20 Tips to Improve Conversion for Your eCommerce Store

Looking for ways to boost conversion rates of the e-commerce store? Let’s have it then!

Even if you have employed the best-in-industry marketers who spend lump sum in PPC campaigns, if your website fails to meet customer’s expectations, all the traffic would go in vain. Ecommerce trends keeps changing and with it your strategies must change too.

A survey indicates that the average conversion rate of an e-commerce store is nearly 1-2%. As a matter of fact, even for the pro marketers, the conversion rate isn’t anything more than 2%. Wondering what to do?

Before getting into the details of how you can optimize your store to have better conversion rates, let’s understand the term conversion. What exactly does this term mean?

What is the conversion rate?

In simple terms, a conversion rate is the percentage of the number of visitors that make a purchase out of the total number of visitors on the website. For example, if ‘y’ people visited your online store and out of this ‘x’ made a purchase, the conversion rate is (x/y)*100.

However, that’s not it. Conversion rates more than just the total sales and are calculated based on a number of KPIs. Improvement of the conversion rates would mean enhancing the output of the metrics rather than simply increasing sales. From getting extra email signup to having visitors adding items to the cart, everything falls in the bar of conversion rate.

When assessing the performance of the store, one must keep in mind all such metrics to have the ideal result. Also, it is important that CRO is applied at all such stages of the eCommerce journey (new signup, conversion, average session, exit rate, bounce rate, CTR, etc).

How to increase conversion rates of your eCommerce store?

Now that you are well aware of what exactly an e-commerce conversion means, let’s move ahead to see different ways you can enhance and optimize the conversion rate of your online store.

Tip #1. USP at the center

When visiting your online store for the first time, customers might be skeptical and wondering why should they make a purchase from your store. Placing your unique selling proposition right in the center, clear and simple will help you make a difference.

Remember you got only a couple of seconds to strike the attention of the customer and so it is important that your website indicates the same right at the beginning.

Tip #2. Double-check website performance

No matter how flawless your products are or how beautiful your web design is, if it fails to function properly, everything else makes no difference.

hat this implies is that you must run a technical audit of your website to check if all the pages are properly optimized and that each of them loads quickly. It is important that your store adheres to both the customer and Google’s website guidelines.

Tip #3. The first 5-second game

It is known that the first five seconds are extremely crucial. It is these that decide whether a customer stays or abandons the website. Hence, you must employ measures to improvise the top of the page. The product page or the home page comes next.

It is your landing page and particularly the first main image that a customer views that keeps them hooked. This is the area where you and your marketing team needs to be a bit creative. Test and try different images/styles to have the best one onboard.

Tip #4. Simplify Your Design

Adding too much is as destructive as adding too little. It is important that your website design is up to the mark. And by up to the mark, we mean to say, it is clutter-free. Keeping your design minimal would not only prevent the buyers from getting distracted but also boost the speed and performance of the website.

Tip #5. Optimize images and product videos

While this might seem something as less important, it is in fact one aspect that the leaders even miss. Imagine a customer landing on your page and now that your attractive appeal has hooked him, he moves ahead to play the product video.

What if this is not apt and that the customer finds to be turn off. Would the customer stay? Apparently not! Hence, the need to make sure that the product images and the videos are top-notch. You can download plugins to make sure images are SEO-specific.

Tip #6. Strategize how to place pop-ups

Traditionally, we find them at the bottom of the page or to be precise, at the end of the page. But that’s not the best way to get your visitors to turn to customers. Testing and experimenting with the popups and the position has proven to be a successful strategy in terms of eCommerce conversion.

The best tactic used is to create an irresistible offer to your customers. Tailor-made pop-ups are again an efficient way to attract the attention of the visitors and convert them to customers.

Tip #7. Contact Details are a must

Often eCommerce site owners argue to the point that since they are an online venture, adding contact details do no good. Breaking this misconception, contact details are always a must when you are selling something.

Irrespective of whether it is a product or a service, offering something to customers require you to give them an option to connect. It could be an online chat or an email option or a contact number. Either be the means, it is a wise decision to leave room for oral communication.

Tip #8. Embed Live Chat

If you are someone who is still thinking about the Live Chat feature, it’s time to make the move and integrate the solution for your online store.

The live chat functionality gives your visitors the ease to connect with your store at all hours of the day and with greater ease. Chatbots simplifies the buying process by providing product recommendations and serving the customer are desired.

Tip #9. Optimize For Mobile Devices

With more than 82% of online mobile users, it is not a surprise that most of the buyers are accessing the application from their smartphone. It becomes extremely important here to have your online store application optimized for the mobile device. Failing the above, you are bound to lose more than half of your store customers.

Tip #10. Optimize the checkout page

Another important element of the website is the checkout page. Make sure your checkout page is simple and has no clutter or non-essential elements on it. It is important to do so because lengthy processes or complicated checkout process happens to be one of the common reasons for cart abandonment.

Tip #11. Retarget abandoned cart users

Keep track of the visitors that have left the website without making a purchase. Reach them via mails or app notifications to remind them about the unattended cart. You can also pitch them discounts and offers, luring them to revisit the site to make a purchase.

Tip #12. Word-of-mouth marketing

People today seek social proof. Prior to making a purchase, they look out for the product reviews online, and only when they are fully satisfied to do they take the next step.

While you cannot guarantee third-party reviews, one way to deal with them is to add product reviews on the product page itself. This will help them decide better and without leaving the store.

Tip #13. Free Shipping

Another reason why people abandon the idea of purchasing is the shipping rate. While reducing them might help, an excellent strategy here is to offer free shipping of products as and when possible. It’s a really profitable marketing strategy that you need to adopt.

Tip #14. Faster Delivery

One-day delivery is quite trending. More and more store owners are resorting to strategies that help them deliver products faster and better. It is seen than 75% of the shoppers buy more if products get delivered on the same day.

Tip #15. Personalized Content

Product recommendations are one way of attracting customers. An alternative here is to have personalized content displayed over the website. Gone are the days when everyone landing on the home page would see similar content. Today people seek more personalization and so the need to have user-specific content on the site.

Tip #16. Provide one or more payment methods

You cannot assume that everyone uses the same method for making payments. In fact, customers today making payments through digital apps rather than making the same through debit or credit cards.

Providing them a single method for payment (even if it is a famous one, like PayPal) restricts the purchase and in a way, you lose sales.

Tip #17. Security of primal importance

Make sure your website adheres to the security terms and corresponding guidelines. Ecommerce fraud has turned out to be a common thing. It is therefore important to assure your visitors of their safety and data privacy. Highlight security precautions while processing the payment.

Tip #18. Reassess Product Description

The way you describe your store products has an influence on buying intentions. Analyze the descriptions and see that they are clear, concise, and to the point. Include all the relevant information before adding the call to action. Also, design your CTA clean and appealing. Perform A/B tests to identify what works and why.

Tip #19. Simplify Store Navigation

You wouldn’t want your customers to wander around the store. Do you? It is imperative that the entire website is designed so as to keep the navigation simple and straightforward.

Complicating steps and the next process increases the bounce rate of the website. The best hack here is to have a search bar embedded within.

Tip #20. Create FOMO

Irresistible offers are the heart and soul of an online store. Whether it is your social media campaigns or a simple browse operation, design your pages in a way that lure customers to make a purchase. Make sure these offers are genuine and you do not just pretend.

The Final Word

Following the above-mentioned tips, you would be able to increase your store conversion rates while adhering to the customer demands and end to end expectations.

Make sure to optimize your eCommerce store for sales, search engines and customers to attain the maximum benefits. After all, it all cannot be taken lightly when you want to grow fast.

About the Author!

Nimesh Patel is a Product Marketer and Growth hacker with expertise in the areas of Digital marketing; Search engine optimization (SEO), Email Marketing, Paid Campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, Content development strategies, Competitive Research & Analysis. He wok as Product Manager at theDotstore.com