You Don't Need to Optimize Your Store
You need to get your ad performance back on track.
Hey I’m Shane, welcome to another issue of The CRO Weekly where each week I explore how to build a high converting Ecommerce store. If you’re not subscribed you join 961(!) people that are right here:
I’ve been struggling to write this post so I’m just gonna say what I think —
If you have a good product that people want, the design of your store matters much less than the quality of traffic you send to it.
Why do I think that’s important to say?
Well, in the wake of the iOS updates I’ve seen a lot of people who sell design, dev, and CRO services joking about how brands “should have been optimizing their store all along and this wouldn’t be so bad” and I think it’s complete bullshit.
Reading between the lines what they’re saying is “oh too bad your revenue has taken a major hit, maybe if you just listened to me all along you wouldn’t be in this spot.”
It’s not just CRO people, I’ve seen this from content/SEO people too. Some version of “Well you should’ve built an owned media channel [like I have been saying] and you would be fine right now”. Acting like that’s an easy thing to do and a guaranteed win for brands is again… bullshit.
But I digress.
The less snarky version of these posts, but just as toxic, offer the thing they do as the savior. They then proceed to give surface level advice in a sermon-esque tone. I’m probably guilty of this too, maybe this post is just an atonement for my sins.
Side note: can you tell why I’ve been struggling to write this?
I didn’t write this just to ruffle some feathers. Again, the thing I want to say is that your traffic quality matters much more than your store quality.
It’s really not that hard to understand. There are qualitative arguments that I’ll get to but just think about it. If you sell high-end athletic clothing and your ads are only being shown to people in North Dakota, your conversion rate may very well be .1%. At the same time, if your ads are targeting people in SoHo NYC, your conversion rate may be 5-10%.
The targeting of an ad can result in a 50-100x change in conversion rate? You will never see that sort of impact from making a change on your store.
This isn’t just a hypothetical. If you’ve spoken to enough media buyers you know that “one ad can change everything”.
I know, there is nuance here. Traffic quality isn’t just about targeting. A video is creative, not targeting. But the creative causes a certain demo to engage, and then that demo gets target more often. Etc etc….
Anecdotally… I constantly hear about, and see, brands that crush it with a mediocre store.
Zach’s team works with 20+ brands at a time. I’ve seen and worked with my fair share of brands that are succeeding despite the quality of their store.
That’s why when founders reach out to me for help I consistently have to turn them away. They’re usually in a tough spot where they can’t justify spending money on advertising because when they do their conversion rate is too low.
I’ve tried to help people in this position a number of times and failed. I’ve spoken to others that have paid for UX/CRO consulting and audits that didn’t move the needle. I’ve hardly ever heard of a story where a brand updated their store and it improved their CR enough to move the needle.
This is why I position my services the way I do. On every sales call I run the numbers to ask, “if we only improve your conversion rate by 10% over the next 6 months, is hiring me still a no-brainer?”
Do we sometimes achieve that in one month? Yes. Other times does it take 6 months? Yes. Either way, the expectations are pretty low.
I could go on and on but I guess here is the ‘so what?’— conversion rate optimization is not going to save you.
If your business has been affected by the iOS updates, I’m genuinely sorry. There is not silver bullet that’s going to bring you back to the ad performance of the past.
Do you need to diversify your channels? Sure. Should you work on improving your store? Sure. Should you get better at email marketing? Sure.
But right now the most important thing is getting your advertising performance back on track so you have the time, energy, and resources to focus on those other initiatives.
I can’t really help you there but people like Patrick Coddou (Supply) have been sharing what’s working for them. Maybe if enough people ask he’ll post a longer thread on how he’s been approaching the problem.
Otherwise, if anyone has good resources let me know and I’ll build up a list under the tweet for this post:
