Is your customer acquisition cost climbing every quarter?
Don’t feel bad. Most ecommerce brands pour cash down the drain on ads, influencers, and SEO campaigns to acquire one new customer. And you know what, it’s rarely your marketing that’s the problem.
It’s your website architecture.
The best part? Repairing your website architecture is one of the least expensive methods to reduce acquisition costs and increase profits over time.
Here’s What’s Coming Up:
- Why Website Architecture Affects Your CAC
- The Hidden Costs of a Poorly Built Site
- 5 Architecture Fixes That Lower Acquisition Costs
- Why This Matters Long Term
Why Website Architecture Affects Your CAC
Customer acquisition cost is how much you spend to acquire one customer.
This includes advertising spend, SEO, influencers, content, etc. Everything a store puts money into marketing. Lower this number and you increase profitability.
Here’s the problem:
If your site architecture is poor, you are paying for visitors who bounce right off your site. Each visitor that departs without purchasing raises your cost per acquisition.
Here’s an example. Let’s say 100 visitors arrive at your store and only 2 buy. You have a high CAC. Now let’s say you can convert 5 out of those SAME 100 visitors to buyers WITHOUT spending additional money on advertising… You’ve lowered your CAC by 60%.
This is the power of better architecture. And it all begins with choosing the right foundation. This means using dependable eCommerce hosting that loads quickly and doesn’t go down. Partnering with a UK Based eCommerce agency is a great way to ensure you have the proper hosting, architecture, and internal linking right from the start.
Now for the why behind all this…
The Hidden Costs of a Poorly Built Site
Most ecommerce sites are built without much thought given to architecture.
Humans obsess over pretty designs and neglect the basics. What do you get? Beautiful sites that hemorrhage cash. Did you know that recent stats show 42% of marketing budgets are wasted on customer acquisition by ecommerce brands?
That’s nearly half of your spend going down the drain.
Why does this happen?
Traffic literally doesn’t convert because of how the store is built. Slow speeds, complicated menus, broken filters… these things turn users off. The sad thing is most retailers blame their ads for it.
They continue to invest more into Facebook and Google. Hoping someday it will change. The problem isn’t the bucket. It’s the tap that’s leaking.
Here are the most common architecture mistakes that drive CAC up:
- Slow page load times
- Confusing category structure
- Poor mobile experience
- Broken internal linking
- Bad URL structure
Time to look at how to fix each of these.
5 Architecture Fixes That Lower Acquisition Costs
Here are the initiatives most likely to move the needle on CAC. Choose two or three. Execute. Watch the numbers soar.
Speed Up Your Site
Speed is the most important architecture factor. People hate waiting.
You should know that 53% of mobile users abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Half your paying traffic wasted before they see the products.
Solution Numero Uno is upgrading your eCommerce hosting services. Discount shared hosting will NOT cut it if you want a store. You need:
- A dedicated server or quality cloud hosting
- A content delivery network (CDN)
- Image compression and lazy loading
- Minified CSS and JavaScript
Site speed correlates to conversion. When a site loads in less than 2 seconds, conversions increase. Each additional conversion decreases CAC.
Clean Up Your Category Structure
A messy category structure confuses both shoppers and search engines.
Site visitors aren’t finding what they need. Googlebot can’t crawl the site effectively. Both of these scenarios negatively impact conversions and organic visitors.
Here’s how to fix it:
Create logical groups of products. Limit nesting to 3 levels deep at most. Each product should have 1 primary categry.
This creates what’s known as a “siloed” structure – which allows Google to better understand the store. Better understanding = better rankings. Better rankings = cheaper organic traffic.
Optimise For Mobile First
Over 70% of ecommerce traffic now comes from mobile devices.
A store that looks awesome on Desktop but breaks on Mobile…. Away run MOST of your potential customers. Mobile First Design is no longer optional, it’s REQUIRED.
That means:
- Big tappable buttons
- Easy thumb navigation
- Fast mobile checkout
- Compressed images for mobile
If the mobile experience is seamless, the conversion rate increases. Lower conversion means cheaper customers overall.
Fix Your Internal Linking
Internal links pass authority around the site and help shoppers find related products.
The majority of stores completely disregard this. They make product pages that link to nowhere. That’s a huge lost opportunity SEO and sales wise.
Use internal links to:
- Connect related products
- Link category pages to top products
- Send authority to high-value pages
Rule of thumb is to link to 3-5 other relevant products from each product page. Increases time on site, decreases bounce rates, and enhances SEO. All three factors decrease CAC simultaneously.
Build A Logical URL Structure
URLs matter more than most people think.
“http://yoursite.com/p?id=12345” is ugly to Google. “http://yoursite.com/mens-shoes/running-shoes” speaks volumes. Clean URLs = Better ranking = More clicks = Better conversions.
The solution could not be easier. Create descriptive keyword-rich urls based on your category structure. Eliminate query strings and random numbers whenever possible. It’s a small tweak that can have monumental benefits down the road.
Why This Matters Long Term
Customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing. Over the past five years, CAC has increased by nearly 60% and shows no sign of leveling off anytime soon.
In the meantime, it costs 5-7x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one. That equates to exponential returns on every architecture improvement. Improved speed = reduced CAC + improved retention. Improved mobile experience = reduced CAC + improved retention. The longer you stick with it, the more the numbers work in your favor.
That’s why intelligent brands build their site infrastructure from day one. It’s worth it for all eternity.
Final Thoughts
Lowering customer acquisition cost doesn’t mean slashing ad budgets or seeking lower-priced marketing channels.
It usually means repairing things under the store hood. Like:
- Hosting and load speed
- Category structure
- Mobile experience
- Internal linking
- URL structure
Every one of these fixes reduces customer acquisition costs. The best news is that when fixed, they continue to save you money indefinitely.
Ok before you spend another pound on advertising… Look long and hard at your site architecture. The hole could be right under your nose.
