The essence of setting up an eCommerce store is to have your website visitors buy something. However, not all site visitors will buy something. Successful eCommerce stores are those that are able to convert most of their website visitors into actual customers.
The average eCommerce store is able to turn approximately 1% to 4% of its website visitors into paying customers. The average Shopify conversion rate is lower at 1.4%. But if the value of the product is higher, your conversion rate could be lower and that a common case So, how do you increase your site’s conversion rate?
What’s eCommerce Conversion Rate and How to Calculate It?
Before discussing eCommerce conversion rate optimization (how you can boost your conversion rate), it helps to define conversion rate.
In simple terms, ECommerce conversion rate refers to the percentage of customers who will buy your products/services after visiting your site.
eCommerce conversion rate = no. Of completed orders/site visits * 100
For instance, if you have 10 complete orders after 1,000 people have visited your site over a certain period, the conversion rate will be 10/1,000 * 100 = 1%.
Ways to Increase Conversion Rate for Your Online Store
Now that you understand eCommerce conversion, how do you boost the rate? Look at the formular and concentrate on the Numerator(no. Of completed orders) and denominator(site visits)
1. Pay Attention To the Site Visitors
You can check your eCommerce Conversion Rate from Google Analytics(GA). Go to “Acquisition”-“All Traffic”-“Channels” and you will able to see detailed conversion rates for different traffic sources.(The path may differ if you are using the new Google Analytics 4)
In most of the case, the conversion rate of referral and email marketing would be higher than others. The main reason is they do target and bring “accurate” traffic to your website. For example, the referral sources may be some coupon/deal websites or some niche blog that recommend your products. Visitors from those sites redirected to your store would have higher probability that are interested in your products/brand and then buy from you. So, do not miss out to pay more attention to manage your affiliate program and email marketing if you want to increase your eCommerce conversion.
Now you know that the high quality site visitors will effect the conversion rate, but how about the Numerator(no. Of completed orders)? What can you do to increase the numbers of the complete orders? Below there are 7 top tips to consider;
2. 8 Best&Unique Tips to Let Your Visitors To Buy
Tips 1. Get More Honest And Detailed Product Reviews
One key reason why website visitors would shy away from buying on your site is lack of assurances. Customers’ reviews have been proven to boost conversion rates. Most of potential customers will check what other people say before they take out their credit cards. Besides, according to the Google algorithm rules, it would reward high quality product reviews and it can be a factor to rank higher in the search results. So it’s very important to get more reviews in your online store.
But how? I think most of you may have gotten the review app already. Try to carefully set up the “Review Request” section from the app and send emails to people who bought from you to write products’ reviews.
Maybe you can also offer incentives (such as provide coupons) in exchange for customer reviews.
If you have different platforms to sell your products, it’s a good idea to import and sync the reviews across several stores.
Getting more customer reviews make it easier for more site visitors to submit their personal and payment information without worrying about fraud, hacking and other related concerns.
Tips 2. Reduce Page Loading Time
Long page loading time can be one of the obvious reasons that visitors close your page and leave. Online shoppers have no patient to wait for several minutes and they would turn to your competitor’s stores to buy. Go to Google’s PageSpeed Insights to discover how fast your site runs and see the advices to optimize the speed.
As we could not ask visitors to switch to a good Wi-Fi service, what we can do is compressing the images and deleting some apps or services you don’t use. Try the free online image size compressor Tinyjpg to reduces the file size. And remove the services loaded in your store you don’t actually use. For example, for a Shopify Store, just login your Shopify account and head to “Apps” to check and delete.
Tips 3. Automate Support and Cart Abandonment
ECommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) can also be as easy using tech that is readily available. There are many reasons why potential customers abandon their carts. For instance, a customer may fail to get an answer to a question. They may also fail to get through to your customer service by phone.
Such problems can be solved by having live chat software or chatbots that handle common issues during off-hours. Cart abandonment software can help customers who fail to complete checkout to come back later and complete their purchase. Saving checkout progress and prompting customers makes it easier for users to complete abandoned sales.
Tips 4. Have a Seamless Checkout Process
Your site visitors could also be leaving prematurely because you have a cumbersome or inhibiting checkout process. In today’s era of low attention span and privacy issues, forcing your site visitors to register first before they buy anything is bound to cost you. Implement checkouts for site visitors to shop as guests provided they offer simple information like a name and email.
The checkout process should also be simple. Your potential customers want an easy checkout. This can involve simple measures such as providing “further information” links to limiting character entries in form fields to ensure customers don’t mess up when filling out forms. Offering payment processor and app options like Afterpay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Shopify Payments etc., is also a great way of ensuring user payment information is pre-populated faster and securely.
Tips 5. Have Great Pricing, Shipping, and Product Return Policies
Your potential customers can’t resist good prices and cheaper overall costs. As a result, reviewing pricing and shipping is a great way to boost conversion. Begin by pricing your products below the average prices and frequently adjust to remain competitive.
It also helps to offer free shipping where possible. Online shoppers today are accustomed to free shipping, especially for products past a certain price threshold. If it’s not be able to set the products with zero shipping fee because your product is heavy and large, or the conveying distance is far away, it makes sense to just add it to the product’s price. For example, if the exact shipping cost is $7.99, you can just split the price with $2.99(show in the shipping fee to customers) +$5(add to the price of product). And $2.99 for the shipping cost would be more accepted for customers than $7.99, right?
The other good points to improve the conversion rate with shipping cost is to list several shipping Carrier services for selection. The costs from different Carriers varies with different shipping times and services. Give your customers the option that they want to pay can increase the willing to place orders.
It also helps to offer coupon codes. Offering limited-time coupon codes is a great way to boost conversion. As mentioned, online shoppers can’t resist good deals. Coupon codes that expire after a certain time create a sense of urgency. Besides, using automatic discounts that are applied automatically at checkout and on cart will make it effectively reduce the customer journey. People do not have to manually enter coupons and it dramatically increases the likelihood to shop.
Lastly, allow product returns. ECommerce sites that have great return policies offer risk-free purchases. Online buyers are more likely to buy if they are allowed to return products, ask for product replacements or ask for full/partial refunds in case of product malfunctions or related occurrences. A good return policy will increase trust and boost your conversion rates.
Tips 6. Track Your Progress Continuously
You can take all the measure above to boost your ecommerce conversion rate. However, you won’t know if you are making progress if you aren’t tracking. Luckily, there are ways of tracking conversion on many levels. You can use Google Analytics to assess your progress based on time (daily, weekly, or yearly conversion) or based on other metrics. Besides conversion, you could also get valuable insights, such as the value of each customer and your overall profitability.
Tips 7. Grab Attention Quickly and Use CTAs sparingly
As mentioned, today’s online users have a very short attention span. According to research, you have roughly 8 seconds to capture the attention of your website users. Having quality content (text, pictures, and videos) about your products/services is a great way to keep users interested. This content should also be placed strategically. For instance, large images work well for home pages. A mixture of text, pictures, and videos works great for individual product pages.
However, once you capture attention, don’t oversell. Using CTAs (Call-to-Action) buttons sparingly prevents potential buyers from feeling coerced to buy. CTAs can also over-clutter your pages and over-complicate the checkout process.
Tips 8. Personalize the Experience
Lastly, you need to personalize the buying experience of every user to boost your conversion. Buyers want to feel valued. A personalized experience initiates a desired feeling and action. You can do this via readily available user tracking and communication programs. Customer data such as name, location, device in use, social networks, and type of products/services being viewed offers great avenues for customizing experiences. A typical example would be suggesting other products/services based on interests.
Conclusion
While there may be other ways of boosting conversion for your eCommerce store, the above tips are adequate enough to offer a significant eCommerce CRO impact. Most eCommerce customers want the same thing. If you offer great deals, a secure environment, personalized experiences, and a seamless checkout, you will boost your conversion rate. It also helps to grab attention quickly, avoid overselling, track your progress and use tech to your advantage. Also, you can check our ClickFunnels Review and give it a shot for store conversion.
Ecommerce Conversion Rate FAQs
1. What can cause a low conversion rate?
Low conversion rates are caused by many things, among them being bad site impression, poor pricing, poor site responsiveness, poor content, poor analytics tracking, overselling, and lack of personalization.
2. What’s a good conversion rate for eCommerce?
While the average conversion rate eCommerce by industry varies, anything above the 2.5-3% average is considered good.
3. Which KPI is used to increase sales conversion?
Sales revenue is the main KPI used in measuring conversion progress. Using several data points, it is possible to estimate business growth.