We killed the ECR.

A couple of years ago, I led UX & design for a blue chip retailer with a then poor and fragmented online store. So with a small internal dev team we rebuilt the site to be responsive in 3 sprints (6weeks) at the time it was quite magical. It moved, it adjusted, it didn’t look stunning, but it was an MVP and everyone couldn’t be happier. We launched while everybody was enjoying a round of pats on the back until senior management called through demanding to know why their key online metric had fallen through the floor.

The conversion rate, aka ECR, (e-commerce conversion rate) is often seen as the #1 metric for ecommerce sites. This is because in its simplest terms, it equates to how many people walked in the door and of those how many people made a transaction. This is something very easy for bricks and mortar based companies to understand.

So when the responsive site launched and the ECR went from 2% to less than 1% there was substantial panic. The term “rollback” went through the office like wildfire. Time to panic?

Possibly, but it was time for fast talking and fast data analysis. What could have been a head on chopping block moment turned out to be a great opportunity to educate and expand understanding for the fledgling online section of the, at the time, old world. brinks and mortar retailer.

What was needed was to convey to the suits in the corner office, was that the ECR was dropping as more people were “entering the store”, primarily on their mobile & tablet devices, which is a good thing. But most importantly, we were now tracking them and could see the full extent of missed opportunities. Customers that had been unable to use and shop with the retailer on their mobile devices due to the poor m.site implementation. What we also showed, while small at first was that the revenue coming out of mobile traffic was growing. AOV was up, items per transaction were up and very importantly retention was up. Stay the course was the message.

Fast forward 12 months and mobile had jumped from approximately 10% off traffic to roughly 40% of traffic. The ECR was still low, but the mobile revenue was now double that of the same time the previous year and growing. We also now had in place a very comprehensive deck of data and analysis which was for the most part, was well understood through the company. This was a hugely important outcome for the online group in that business. We had not only dramatically improved the customers experience, we’d increased revenue and even more importantly we’d been able to educate the wider business about the possibilities for its online venture.