14 Proven Strategies to Increase your Ecommerce Conversion Rates
I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas weekend!
As you sip your eggnog or coffee and start thinking about your goals for 2022, you’ll find there’s no dearth of content on the internet on how you can increase the conversion rates for your ecommerce website and drive in more sales.
Despite all that, in the Wild World of Ecommerce (read: the world of cutthroat competition) — there’s always something better that you can do to improve the effectiveness of your online store and have those conversions coming in.
Here’s the thing — a “good” conversion rate is higher than what you think it is and it’s most definitely better than what you’re tracking today!
As per the reports by Littledata, stores on Shopify are clocking in an average conversion rate of 2.1%. Is this good enough?
In this article, we address the question on every online seller’s mind — ‘What is a good conversion rate?’. We also dish out the details on:
- How do you calculate the conversion rate for your store?
- Benefits of improving your store’s conversion rate
- Techniques to improve your store’s conversion rate (with examples, of course!)
First up — let’s dig a little deeper and learn more about ecommerce conversion rates.
Understanding conversion rates for ecommerce stores
In today’s competitive digital retail world, it takes more than just setting up a fancy online store to succeed.
While a lot may go into building an ecommerce business, from deciding what to sell to setting up the store and driving traffic to your website — there’s still a lot more work that needs to be done.
Getting more traffic is great, but are you able to get those visitors to buy from your store?
This is what conversion is all about — in ecommerce, conversion is defined as the percentage of users who visit your store and complete the desired action, in a given time. Typically, this means making a purchase.
However, in some cases, it could be adding an item to the cart or a wishlist, and sometimes all it takes is signing up for your monthly newsletter.
You need to define and align your conversions to meet the end goals of your business. More importantly, you need to keep optimizing your website to increase conversions — that’s right, conversions don’t just happen overnight!
What is a good conversion rate?
Now onto the burning question — let’s find out what is considered to be a good conversion rate for online stores.
With most ecommerce businesses touching a conversion rate of 2.12%, the reports as of January 2021 show that ecommerce stores selling arts and crafts are tracking the highest conversion rate at 3.79%. The health and well-being industry comes next at 3.62%, followed by the pet care industry at 3.28%.
While conversions may vary depending on factors like the industry you’re in, the price point at which you’re selling your products, and your target audience — a good conversion rate for ecommerce businesses can be anywhere in the range of 3% — 5%.
How do you calculate the conversion rate for your store?
To be able to calculate your store’s conversion rate, you would need to know:
- The number of unique store visitors in a specific period of time
- The number of conversions your store receives in that same timeframe
The formula to calculate conversion rate is:
Conversions ÷ Total number of visitors x 100
If you were to get 2000 store visitors and 40 conversions for a specific period, then your online store’s conversion rate is 2% (40 ÷ 2000 x 100).
Benefits of improving your store’s conversion rate
Well, if it isn’t obvious by now, your conversion rate is your online store’s gateway to success! If you’re looking to climb up the ranks and build revenue, then increasing your store’s conversion rate is the most cost-effective way to get there.
Besides earning more revenue, taking a conversion optimization approach will benefit you in more ways than one. Here’s what we’re talking about:
Gain rich insights about your customers
Tracking your conversion rates will tell you a lot about your customers, it will help you get answers to questions such as — ‘Why do customers visit your store?’, ‘What do they want?’, etc.
In turn, you can bring about changes to your products, layout, and pricing based on the data that you gather.
Improve your paid Ad performance and remarketing strategies
As your conversion rate increases, you will be in a better position to understand what your customers want. This way you can target your ads better and find new ways to retarget existing customers.
Take your UX experience up a notch
Conversion rate optimization revolves a lot around improving the User Experience. In your efforts to increase conversions, you’ll end up creating a relevant and engaging experience for your customers across devices.
14 Techniques to improve your store’s conversion rate (with examples, of course!)
Ecommerce business owners are forever on the lookout for new ways to turn their traffic into sales. We’re sharing with you 14 effective tactics to increase your conversion rate and sell more in less time.
1. Use high-quality images & video
This one’s pretty direct but it helps you sell like a dream. While most online stores are already managing to display great-looking product images, using high-quality ‘immersive’ images and videos is key.
You need to show people what they are getting into — which means show them how the product looks up close and from every angle possible. The more the user gets to see, the more they will be convinced.
2. Write persuasive product descriptions
Great product copy minus the fluff is what sells! Give your store visitors all the information they will need to buy the product. That being said, giving them both a short and long version is the way to go about it.
The short version can sum up what the product has to offer in a few lines and for the longer description, be sure to touch upon every detail (material, size, durability… you know the drill).
3. Make navigation simple
It has been found that 25% of online shoppers leave the website if they find the navigation to be complicated.
It’s important to help your store visitors find the products they came looking for, fast! Making navigation as easy as possible plays a big role here.
4. Offer free shipping
Customers today expect free shipping and giving them what they want will help you set sail to success.
Free shipping is a persuasive element when it comes to influencing your customers to make the purchase! If offering free shipping will affect your profit margin, then you could consider factoring in shipping charges into the product’s price or simply offer a free shipping threshold, where you charge above a certain limit.
5. Recommend better products
Product recommendations work like a charm! If you’re looking for ways to get your customer to buy more from your store then it’s time to use an AI-powered product recommendation engine like Skafos.
Recommend products that are frequently bought together and help customers discover great buys in your store.
6. Reduce cart abandonment
With every 2 in 3 shoppers abandoning their carts — cart abandonment is turning out to be a hurdle in improving conversions!
Users could be abandoning carts for simple reasons like price, shipping costs, complicated navigation, or a slow website.
First up, fix these issues on your website — you can even tackle cart abandonment by sending customers timely reminders via emails.
To learn more, see my blog post: Ecommerce Abandonment: Looking Beyond Abandoned Carts
7. Use a live chat tool to have conversations with the customer
It’s all about offering your customers a delightful experience — adding a live chat tool to your website will help you do just that.
Customers today need instant support and gratification, help them out with immediate responses to their queries and guide them to make purchase decisions faster.
8. Provide advanced search to easily find products
People come to your website looking for products — helping them find these products, faster is your part of the deal! Failing to do so leads to search abandonment, a crucial drop-off point before shoppers even make it to the cart.
Search is an important feature that shoppers rely on heavily to look for what they want. Enable a quick and detailed search functionality on your website. Using auto-suggest and adding a drop-down menu of results will help you improve the customer’s experience to a great extent.
9. Display social proof
From product reviews, user-generated content, to Instagram feeds — social proof can give your brand the weightage it needs.
Don’t shy away from showing why your customers love you! Ensure product reviews are added to your website, you can also help customers share their love for your product by adding social share buttons across your product pages.
10. Enable instant checkout (with Shop Pay and others)
Simplifying your checkout process and reducing the number of steps involved in purchasing at your store will go a long way in getting more conversions.
Remove all the clutter, keep the process short and offer instant payment options like Shop Pay or Amazon Pay.
11. Leverage ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ tools
Adding the option to “buy now, pay later” is another great tactic to improve your conversion rate.
Giving users the liberty to pay later in installments, will help build their trust in your brand and fix cart abandonment issues.
12. Use clear CTAs throughout the page
Get your customers to take the desired actions with eye-catching CTA buttons.
Call-to-action buttons are an important part of your website design.
While you shouldn’t go overboard with them, adding clear, concise, and catchy CTAs will help in increasing conversions for your store.
13. Add an “About Us” section on every page
Your customers need to know about your brand — never miss a chance to tell them why you do what you do!
Crafting a killer “About Us” page is not only a great way to introduce yourselves but it will also help your customers know what sets you apart from the competition. After all, that’s probably why they’re shopping on your site instead of Amazon.com.
14. Never miss a chance to provide great offers
Your customers appreciate great deals and offers! Find ways in which you can get them to buy more from your store by giving them seasonal deals, new-user discounts, and more!
Get ready to increase your conversion rates
Optimizing for conversions should never stop!
These tried and tested tactics will help you boost your sales, increase your conversion rates and keep your customers coming back for more.
Unhappy with your ecommerce conversion rates?
Try Skafos Product Recommendations to expedite product discovery and help first-time customers find the products they are most likely to buy.
