Customers rarely assess every option with complete objectivity. Their decisions are influenced by familiarity, perceived quality, relevance and trust.

A strong identity can make a business feel established and distinctive before somebody has read the detail. Consistent language and visuals also reassure customers that they are still dealing with the same company as they move between an advert, social post, landing page and checkout.

Research from Nielsen Norman Group supports the importance of that initial response. Its work on first impressions in digital design found that the immediate reaction to a website can influence perceptions of relevance, credibility and usability. Its research into trustworthy web design also identifies design quality, clear disclosure and current, comprehensive content as important credibility factors.

That makes branding part of the conversion journey. It is not a decorative layer added once the important work is finished.

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A distinctive brand still needs a usable website

Great branding may persuade somebody to visit, but the experience has to deliver on the promise. If customers cannot understand the proposition, find the right product or confidently complete a purchase, the brand has attracted attention without turning it into business.

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Common problems include:

• A homepage that looks impressive but does not explain what the company sells
• Navigation structured around the business rather than the customer
• Product pages that create more questions than they answer
• Inconsistent language between advertising and the landing page
• Forms and checkouts that ask for too much information
• Important delivery, returns or pricing details appearing too late
• Generic templates that remove everything distinctive about the brand

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The answer is not to strip away the personality and make every website look the same. Good UX should help customers experience the brand more clearly.

For Maveroc, a new luxury jewellery brand, the ecommerce experience needed to communicate quality from the homepage through to checkout. Visual impact mattered, but so did product discovery, trust and a purchase journey appropriate for a considered luxury purchase.

Brand, UX and ecommerce CRO were not separate tasks. They were different parts of the same customer decision.

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Stop Optimising Against Your Own Brand

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Conversion rate optimisation is sometimes associated with aggressive pop-ups, countdown timers and endless calls to action.

Those techniques may produce a short-term response, but they can also make a premium or trusted brand feel desperate. A conversion gained through pressure is not necessarily a good customer relationship.

Effective CRO starts by understanding why customers hesitate. The problem might be an unclear value proposition, weak product information, poor mobile usability, limited social proof or uncertainty about what happens next.

The improvement should remove that uncertainty while remaining consistent with the brand.

For ecommerce brand APOC, CRO insight and design refinement helped triple the conversion rate. The objective was not to replace the personality of the store with a generic high-converting template. It was to make the existing brand and shopping experience perform more effectively.

This is also why UX and CRO work well together. UX provides the research and design methods needed to understand the customer. CRO provides the commercial measures needed to judge whether changes are helping.

You can read more about where to start with conversion rate optimisation and how Higher Ground approaches copywriting for CRO.

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Do not buy more traffic before fixing the journey

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Increasing advertising spend is an expensive way to compensate for a website that does not convert.

SEO, paid search and social campaigns can bring more people to the site, but they cannot make an unclear proposition convincing or repair a frustrating checkout.

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Before increasing traffic, ask:

• Are the right people reaching the website?
• Does the landing page continue the message that attracted them?
• Can visitors understand the proposition quickly?
• Does the brand feel credible and appropriate for the price?
• Where do customers hesitate or leave?
• Are conversions and lead quality being measured accurately?

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Paid traffic can then become a useful source of evidence. Different messages, audiences and landing pages can be compared to learn what creates both interest and action.

Our article on why CRO should be part of digital marketing strategy explores this relationship in more detail.

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