Conversion rate optimization: how well equipped are you?
Maximizing the efficiency of your purchase process is critical to client acquisition. Sometimes little adjustments on your cart help you grow your conversion rate by a few points, which can significantly impact your top line.
Crafting these improvements may be simple, or not, depending on your commerce platform and the flexibility it brings. This article aims to give you an overview of some ideas that can positively impact your conversion rate, and help you evaluate to what extent your commerce platform facilitate their implementation.
User experience
First of all, the user experience in cart needs to be flawless and adapted to the user context. It is important that your checkout pages deliver compelling experiences whatever the device: mobile, tablet, desktop, etc..
A best practice when selling software licenses or subscriptions is enabling the purchase within the application. The whole shopping experience is seamlessly embedded inside the software, allowing the user to purchase without leaving the application. Some of my clients have increased their conversion rate by 30% with this feature.
How adaptive is your current cart? Are you able to serve a commerce experience where your prospects are the most likely to convert?
A/B testing core features
There is no one-size-fits-all model, what works in one market may not work in another one. One of the simplest keys to success lies in your capacity to simply A/B test various versions of your checkout page. For instance, test and measure your cart performance with one-step, two-steps and three-step checkouts. You may have opinions about what works the best, but there is no truth without proper testing. It is the same with price rounding: just test if €19.99 gives better conversion rate than €19.95 or €19.90, the results may surprise you.
You can apply this process to any parameter that can be adjusted in your cart, from the color of your buttons to the entire layout. What’s interesting though is to test core features such as pricing, page layout, product cross-sells… This is more impactful than changing a color or a font… but it is technically more demanding than simply changing a css line.
The ability to simply apply changes on core features (with url parameters, for example) should definitely be considered when selecting your commerce platform.
Payment efficiency
Payment is the most critical step in your purchase funnel, and it tends to remain a black-box for many e-commerce managers. Let’s have a glance into this box.
The first thing you need to consider when it comes to payments are the options you give to your prospects:
Are they able to purchase in their local currency?
If there is the slightest doubt about currency conversions and related fees in your prospects’ mind, chances are high they will simply quit at this stage without purchasing.
Do you accept the payment method they are likely to use?
If you don’t know that IDEAL is the main payment method used in the Netherlands, or don’t allow SOFORT or SEPA Direct Debit in Germany, you are simply missing the majority of your potential sales.
As far as credit cards are concerned, after your prospect has entered the payment details and validates the transaction, you may think that the job is done. However, the payment is now going through the Caudine Forks of the authorization process, which implies as many players as your payment service provider (PSP), the credit card network, the processor, the acquirer and the issuer bank. Each step of this process represents a risk of failure, and the overall success is measured by the acceptance rate. It is possible to maximizes the acceptance rate by routing payment among different PSPs. Depending on the market and the type of credit card, you will get different acceptance rates with different providers.
Connection and data exchange
Running an online business implies connecting multiple solutions together: from ad-tech to CRM, and you need to circulate data between them to do a good job. Ideally all your data is centralized into a data lake or a data management platform (DMP).
Your commerce platform is at the forefront of data collection, with crucial information about your clients’ status. Have they purchased? When was the last time they did? How frequently? For which amount? This information enables you to build relevant user segments and properly engage them… still you need to have this data available in your DMP or your ad-tech solutions or your personalisation tools.
How simple is this data connection with your commerce platform? Can you pull data with APIs? Do you have native connectors to 3rd party tools such as Zapier? Can it be real-time?
These are key elements to consider when selecting a commerce provider.
Conclusion
In many cases there are some real quick wins to be realized through checkout and purchase process optimization. For example, if you don’t have a mobile version of your cart or the right payment method with local currencies, you can easily gain a few conversion points by fixing this.
Otherwise, improving your conversion rate is a long process that requires A/B testing, implementing small changes, and interacting within your tech ecosystem.
In order to bring your conversion to the next level, you need to be equipped with an open and agile headless commerce solution.
