must and they can definitely improve results with this focus. This should be a part of a wider “digital transformation” strategy in which retailers use technology to improve in-store operations. As said before, one of the key advantages of physical retailers over online retailers is the human factor. By improving human interaction and empowering store staff to use technology to identify shoppers, see their purchase history and personalize offers or provide better and faster answers to their product-related inquiries, conversion will increase and, no less important, with cross selling opportunities baskets size will grow as well.

When you run an e-commerce website, you generally have three or four great tools that you review every day to see what is working on the site and what isn’t. Conversion is a main focus and a good e-commerce retailer will continually modify their site seeking to increase conversions. And that is because the e-commerce mindset is consumer-centric. Always searching for ways to improve the customer experience to increase conversions and retention. Unfortunately, retailers are retail-centric and the data they review has to do with accounting and not customers. Conversion Rate Optimization is a consumer-centric mindset. Any retailer today would improve their results if they put the customer first. What you find in retail today is that most retailers are doing the same thing they have done for the past 30 years. They put displays in the same spot with the same items according to the same merchandising schedule that they have used for years. There was a book that was published many years ago called “Why We Buy” which addressed this point. Many retailers… Read more »

Charles is right on the tactics needed to improve conversion rates. Customer service and shorter checkout lines both require payroll expense whether you are Macy’s or Target. The question is whether stores will commit these dollars since their expenses are already being stretched thin by omnichannel initiatives like BOPIS and ship-from-store.

In my opinion, CRO in a vacuum is risky. So many factors impact conversion, it could be easy to overreact to CRO metrics without the context of omnichannel conversions and other influencing factors (price competition, stock availability, etc.) However, as part of a toolkit designed to evaluate how successfully experiences are meeting expectations, CRO is invaluable.

Brick-and-mortar retailers are competing against other brick-and-mortar retailers and online retailers. Competition is tougher than ever. If a retailer isn’t properly training their people to not only sell but, even more importantly, to build a relationship with the customer, they are missing a big opportunity. Conversion rates aren’t just being hurt by price-sensitive shoppers who believe they will get better pricing online. They are being hurt by employees who don’t know how to sell and build customer relationships.

Thanks Mark, for bringing this to mind. I think about customer experience all the time and often forget myself to align CX with CRO. Retailers need to be looking at what makes a customer choose shopping in-store over shopping online, and give them that experience. And they need to measure the delivery in conversions. If they are simply looking at sales transactions, they have no way of knowing if they are giving the customer the right experience and enough of it. As for conversion rate killers? If you know the reasons your customers come into the store then map the customer journeys and make sure every potential exit point has been addressed with the right solution and/or interactions.

For my 2 cents.

Higher conversions come from humans. Keep cutting staff and not giving them training and you might as well cede your business to Amazon.

I’m thinking the opposite. That stores need to figure out how to improve online conversion vs. in-store conversion. More and more, retailers should start to think of their physical spaces as the optimal brand touch points, where you emotionally engage humans with the real power of your brand and subsequently drive online purchase when the consumer feels like it. Not just places to put stuff on a shelf and try to get them to buy on the spot. Samsung 837, Yeti, Nike, UO Spaces; these are the stores of the future.

Face it, it’s SO much easier to buy online on your own time, why on earth would you continue to fight the way people truly want to purchase? Functional/convenient: online. Emotional/human: stores.

Thank you Mark for highlighting an obvious, yet overlooked opportunity for brick-and-mortar retailers. Your book on the topic is a very useful resource. Every shopper walking into a store has already made a time commitment and is ready to buy. This is especially true today where a significant amount of exploration and research is done on a mobile device. Being properly staffed and inventoried should be viewed as high ROI investments to achieving conversion or CRO. Unlike online conversion, in the physical world you need people and products in an easy and pleasant shopping environment. Some of the biggest solutions to conversion rate killers are obvious. Eliminate long lines at checkout or customers having to hunt for an associate so they can make the purchase. Restock, restock and then restock again so your shelves reflect your inventory position. Give associates the tools and access to information so they can be advocates for the customer. Understand that the physical in-store experience (and CRO) cannot be delinked from your online presence. Finally, hire people that like to… Read more »

Conversion will be a big topic at the upcoming Store Operations Council meeting this September. There is some frustration among store operators that they’ve been left out somewhat as retailers beef up their online presence … when 70 percent or more of retail sales happen in the store, it’s time to pay more attention to what actually happens there.

CRO gives retailers a critical metric. But the real issue is, are we getting better and better at measuring the evolution of decline? Yes, temporarily it allows retailers to modify their approach in near real-time, but I don’t think it addresses the macro questions behind declining performance in certain channels. Good tool? Yes. Salvation? Not hardly.

The challenge is first to remain a relevant draw for shoppers to take the time to visit your stores. This has everything to do with being a compelling merchant that has the products people want to see / feel / hear / touch / smell better than they can online. Sure, there’s a conversion issue today due to myriad causes, showrooming not the least of them. CRO is just one tool to leverage, alone with other critical ones to gain insights into how to generate those ways to get shoppers to buy more in-store. We can all think of those innovators that always have heavy traffic in their stores and are leaders in conversion rates. It can and IS being done.

This is an important, but risky, topic. Once someone has come into your store, it’s reasonable to want as many as legitimately possible to spend some money and to spend more money. And there are solid answers here about customer service and checkout as key. The problem with a metric like this is it isolates one element of shopping and leads us to ignore what might be most critical. For example, Byron Sharp has done tremendous work on Double Jeopardy in brands. While marketers everywhere obsess about maximizing heavy shoppers, Sharp’s work finds that the larger a brand’s market share, the larger the average spending per consumer (so pure focus on big spenders ensures small market share). So my guess is that problems with conversion are linked to product mix or product display or traffic flow problems. Solving customer service problems will only do a small amount. Having compelling, important products will do far more. Remember when Keurig dominated stores? Remember when the Foreman Grill drove all small appliance departments? Remember when…? If you have… Read more »

Absolutely conversion rates are something retailers need to spend more time seriously evaluating and optimizing in their stores. That said, it’s not the “one metric to rule them all” — and I don’t think there is such a metric anyway. The best answer is to use the right set of metrics to evaluate your stores. When you look at traffic counts, conversions, average transaction value, and total sales, you have to wonder when retailers will start realizing that their store associates have the most impact on the majority of these metrics. When shoppers are asked what upsets them the most in their store experience (and therefore keeps them from making a purchase)? Invariably you’ll get answers like long checkout lines, lack of knowledgeable associates, and out of stock merchandise, to name a few. Anyone notice two out of those three can be directly impacted by store associates? Too often reducing labor costs take center stage and that creates a formula for poor conversion. Retailers need to rethink their approach to labor while at the same… Read more »

Unless you think there is a time coming when the malls are all closed and Amazon is the only retailer left, then OF COURSE conversion has to be one of the key metrics of the business. You KNOW you are going to have less traffic, so you HAVE TO convert more of it to actual sales. Kind of a no-brainer. You are competing for customers emotions. They buy when and where they FEEL it’s the right moment to buy. It might not be rational, but it’s what they feel.

I think it was RetaiWire that I read that people FEEL faster than they THINK. I love that observation. It explains a lot. Customers are developing a FEELING within mere feet of entering a store. It’s PRODUCT and PRESENTATION first. It’s assortment planning and color management.

Customers are developing their FEELING before they encounter a human. PRODUCT and PRESENTATION…then the humans can finish the emotional engagement and overall experience.