Results roundup – cart abandonment reduced by 36.7% and other interesting marketing morsels

I’ve stopped handing out virtual awards for performance marketing winners because we’ve got so much good stuff to talk about. Though, if truth be known, I’m quietly impressed with Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) this month – how we’ve used personalisation to drive up subscriptions by more than a third.

But then again, PPC management has been really good too – helping one client reduce the CTR and boosting leads massively! And on the other hand, that little micro SEO tweak has had so much impact on a group of product keywords…

735% increase in PPC leads in 5 months

This e-commerce client sells and installs charging points for electric cars. We worked with them on a campaign to bring the prohibitive cost per lead (CPL) down from £32 to £10. Critically, the leads we brought in had to be good quality.

With the right management, Paid Search and Paid Social elicit quick wins and build on your investment. Our client had been doing bits here and there but there wasn’t an awful lot of reliable historical keyword data to base forecasts on. We began with PPC keyword research and got stuck in:

• Improving efficiency/relevancy by refining negative keywords
• Updating and improving ad copy in line with best practice
• Activating low budget campaigns to target and capture brand traffic
• Launching a location strategy 
• Using campaigns to separate keyword groups for relevant targeting

With the right management, Paid Search and Paid Social elicit quick wins and build on your investment.

PPC is an easy way to burn through budgets. Accounts need optimising and managing with care and attention – and strategy. Tinkering about won’t gain good results, and never ones that last. Our strategy worked and – even in the absence of historic keyword data – much faster than we anticipated.

• CPL (cost per lead) DOWN by 75% to £10.53
• CR Conversion Rate UP from 3.35% to 9.96%
• Leads UP by 735% from 133 to 1,198 

Looking further ahead, our client has an appetite to work more collaboratively on data analysis so we can identify the best locations for additional budget spend and lead generation to keep them growing in a self-sustaining fashion.

The micro magic of tiny on-page tweaks

One of our long-term SEO clients had experienced a mysterious slump in keyword performance. Sometimes it’s difficult to attribute a fall to any one thing – a fuzzy Google algorithm update, uncertainty in the sector – and we’re still not sure what happened. We do know how we fixed it though.

Working out how to fix an SEO issue can be a forensic examination of data from several sources. We scrutinised keyword data and looked at what was happening with competitors and came up with a simple on-page optimisation plan that pin-pointed keyword relevance and intent.

It was such a subtle and simple idea that we tested it first, on one small product keyword group. In the illustration below, that’s the first hesitant jump in average position. When we continued making these tiny changes there was another leap – and you can see how the average position data has again stabilised.

CAPTION: Screenshot from analytics showing 2 increases in performance following strategic on-page tweaks, and how quickly average positions stablised.

In addition, the bounce rate for this group of products came down, which was proof that by micro-targeting relevance we were really hitting a spot for the client’s customers. 

• Organic traffic is up over a 3 month period by 348.57% YoY
• 157 organic leads vs 35 leads in 2021 over the same 3 month period
• 208 overall leads in 2022 vs 74 leads in 2021 over the same 3 month period

… our SEO manager ran a cautious test first and only did more when she’d observed upward movement and stability. 

One day, we’ll share some anecdotal cautionary tales about how even small SEO tweaks can have a negative impact on your site. In the meantime, suffice to say, our SEO manager ran a cautious test first and only did more when she’d observed upward movement and stability. 

Basket abandonment -36.68% as subscription flow is optimised 

This month, we reached a landmark in our relationship with an e-commerce client. It’s 12 months since they signed up to UX and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) services. Our work with them is going from strength to strength (great data) and it’s becoming a relationship with deep, lasting impact on growth.

It’s a young brand and ready to move into the next phase of growth.

Our client was selling quality pet food online in the UK and across certain international territories. It’s a young brand and ready to move into the next phase of growth. Their website had a clunky and disjointed user journey, and customers were not being converted into loyal, returning customers.

What we did overall

• 12 ‘big’ tests and CRO, from testing and optimising functions, right through to aesthetics, copy and structure
• 12 ‘small’ tests along the same lines
• Improved credibility and reassurance
• Rationalised CTAs to cut down on mixed messages across the site
• Created and optimised a Paid Search landing page (they’ve just signed up for this with us too)
• A complete homepage refresh 
• Improved the subscription flow

Results

This month so far, comparing YoY data:

• Conversion rate UP 8.3%
• Average order value UP 15.11% YoY
• Sessions with product views UP by 417.43%
• Basket abandonment DOWN by 36.68%

As a point of interest, a 2-month test on variants for the subscription flow elicited a 173.90% improvement in users reaching the basket versus the control.

The client has also been able to add a major new range of products to their offering. Watch this space!

Takeaways

• Investment in CRO reaps long-term rewards
• Tiny SEO tweaks can make a massive difference
• PPC needs strategy and ongoing, attentive management

We use robust performance marketing strategies to help you grow your business. Got a question? Ready to begin? Get in touch!