Over half of the shoppers in the UK prefer to shop online.
As the old adage goes:
You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
For millions of online stores, this is their reality. People come to their sites, but it doesn’t seem to be converting into sales.
If this sounds like your eCommerce store, stay tuned. Ease of navigation and purchase, customer relationships, and product pages are just a few areas that affect your site’s conversion rate.
Keep reading to discover 21 e-commerce conversion rate optimization techniques.
The first step to improving your conversion rate is to start tracking it. By a lack of tracking, you miss opportunities for growth. Therefore, you could be dumping money and resources into a system that could be hurting your business.
To track your conversions, follow every channel where you gain leads. This includes email click-through rates and signups, open chats, wishlist adds, product purchases, etc. This the only way to truly know if your marketing efforts are working.
Trouble-shooting is an essential part of improving CRO.
HotJar is a CRO tool that shows you how customers are spending time on your site. Their interface uses a heat map that demonstrates up to 10,000 customer clicks. This gives you a brief overview of how your site is performing and where people are getting held up.
Google Analytics lets you get ‘under the hood’ to see who your customers are. You find out what country they are from, what device they used, how they found your site, and how they spend time on your site.
People that signup for an email shows that they have an interest in your site. This makes them far more likely than other visitors to convert to sales. Email gives you a chance to personalize the shopping experience for each customer.
Email lists offer more security than a social media following. You own your email list. If you change sites or your site crashes, you maintain that list of potential customers. Social channels are a vital part of e-business—but if you lose access to it, you also lose access to your followers.
At any time, visitors to your site are in various stages of purchasing decisions. Google calls these stages Moments.
They include: I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, I-want-to-buy. In sales funnel terminology this i: Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action.
A sales funnel helps you build relationships with your customers at different stages of their purchase journey. The beginning of the sales funnel is the email capture. From there you can connect with the customer and get them to come back to your site.
What you connect with them over depends on their position in the funnel. For example, offering discounts during the Awareness stage may turn the customer off. Offering during the Decision phase will more-likely lead to a sale.
A/B testing is a comparison testing technique to get info about customer behaviour. For example, you may send one version of an email to one half of your list and another to the other. Then compare the results. Companies do this with product roll-outs, apps, special discounts and more.
This improves conversion rate because it helps you make better decisions based on your audience.
Purchasing from your website should be intuitive. A complicated purchase process will lead to abandoned shopping carts. 83% of online shoppers need some form of guidance through the purchasing process. Don’t overwhelm them with choices or forms to fill out.
In 2019, customers can pay from many gateways, including Paypal, Venmo, ApplePay, Bitcoin and more. People want to give you their money. Don’t make it harder for them.
To purchasing easier, don’t force people to create an account first. The speed of purchase is your ally or enemy in these situations.
In the virtual world, trust is built with words, sounds, and visuals. The customer can only know what your product is and does through the product page. Product descriptions should be as detailed as possible. You want your customer to know exactly what they are getting.
Great descriptions reduce the chances of returns, complaints, and bad reviews. Include popular keywords so your products show up in search engine results.
Keep product pages as simple as possible. It should only include information about the product and how to make a purchase. Avoid adding outbound links on product pages. If they navigate away from the page, they may not come back.
Because your customers can’t touch the product, the images should be high resolution.
Take photos from every angle and use size comparison shots if necessary. Also, include interactive features like point-zoom so customers can get an even more in-depth feel of the item.
Product videos are a great way to help customers get a feel for your products. They are also up to 85% more likely to make a purchase after viewing.
Video makes it easier to convey personality and brand voice than words can alone. They also serve short guides and how-tos. Customers learn exactly how to use the product for their own needs.
When it comes to satisfied customers, now is not a time to be shy. Post reviews in a can’t-miss location on your site. In the world of word-of-mouth, people consult online reviews before making purchases.
This is the time for you to learn the art of the humble-brag. Encourage your customers to leave reviews on popular review sites. Respond to negative previews quickly. This develops more trust in your company when they witness your ability to solve an issue.
Increase your average order value by offering an upsell or cross-sell. An upsell is when you offer a customer an upgrade to a more expensive version of the product. The cross-sell occurs when you offer a complementary product. Offering earbuds with a mobile phone purchase, for example.
The downsell occurs when a customer declines a product so you offer another, less-expensive options instead. Used effectively, each of these techniques can improve your conversion rates overall.
You want the journey from awareness to purchase to be a smooth as possible for the customer. 74% of online shoppers use social networks to inform purchase decisions. Use your social media to showcase your products but also as a means of selling.
An interested customer may not want to navigate away from their platform to make a purchase. Eliminate the obstacles, make more revenue.
Adding a Chatbox to your site lets customers get help with their problems right away. This way, you don’t lose customers to simple issues with quick fixes. It’s a personalized way to improve conversion rates.
When you start a business, you should know who your target customer is. Know what car she drives, what she likes to do on weekends, and what her hopes for the future are. Going this detailed, helps you anticipate the needs of your customers and offer them the best solutions.
This is called your value proposition. When you are in a saturated niche, why should a customer go with your products over the competition? If you don’t know, they won’t know either. This is the value you offer to your client.
Your value proposition is a combination of your brand and exactly what your product offers in as few words as possible.
An abandoned shopping cart happens when customers leave the site before completing a purchase. Tracking your shopping cart abandonment rate will provide vital information about your conversion efforts. Something as small as the colour of your ‘buy’ button or an outbound link on your product page can affect when carts get abandoned.
An email to the customer reignites interest in an abandoned cart. Sometimes offering discounts with the email will stimulate interest.
If you’ve ever been excited about an online purchase just to baulk at the shipping fee, your customers have too. 55% of online shoppers say free shipping is the most important option at checkout. The prospect of free shipping means a customer doesn’t have to pay ‘extra’ for their item.
If you can’t afford free shipping, calculate at which price you can. For example, many sites offer free shipping for orders over $100. Some retailers have seen an increase of 20% and more in their conversion rates.
Offer discounts on for a limited time. This creates urgency for your products. A customer will take advantage of your sale if they believe they may not get it again. Retail stores do this all the time with their “Limited Time Only” sales.
Create scarcity with countdown timers, items left in stock, limited-time offering, etc.
Navigating your site should be intuitive. Use simple but appealing visuals to help guide the user’s eye. Also, your site should load quickly and easily across different devices. The average person spends about 15 seconds on a website.
The percentage of visitors who leave a site after viewing only one page is called bounce-rate. High loading time will increase your bounce rate and ultimately lead to low conversions. Your web host, the age of your site, site contents and more affect your loading time.
Keep your site up to date and with a responsive design that works across multiple devices.
Your conversion rate is determined by several factors. The most important advice for e-commerce conversion rate optimization is to always keep improving.
You want to create measures for constant testing. This way you remain informed as to what is actually working for your customers.
Understand who your target customer is and sell to them exclusively. Make it as easy as possible for them to make a purchase, get help, and understand your product.
To learn more about marketing your e-commerce site, improving customer engagement, and conversions, click here.
