Conversion Rate Optimisation – Experience drives performance
The retailer’s guide to 2025 – Chapter 8
In a time where every click counts and margins are tighter than ever, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) has become one of the most effective strategies to improve both customer experience and business performance. In 2025, CRO is no longer limited to A/B tests on landing pages, it’s a data-led, cross-functional discipline that transforms how retailers design, personalise, and refine their digital ecosystems.
CRO has evolved from a niche marketing practice to a core business capability. In 2025, it’s no longer about squeezing marginal gains out of a button colour or landing page headline, it’s about deeply understanding shopper behaviour and systematically removing friction from every part of the customer journey.
In today’s competitive setting, where customer acquisition costs are high and expectations are higher, CRO is the fastest route to win revenue, build trust, and improve sustainability. When done right, it aligns user experience, data, content, and operations into a seamless, intuitive path to purchase.
Modern CRO starts with empathy as a series of micromoments. What do customers really want in each moment, and what’s getting in their way? Leading retailers are answering these questions by leveraging behavioural analytics, session replays, heatmaps, and AI-generated insights. The goal isn’t just to optimise the website, it’s also to optimise how the brand communicates, performs, and delivers value across all channels.
“When done right, it aligns user experience, data, content, and operations into a seamless, intuitive path to purchase.”
CRO as a strategy, not a sprint
Retailers in 2025 understand that optimising conversion means understanding the entire customer journey. From first impression to final purchase (and beyond), CRO helps identify and eliminate friction, build trust, and align messaging to moments. CRO might be seen as the connective tissue that aligns UX design, content, analytics, and development into a single goal: seamless conversion.
“Retailers in 2025 understand that optimising conversion means understanding the entire customer journey.”
From the first homepage visit to the final delivery notification, every click, scroll, and swipe has the potential to create momentum, or resistance. CRO specialists now work together with UX designers, merchandisers, developers, and customer service teams to optimize across:
Homepages and navigation: Guiding users intuitively toward relevant products.
Product detail pages: Leveraging reviews, size finders, rich imagery, and sustainability info.
Checkouts: Reducing abandonment through guest options, autofill, and flexible payment.
Post-purchases: Enhancing confirmation flows, upsell opportunities, order tracking and easy returns.
CRO also plays a critical role in sustainability. Smarter sizing tools and more accurate product descriptions reduce returns. Clear material information helps customers make informed decisions. Optimising conversion is not only about increasing sales, but also about improving quality of sales and reducing waste.
Retailers like Zalando, ASOS, and Glossier are setting the bar. Zalando combines deep product data with AI-driven personalisation to simplify decisionmaking. ASOS delivers a mobile-first UX that adapts to different user behaviours and preferences. Glossier’s minimalist design, transparent reviews, and community content make the journey feel effortless and trustworthy.
CRO meets sustainability
With growing concern over waste and return emissions, CRO is now being used to align performance with purpose. By optimising toward lower returns and smarter purchases, CRO becomes a driver of both profit and sustainability:
- Smarter sizing tools reduce fit-related returns
- Clear material information supports ethical decision-making
- Simplified paths to pre-owned or alternative products reduce overconsumption
In 2025, CRO is also helping retailers balance automation and emotion. While AI tools can test, predict, and personalise at scale, the best results come when those tools are guided by human insight and brand integrity. The winning formula is datainformed, creatively driven, and relentlessly customerfocused.
Because at the end of the day, conversion isn’t just about getting a sale, but about earning relationships. And that’s a metric every brand should care about.
The power of personalisation
Personalisation has become one of CRO’s most powerful tools. In 2025, AI and customer data enable retailers to dynamically recommend relevant products and categories, adjust content by location, weather, or buying intent and show urgency and social proof without overwhelming users.
Retailers like Zalando and ASOS are using hyperpersonalisation to reduce returns, improve size confidence, and tailor messaging based on individual behaviour patterns.
Best-in-class retailers
Zalando – Focuses on simplifying the journey, offering visual search, predictive sizing, and usergenerated content to improve decisions.
Asos – Innovates with lifestyle photography, mobile-first UX, and fast load times across all devices.
Fjäll Raven – Combines high-quality content with clear specifications and flexible payment to support confident conversion.
Glossier – Builds trust with transparent reviews, community-driven content, and minimalist UX.
Final thought
Retailers in 2025 can’t afford to leave conversion to chance. Every friction point is a lost opportunity, and every improvement compound business value. CRO is the most pragmatic way to turn visitors into customers, reduce returns, and enhance satisfaction, without increasing ad spend. In a market defined by experience, it’s not just what you sell, but how you help people buy it that matters.
BREAKING