21 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips to Boost Ecommerce Sales
If you’ve been getting lots of traffic but making little or no sales, this means that you need to optimize your ecommerce website for conversions and increase your overall conversion rate.
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who convert by completing a desired action (e.g. a purchase). If your online store receives 1000 visitors and makes 10 sales, this means that your conversion rate is 1%. The average conversion rate in ecommerce is around 1% to 2%.
There are a number of things that you can do to improve your online store’s conversion rate.
Use high-quality product images
Use high-quality product images to let visitors inspect the product in detail and help them make their decision easier. The more images you have of each product, the better. Make sure to show the product from each angle and let visitors zoom-in photos. Practice product photography or hire a professional photographer to take product photos for you.
Offer free shipping on all orders
60% of online shoppers abandon checkout because of shipping costs. Buyers love free shipping and offering it makes a huge difference. Find a way to offer free shipping on all orders, by either incorporating shipping into the product price or giving up a percentage of your profit margin.
Give out coupon codes
People love getting discounts and offering these in the form of a coupon code will do wonders for improving your conversion rate, especially from social media traffic.
Use psychological pricing
Pricing is a science in itself and there has been a lot of research done on the subject. The most common advice is to make all your prices end in .99. I can confirm that this definitely works since I have seen massive improvements in conversion rate in my own online store when using this type of pricing. However, you will need to test out different price points yourself to find out which one works best for your traffic.
Add more payment options
The more payment options you offer, the less of a chance that a customer will abandon checkout. The two basic ones that you should include are credit cards and PayPal. You can also consider adding options such as Amazon Pay or Bitcoin.
Use abandoned cart reminders
Depending on the ecommerce platform that you are using, there are a number of different plugins and apps that automatically send out email reminders to visitors who left items in their cart without purchasing. Make sure to use these on your online store in order to reduce cart abandonment and increase conversion rate.
Use live chat
If possible, implement a live chat feature on your online store and answer customer’s questions and concerns to help them make their purchase easier.
Use trust signals
Increase the trust and credibility of your online store by incorporating trust signals such as an SSL certificate, security badges and trust seals from places such as McAfee, PayPal, VeriSign etc. A good idea would also be to include the address and phone number of your business in a visible place. This will make your visitors more confident when entering their credit card details on your website.
Simplify your checkout
Simplify your checkout by reducing the number of fields the visitor needs to fill before finally checking out. Some fields you can exclude are the “Company Name” and “Address 2” fields which are frequent on most ecommerce checkouts. Make sure to include a checkbox where people can choose to use their billing address as the shipping address so they don’t have to enter the same address twice.
Enable guest checkout
Let visitors check out without having to register on your website by enabling guest checkout. This is a feature almost all ecommerce platforms offer.
Write detailed and easy to read product descriptions
Include anything you think a potential customer might want to know about a product in the product description. If you get emails from visitors asking specific questions about a product, make sure to include answers to those questions in the product description as well.
Gather reviews
55% of people consult online reviews before making a purchase. Actively seek out reviews for your products by asking your existing customers for reviews and perhaps even giving out free samples of your products in exchange for reviews.
Make your Add to Cart and Checkout buttons stand out
Make these two buttons stand out by placing them in prominent places, making them bigger and differently colored than the other buttons on your website.
Optimize your online store for mobile devices
34.5% of online shopping in 2017 was done using mobile devices. It is estimated that this number will rise to 54% by 2021. This is why it’s important to make sure that your website looks great on mobile and is easy to use.
Use an exit-intent popup to change a leaving visitor’s mind at the last moment
Incorporate an exit-intent popup with a coupon code to entice a visitor that was about to close the page to continue with the purchase, or at the very least leave their email address so that you can market to them later.
Use videos
Embed videos showcasing the product into your product description. While video production is time-consuming, using videos in your product descriptions can definitely increase your overall conversion rate. If you’re tight on time or money, try creating videos for your best-selling products first. If you see a substantial increase in your conversion, work on creating videos for all your products.
Use a persistent shopping cart
Make sure that when the visitor leaves your website with items still in the cart, that those items will still be waiting for them if they return a day or week later. This can be done by using a persistent cookie.
Create an FAQ page
Create a page on your website where you will answer all the frequent questions or concerns potential customers might have. Include a clear explanation of your refund and return policies as well as average delivery times.
Display contents of the shopping cart on all pages
Selling your product doesn’t end when the visitor adds it to their shopping cart. You need to keep selling it to them throughout the whole checkout process. Display the contents of the shopping cart on all pages to remind visitors that they still need to complete the purchase.
Improve page load speed
If your website is too slow, impatient visitors will just close it and move on. Try to keep your page load speed under 3 seconds to both improve conversion rate and reduce bounce rate.
Remove navigation from the checkout page
Remove navigation options from the checkout page to avoid the visitor getting distracted and drifting off to a different page on your website.
You will most certainly see an increase in your overall conversion rate if you implement these tips. However, you need to remember that conversion rate optimization is a never-ending process and that you should always be testing and tweaking things to get even more sales out of your existing traffic.
Originally published at borismustapic.com.
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