How to improve the conversion rate of your e-Commerce?

Let’s face it. If your Google Ads bring you a lot of new users and you have placed banners on the biggest website in your industry, but your e-commerce sale is still not satisfactory, you’re doing something wrong. There is a big chance that your e-commerce needs conversion rate optimization.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

This definition of conversion is probably well-known to you. It is an expected action performed by a customer. For e-commerce, the most important conversion is sales. But there are also other types of conversion that matter for online businesses, such as creating an account, signing up for a newsletter, or adding a product to the wishlist.

The conversion rate is nothing more than the percentage value of the conversion. You can calculate it using the equation below:

So what is conversion rate optimization? These are all the actions you take to increase the conversion rate in your online store. Let’s see what you can do to make it happen.

Before you start Conversion Rate Optimization…

You have to know what your conversion really is. So start by defining what user’s actions are important to you. Of course, increasing sales will be the number one priority on your list. But we’re 100% sure that there are more conversions that are affecting your e-store profit. Without a clear definition of your macro and micro conversions, you won’t know what indicators you should measure. And consequently, you won’t know what to do to maximize your e-store results.

When you know what your micro and macro conversions are, you can now go to the next step – analysis. You need to know your business inside out. And we don’t only mean profits, margin, and taxes you pay, but first and foremost, your users' behavior.

To optimize your e-commerce, you need to know what your target audience is, what they do on your website, how they act, what pages they view the most, and how long it takes them to finalize the purchase. To do that, you can use Google Analytics, HotJar, or cux.io. A good analysis will help you to identify your e-store's pain points and find places where you’re losing the most of your users.

How to optimize the conversion rate of your e-store?

There is no perfect hack that guarantees conversion rate growth in every e-commerce. That’s why you need to analyze your platform before you start with optimization. But there are some issues that are more common. Here are 11 things you can tweak to increase the conversion rate of your e-store.

Boost your e-Commerce’s loading time

According to WebsiteBuilderExpert, one out of four users will leave a website if its loading time takes more than four seconds. Each additional second can reduce your conversion rate by over 4%. The only conclusion is that slow e-Commerces sell less.

If you want to increase your conversion rate, you must ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible. There are many ways to make your e-store faster, such as checking if your hosting is fast enough, eliminating all comments and unused scripts from your code, changing graphic files to WebP, or minimizing the number of redirections within your website.

Talk to your developers and work out the best solution to speed up your online store. The faster your e-Commerce works, the lower the bounce rate is, and consequently, the higher your sales numbers are.

Make sure your e-Commerce is mobile friendly

Over 92% of internet users use a mobile phone to access the internet, and 29.3% of them buy something using these devices on a weekly basis. We cannot deny that mobile users have a huge impact on e-Commerce. That's why you must include them in your marketing strategy.

Verify if your online store works smoothly on every mobile device. Make sure that your e-Commerce layout is mobile-friendly and that buttons are easy to click on. A great way to optimize your e-store for smartphones is Progressive Web App (PWA).

A PWA is a certain type of mobile website that looks and behaves like a mobile app. E-Commerce that was built using PWA rules works smoothly on every device, even when the internet connection is weak. Better user experience on mobile devices will significantly increase your sales.

Make your e-Commerce easy to use

Who wouldn't want to have an e-store that is unique and completely different from any other? Unfortunately, some e-Commerces take it too far and prioritize uniqueness over utility during the process of designing their platform.

The main goal of every e-Commerce is to sell as much as possible, and you can't do that if your users are not able to navigate through your e-store correctly.

To purchase a product on your website, a customer must find all the information they need to make a decision. If they can't find the cart icon because you've put it in the bottom left corner, they won't finalize the transaction. Too complicated navigation and extraordinary design can cause you more harm than good. Make your e-store visually pleasing and easy to use, and your conversion rate will improve substantially.

Simplify your checkout

This is probably the most critical part of e-Commerce development. If your checkout takes a lot of time or, worse, doesn't work correctly, it wouldn't be a surprise if your online sales are low.

Unfortunately, many e-Commerces still implement long forms and unclear purchase steps. To simplify your checkout and increase your conversion, eliminate all distractions at this stage of purchase, make forms short, turn on autofill, and clearly indicate the next remaining steps. If the checkout on your e-store works smoothly and doesn't take a lot of time to complete, there is a better chance that your users will make their purchase on your platform.

Add filters to a category page

Very often, users are not looking for a certain product but products that have specific parameters. If they can’t easily find them, they leave, and your online sales suffer.

To avoid losing potential customers (and even current customers), add filters to your category pages. Make sure that they are well-fitted to a specific category. So, if you’re selling hair products, add hair types, formulas, and desired effects to your shampoo category. That way, your e-customers would be able to find a product that fits their needs. Filters make your customer journey easier, and that results in a conversion rate increase.

Include high-quality photos and videos

Since we can’t touch, smell, or try a product before buying it on the internet, we base our decision mostly on one sense – sight. That’s why high-quality visuals are vital to make a thoughtful purchase decision. This is one of the most crucial elements.

Make sure that every product in your e-store has enough photos that show all the important details of it. You can also add 360-degree videos to ensure that your e-customer knows exactly what they’re buying.

If your e-commerce lacks high-quality visual assets, there is a big chance that your product pages have a high bounce rate, and you don’t really get any conversions. So, hire a product photographer and add high-quality visuals to your e-store.

Write detailed product descriptions

Online shopping can be like buying a pig in a poke, especially if there are no good photos and descriptions. Since we can’t see a product in real life and actually touch it or try it on, we have to get as much information as possible to be able to buy the right thing.

That’s why detailed product information is so important. Without it, your customer can’t be certain what they're buying. If they don't find accurate product descriptions in your e-commerce, chances are they'll go to another online store that provides them with all the information they need to make their purchase decision.

Maintaining high-quality product information can be challenging, especially when you offer a great number of items. To make it easier, you can implement a PIM tool, e.g. Akeneo. It will help you manage your product information data on all selling channels. Add detailed descriptions in your e-store, and you’ll see how much your conversion rate increases.

Provide a guest checkout

Creating an account on every platform we use can be tedious. Firstly, who would remember all of these passwords? Secondly, as internet users, we are more conscious about the personal data we hand over. Not to mention that creating an account takes time. Time we just don’t want to waste.

According to Caterra report, 43% of internet users prefer buying products online without signing up. It's quite possible that if in order to make a purchase in your e-store a user needs to create an account, you're losing a lot of potential customers.

There are a couple of ways you can make this stage of the customer journey easier. You can add an option to make a purchase as a guest or make signing up faster by allowing your e-customers to create an account using social media. The faster and smoother this process is, the more conversion your e-Commerce will generate.

Make it easy to contact you

Providing excellent customer service is important not only for post-purchase matters such as complaints or returns, but also has a huge impact on the pre-purchase stage of the customer journey.

Sometimes, to buy a product, we need more information than what is available on a product page. If we don’t get the missing information fast, we’ll go somewhere else to buy the desired product.

To avoid losing customers in such a way, provide them with excellent customer service. You don’t have to hire 50 people to answer all of the incoming calls and emails 24/7. You can invest in chat tools such as LiveChat or Zendesk chat.

Well-designed customer service not only increases the post-purchase experience of your customer but also helps them make a decision to buy the product in your store, hence improving your conversion rate.

Display customer testimonials and reviews

Social proof marketing is one of the most impactful factors when making buying decisions. According to Northwestern University, when a product receives five reviews, the likelihood of purchase increases by 270%. That shows how important it is to add reviews to your e-Commerce. Make sure you display only real and verified opinions. Don’t buy them in bulk from some suspicious Indian website. Make an effort to gain honest customer testimonials, and remember to check legal regulations in that matter. If your store operates in the European Union, you may need to implement the reviews section in a specific way in accordance with the Omnibus Directive. Displaying reviews in your e-store grows your brand trust and increases your sales.

Add recommendations to your e-Commerce

Cross-selling is a really effective sales strategy, not only in retail but also in the e-Commerce industry. Adding a recommendation section on your website can significantly boost sales of your business. The best part is that you don’t have to manually prepare all suggestions. There are many tools that can do that for you using marketing automation. Recommendations convince existing customers to make larger purchases at your store, hence increasing sales of your e-Commerce business.

Use additional incentives

To convince your users to make their purchase at your store now, you can use some strategies that evoke feelings of urgency or missing opportunities.

A good example would be the “Delivery tomorrow when ordering by 12:00 PM” banner on a product page or information that there are only three items left. There are a lot of tricks like that to use, so give them a try and check out which of them increase your sales the most.

Test, test, test…

There are many ways to increase the sales of an e-Commerce business. Some work better than others for certain types of businesses. The key to successful conversion rate optimization is to analyze your e-store and test available solutions.

Remember, everything starts with a good offer and a reliable e-Commerce platform, such as Magento 2.