For years, traffic acquisition has been the priority of marketing departments. Google Ads, Meta, Tiktok: budgets have been massively focused on increasing the volume of visits. This approach, inherited from a low -cost growth paradigm, today shows its limits. The economic context was tense. Traffic is rarer. Its cost explodes. And the conversion rates stagnate.
A high increase cost
The aggregated data on European e-commerce show a clear trend: the cost per visit has progressed by 26 % in two years. This inflation is explained by several factors: saturation of traditional channels, increased competition on keywords, drop in organic reach, and more aggressive pricing policy of platforms. At the same time, The average basket remains stable – around 68 euros in France according to the Fevad – and Conversion rates oscillate between 1.5 % and 3 % According to the sectors.
Result: the brands pay more and more for visits which report less and less. This imbalance, largely underestimated, weakens the economic models of digital actors, in particular those dependent on massive acquisition campaigns.
Conversion: blind spot of many strategies
While acquisition budgets are monitored daily, The conversion tunnel remains under-exploited. Few brands know precisely why a user leaves a product page without buying, why a form is abandoned at the last step, or how a navigation detail impacts commercial performance.
On average, More than 90 % of traffic is lost without transformation. Each conversion point won has an immediate multiplier effect on profitability. However, in many organizations, the teams produced, UX, Marketing and Data work in silo, making it difficult to optimize the user experience.
Why “return to fundamentals” has become an imperative
The current situation requires a paradigm shift. Rather than spending more to capture traffic, it becomes more profitable to Better convert what already exists. This presupposes an approach centered on the active listening of users:
- Identify friction : unnecessary clicks, slowness, non -interactive elements, form errors.
- Analyze the real routesand not the theoretical courses.
- Exploit weak signalssuch as scrolls interrupted or zooms on mobile.
- Cross quantitative data and qualitative feedback To detect patterns of frustration.
This approach requires suitable tools, but above all a culture of continuous improvement, shared by marketing, product, data and support teams.
A stronger profitability requirement
The post-ZIRP context (interest rate to zero) puts profitability at the heart of strategic decisions. Marketing directors must today Demonstrate the real impact of their expenses. Optimization of conversion makes it possible to reduce ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), to better make CRM investments profitable, and to improve loyalty KPIS (NPS, Repeat Rate, etc.).
It also constitutes a lever of budgetary resilience : during tension periods, better converting constant traffic is often simpler – and faster – than boosting a new wave of acquisition.
Conclusion: Better to transform than spending
The era of “more traffic for more sales” is coming to an end. Pressure on margins, elevation of acquisition costs, and profitability requirements transform conversion into a strategic issue. It is no longer a secondary subject, but the new priority optimization field for digital companies. In an environment where each click counts, The largest growth deposit is no longer ahead of the door: it is already in the tunnel.
