For years, much of ecommerce growth strategy has revolved around acquisition.
Brands invested heavily in paid media, SEO, social platforms, and performance marketing in pursuit of more traffic, more visibility, and ultimately more sales. In many cases, success became heavily tied to how effectively businesses could attract new customers into the top of the funnel.
The challenge now is that customer acquisition has become significantly more expensive.
Advertising costs continue to rise, competition for attention is increasing, and many ecommerce businesses are finding that simply driving more traffic no longer guarantees sustainable growth. As a result, more brands are starting to look closely at what happens after customers actually arrive on site.
That is where conversion rate optimisation, or CRO, is becoming increasingly important.
In a recent episode of The FODcast, Adam Pearce, Co-founder of Blend Commerce, shared his perspective on how ecommerce businesses should think about conversion, customer behaviour, and long-term profitability, and why CRO is often far more commercially significant than many brands initially realise.
Why conversion rate optimisation matters more than ever
One of the clearest themes throughout the discussion was that CRO is often misunderstood.
Historically, conversion rate optimisation has sometimes been reduced to surface-level experimentation around website layouts, button colours, or isolated A/B tests. While those things can contribute to performance improvements, they rarely address the wider commercial picture on their own.
As Adam discussed, effective CRO is ultimately about understanding how customers behave, where friction exists within the buying journey, and what prevents users from taking action.
That makes conversion optimisation closely tied to overall customer experience.
A poorly structured checkout process, unclear messaging, weak product information, slow page performance, or lack of trust signals can all impact conversion rates significantly. Improving those areas not only increases sales performance, but also creates a smoother and more intuitive experience for customers overall.
In increasingly competitive ecommerce markets, those small improvements can compound quickly.
The three commercial levers behind ecommerce growth
One of the strongest frameworks discussed during the conversation was Adam’s breakdown of the three key levers ecommerce brands can pull to drive growth.
- The first is encouraging customers to buy now.
- The second is encouraging them to buy more through higher basket value or product expansion.
- The third is encouraging them to buy again by improving retention and repeat purchasing behaviour.
What makes this framework particularly useful is that it shifts the conversation away from traffic alone and towards overall commercial efficiency.
Many ecommerce businesses still focus disproportionately on acquiring new customers while underinvesting in retention, customer experience, or average order value optimisation. Yet in many cases, the most commercially valuable gains come from improving how effectively existing traffic and existing customers convert over time.
That feels increasingly relevant in an environment where acquisition costs continue to rise and profitability is coming under greater scrutiny.
Why CRO is becoming more data-led
Another important theme throughout the conversation was the role data plays within modern conversion optimisation.
Successful CRO is rarely driven by assumptions or subjective opinion alone. The strongest optimisation strategies are typically grounded in customer behaviour, testing, and performance analysis.
As Adam discussed, that can include understanding traffic sources, analysing user journeys, monitoring drop-off points, gathering customer feedback, and testing different experiences over time. The goal is not simply to make websites look better, but to better understand how customers interact with the buying journey itself.
That requires businesses to become more comfortable with experimentation.
In many ways, effective CRO reflects a broader shift happening across digital commerce, where decision making is becoming increasingly iterative, customer-led, and evidence-based rather than purely instinctive.
Why customer experience and CRO increasingly overlap
One of the more interesting aspects of the discussion was how closely CRO and customer experience are now connected.
Historically, conversion optimisation may have been viewed primarily as a performance marketing or ecommerce function. Increasingly though, it touches almost every part of the customer journey.
Trust, usability, site speed, mobile experience, fulfilment clarity, reviews, navigation, checkout flow, and product communication all influence conversion behaviour in different ways. That means CRO is becoming far more cross-functional than many businesses perhaps previously considered.
It also means that improving conversion rates is often less about persuasion and more about reducing uncertainty or friction for customers.
The brands performing strongest in this area are often those creating experiences that feel intuitive, trustworthy, and easy to navigate rather than overly engineered around aggressive conversion tactics.
The growing importance of retention and lifetime value
Another important point raised during the conversation was the growing importance of customer retention within ecommerce growth strategy.
As acquisition becomes more expensive, businesses are increasingly recognising the commercial value of improving repeat purchase behaviour and customer lifetime value rather than relying purely on new customer growth.
That links directly back into CRO.
The customer journey does not end at checkout, and conversion
optimisation increasingly extends beyond the first purchase into retention, loyalty, upsell, and long-term engagement. The businesses approaching CRO most effectively are often those looking at the entire customer lifecycle rather than isolated conversion moments alone.
This reflects a much broader shift happening across ecommerce, where profitability, efficiency, and retention are becoming increasingly important alongside growth itself.
The capability challenge behind CRO
One of the wider themes that continues to emerge across digital commerce is the growing overlap between analytics, customer experience, ecommerce strategy, and commercial performance.
Modern CRO now sits across data analysis, UX, development, merchandising, marketing, and customer behaviour all at once. As a result, businesses increasingly need teams capable of connecting those disciplines together effectively.
From our perspective, this is another example of how ecommerce strategy is becoming increasingly interconnected. The strongest businesses are often those capable of combining technical capability with commercial understanding and genuine customer insight.
Final thoughts
What came through clearly in this conversation is that conversion rate optimisation is becoming far more strategically important than many ecommerce businesses perhaps previously realised.
As Adam highlighted, effective CRO is not simply about tweaking websites or running isolated tests. It is about understanding customer behaviour, reducing friction, improving customer experience, and ultimately building more commercially efficient ecommerce businesses.
For brands operating in increasingly competitive markets, that means thinking beyond traffic growth alone and focusing more closely on how effectively customers are actually converting, engaging, and returning over time.
Thanks again to Adam for sharing his time, insight and perspective on this topic. If conversion rate optimisation or ecommerce growth strategy is something your business is currently exploring, do take some time to listen to the full episode; link below:
