Online shopping has become popular over the past couple of years and in today’s fast paced world, it is crucial for a business to have its own website. Despite a lot of people checking out products and doing shopping online, the conversion rate for most ecommerce sites is still low averaging in 1 to 2%.
In this post I’ll show you few tricks that can help to improve any Ecommerce Conversion Rates.
Individuals and companies spend a lot of money to promote their products and services online yet they still don’t get their desired conversion rate. If you have an online business, to be able to make it profitable you need to do the following steps:
1. Set up your business and create your own website.
2. Make it look good and attractive.
3. Drive traffic to it.
4. Aim for a higher conversion rate
Before learning about the different tricks and tactics in optimizing conversion rates, it is important to know what a conversion rate is.
What is a Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that visit your website who complete a desired action. It is essential to know your end goal to define conversions that align with your business goals. Conversion rate can be computed by dividing the conversions for a set period into the number of visitors of your website.
The definition of conversion is different from one business to another. A conversion could mean one of the following:
1. An online sale
5. A user who adds items to their Wishlist
6. A user who adds products to their cart
7. Email signup
8. Social media shares
9. Any KPI valuable to the company
Analytical Tools with Conversion Rates
A lot of analytical tools provide conversion rates but here are some tools that will not only provide conversion rates but can also help you improve your online website’s conversion rates:
• Inspectlet
• CrazyEgg
• Mixpanel
• Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
• BigCommerce Analytics
Tactics and Tricks for Ecommerce Conversion Rates Optimization
Create a sense of urgency
The best way of convincing visitors of your website to buy your product is by trying to turn your product into an impulse sale. You need to convince your potential customers why they should buy the product the soonest possible time. The best way to do this is by making them feel that they might be missing out on a good deal. The customers fear of missing out on something good is a powerful driving force that can make customers buy your product on impulse. Here are some suggestions that you can put into your product pages to create an urgency:
1. Free shipping
Free shipping has now become the norm in online shopping. Shipping fees are one of the biggest factors that affect an ecommerce site’s conversion rate. In fact, based on studies, online stores who offered free shipping increased their conversion rates. Free shipping encourages customers to purchase more products. Just make sure that you have enough margin to cover for the shipping fee.
If you really need to charge for shipping, keep it at a minimum or have a flat rate instead of adding shipping costs per item. Also mention shipping costs up front.
2. Limited supply
Let your customers know when a certain product is almost running out of stock. This will encourage them to purchase the product immediately or someone else might buy the product before they do. This might also be a sign that the item is popular so it gives the customers confidence that they are making the right choice.
3. Limited time offers
Offer limited time package deals, promotions, discounts, or free items to encourage people to buy the product before the offer ends. You need to highlight the time left before the deal ends, the amount that will be saved if they buy the product now, and the number of customers who have availed of the deal to push them to click the ‘add to basket’ button.
Make it easy for customers to look for products
Make it easy for your customers to find the products on your page. Do not give them too many options that would just give them a headache or if you have too many options, be sure to provide filters to make it easier for them to choose.
1. Search button
Having a search button is important in ecommerce. People need to look for products quickly. A lot of visitors navigate ecommmerce sites using search. You can use auto-suggest search which shows the products as you type. This will help boost your conversion rates.
2. Add product filters
The more choices or options that you give to customers, the more difficult it would be for them to choose what product to buy. Adding filters to your products makes it easier for the customers to narrow down their choices and it also reduces the clutter and the mess on the website.
Make your website attractive to customers
In order to convince visitors to buy your product, you need to show really nice photos of your product coupled with a good and creative description that is not entirely copied from a product catalog.
1. Quality product images
Images are the most important element in selling a product online. People would want to see what they are in for that’s why having a visual feel of the product will help encourage them to buy the product. Use high quality product images that would show detailed photos of your product. Show the product from different angles. Try to add an image of the product that indicates the size and quality of the product. Allow interaction with the product images by allowing customers to zoom, pinch, scale, and rotate the image. Use a high-resolution image.
2. Improve product descriptions
The product description is one of the deciding factors that a customer needs in order to buy a product. It provides information and value to your product that helps the customer come up with a decision. Having a long product description is alright as long as it is easy to digest and the information given is really useful. Aside from the long product description, also keep a short summary that is easy to read and which contains the most important information about the product such as who the product is for, what the product will do, and why the product is good. You can use bullets to summarize the features of your product. If you are selling a product, do not copy and paste descriptions from the manufacturer. Write a better product description. Add a personal touch like as if you are speaking directly to your customers.
3. Use product videos
Sometimes, images are not enough to convince customers to buy your product. Adding a video can help convince the customers to buy your product as it shows an actual visual demonstration of your product. Good quality and descriptive videos have a positive impact on conversion rates.
4. Include customer reviews
Include previous customer reviews to add testimony to your product and to build confidence in potential customers. People will never know about how good your product is unless other people would recommend buying it.
Provide excellent communication
The customer must be able to communicate with you easily in case they have questions or doubts about your product before buying it.
1. Live chat
Most of the customers consider a live chat helpful in their purchase. Study shows that customers are likely to go back to a website that has offered a live chat support. This makes it easy to address a customer’s questions about the product. Your website should have a very visible instant chat icon that is easy to find by the customers if ever they come up with questions.
2. Free phone
It’s important to have a phone number on your website. You can also add trust by having a phone number that the customers can call for free.
Streamline the checkout
Ensure that the checkout page is smooth. Your website should have a quick response that the checkout page would load right away as soon as the customer clicks on the ‘proceed to checkout’ button. Having a slow website is a major turn off for customers and some customers tend to just leave the page and not push through with their purchase.
1. One-page checkout
Keep the checkout page simple. Make it easy for customers to place orders. Remove multi-page checkouts as they seem to be time-consuming for customers.
2. Reduce clutter
Do not make your customers fill out a lot of information or they will get annoyed. It would be good though to ask the customers to enter their email on the top portion of the checkout page so that it would be easy to contact them in case they may encounter problems in checking out or if they suddenly decide not to push through with their purchase.
3. Do not insist them to register
Do not trick your customers into registering to have an account on your page at the checkout page. There are some customers who get annoyed by this. You can add the option of signing up once the order has been placed.
4. Automate
Introduce automation at the checkout page. You can do this by implementing the automatic address recognition wherein the customer will just need to enter the zip code instead of writing the whole address. One-click purchasing is another kind of automation that you can add on the checkout page. With just a click of a button, the customer can click the Amazon or Paypal button which allows the customers to order and have the products delivered to their standard delivery address.
5. Offer multiple payment options
You will have an edge and you can win over some customers if you offer different payment options. With the ongoing issues of the leaking of credit card information, some people are hesitant in using their credit cards to pay for purchases made online. There has also been a survey that if the preferred method of payment is not available in the checkout page, the customers will just cancel their purchase.
Finals
Focusing on these tactics can help you to get a better Conversion rate , this eventuality translates to making more money. I hope the post was help and that you enjoined it.
