fonQ is an online Dutch department store offering more than 60,000 living, cooking and lifestyle products. Observing that mobile traffic was on the increase, fonQ launched a new responsive website. At the same time, the business initiated conversion rate optimisation together with the Google Conversion Team to provide a framework for continuous A/B testing of design changes, new functionalities and improvements to the responsive site.
Goals
Increase conversion rate
Improve customer experience
Streamline checkout process
Approach
Implemented continuous A/B testing
Used Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to understand customer behaviour
Results
2.1% uplift in conversion rate across all devices
fonQ started their optimisation process by studying Google Analytics data to identify the pages in the sales funnel where maximum positive impact could be made. When the team analysed the landing page, shopping behaviour and checkout behaviour reports, they found unexpected drop-off rates from the shopping cart.
Having pinpointed the need to improve the shopping cart page, fonQ began collecting heatmap data and used Google Tag Manager to measure clicks on buttons, icons and links. This showed that a lot of visitors were starting the checkout process but subsequently returning to the shopping cart page rather than proceeding to complete their transaction.
“In optimising our checkout flow, we found that small changes could drive huge impact. And by implementing a customer focussed process of continuous A/B testing, this impact increased even further.”
- Jurrien Schouten, CRO Specialist, fonQ
fonQ hypothesised that customers were looking for information related to delivery options and dates, which appeared below the fold in the shopping cart on many devices. The team carried out an A/B test in which they prevented customers from continuing without first scrolling down to view the delivery options. The A/B test was not significant, so the team learned that this wasn’t the problem. A new hypothesis was needed.
By analysing Google Tag Manager events within Google Analytics, fonQ identified the links, icons and buttons that customers were using to return to the shopping cart page. They found out that most visitors were clicking the shopping cart icon (a red notification indicating the number of products) in the top right corner. In fact, most of these clicks were from visitors who were already in the shopping cart, and this behavior was particularly prevalent on mobile devices.
fonQ hypothesised that the icon was actually distracting visitors from the task of checking out, since red notifications tend to signal important actions. In order to decrease distraction, help customers finish their task and increase the conversion rate across all devices, the team ran a test in which the colour of the shopping cart notification was changed to grey on desktop and white on mobile.
After three weeks of testing, the calculated sample size was reached. The test produced an increase in conversion rate of 2.1% across all devices. The percentage of customers who were distracted and clicked on the shopping cart icon decreased by 40% on desktop and by 27% on mobile. With these positive outcomes, fonQ has already moved on to tackle the next test – removing the search bar, the shopping cart icon and the hamburger menu to further reduce distraction and make it even easier for customers to complete their journey. The conversion team at fonQ learned that understanding your customers and making small changes can have a profound impact on revenue.
