It is one thing to get traffic, but converting it into buyers is a lot different.
To help you increase your e-store conversion rate, I'll explain what conversion is and show the best ways to increase it.
Conversion is a goal that requires a person to perform a specific task, such as buying a product or registering an email subscription for your company website. Your conversion strategy can have many goals.
The most important part of goal selection is that it needs to be measurable. If you can’t measure your campaign’s progress, you won't know if it produces your desired results or not.
When you choose the most suitable conversion strategies for your business, you'll get better results from your website.
Depending on your business type, the sale process might vary.
If it's an e-store, your sale depends on customers that buy products.
If it's a service-based company, then your sales process is made up of people or companies converting to clients or hiring you for one-time offers.
Conversion goals can be as simple as a click of a button. It doesn't matter if it’s a button for an e-book download, to read an article, or view a product.
For example, if you want more people to visit your product pages, you could use buttons to send them to those pages and record how many people are clicking those buttons.
It can be applied for email subscriptions, customer surveys, affiliate or brand ambassador recruiting.
For a form to be successful, it must be brief and precise. Include as few fields as possible. Otherwise, it will distance your site visitor from filling it out.
You will also need to test different copy lengths to figure out what your audience will respond to the most.
Even though email subscription is known for being a form completion conversion type, it is still necessary to separate it. Because email collection can be as simple as a single field only asking for an email.
Account registration is one of the major site conversion types for an eCommerce business,
When someone creates an account, you get useful information about your customers, and you can improve your shopping experience based on how they browse.
This conversion goal can help you find out how many potential customers you get.
If your goal is to get as many people as possible to see your useful content, then content shares should be one of your conversion goals.
It is a great goal to grow your audience and increase your reach. You can keep track of how many people have shared your content with others and understand what content works better with your audience.
People in your online store can't touch or feel the product when visiting your store. They trust the photos and videos of your goods. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in eCommerce.
With product photos, you should provide all the information the buyer might want from using the product.
Your goal is to remove as much of the barrier between the product and the customer as possible.
This means that you need to add features that will improve your product's viewing experience.
Features such as video zoom and 360 preview will help e-store visitors get a better view of your product and leave them with fewer questions. As a result, you should only use high-quality photos that do not become blurry or show pixels when zoomed in.
Photos in context help your buyer imagine themselves using the products you provide and can elevate a site’s conversion rate.
If site visitors can’t see value in your product, they are more likely to leave without a purchase.
Video material is also fast-growing in the eCommerce business space. It can help show the benefits of your product and how it works.
If you want your product to be better understood, always use videos or GIFs. Try to use ones that answer questions the customer may have about its purpose and use.
Having good photos is the first step to creating a product page that converts. Don’t spare any effort on your product descriptions because they are even more powerful.
When writing your product descriptions, you should consider the buyer and evaluate their needs and possible questions.
If your description shows clear benefits about your product, it will hook the reader and increase his need to buy.
Since shoppers can't touch your product, images won't always be able to express important information. That is why you need to make sure your copy is of high quality.
Make your product description informative but sleek and not too full. answer any questions your customer might have by using:
Remember to insert keywords that your audience can find when looking for your product using a search engine.
Finally, do audits of your descriptions, and answer these questions:
If you want to find out what converts best for your target audience, you should always A/B split-test.
For a person to buy, the buying process must seem safe and reliable. One of the main ways to do this is to add customer feedback. Social approval is often one of the determining factors in buying when it comes to commerce.
Send feedback requests to your past and present customers via email or SMS.
The recommended time to send this request is 2 to 4 weeks. But it depends on when your customer gets your product.
The best time to send the request is within one week of getting your product.
To make shopping on your website feel safer and that your customer would be more confident in buying, it is advisable to upload existing reviews from your product suppliers or competitors like Aliexpress or Amazon. Because asking your family and friends for feedback is often not enough.
Remember, don't be biased. Include more than the positive reviews, mix them up, and keep the ratings at a realistic ratio.
For the best example, look at your top competitors.
Reduce the pain of buying to increase your conversion rate by making your product prices more appealing to the customer.
Here are a few ways to do it:
1) Create and fill in all the customer support pages, as well as terms and conditions for shopping on your website
Your site should have all the information a visitor might need before considering buying, so your potential customers could find answers quickly to as many questions as possible.
List of important pages:
These pages are typical for any safe and trustworthy e-store to have. Without them, you’ll lower your website conversion rate.
2) Make sure that all the elements are clearly visible and guide your shopper
People need to know what payment methods are accepted as soon as they enter your site. Otherwise, they might find an unpleasant surprise in the middle of checkout and leave.
I recommend adding payment badges or buttons in your cart below the checkout button.
BONUS TIP: Name your checkout button something like “🔒 Checkout Securely” to raise trust and boost people’s confidence in purchasing your product. Emojis can make your call to action look more eye-catching and inviting, so don’t shy away from using them unless it seems inappropriate for your target audience.
The cart must be distinctly visible. Use an icon that stands out and is in different colors. The icon should guide your shopper back to the cart after they finish browsing.
Show the total number of added products in the cart with your icon.
If the visitor adds to the cart, show a notification confirming the action or display the cart window on-screen.
People usually forget they put something in their cart. And if they don't see their actions do something, they might think your site doesn't work and decide not to buy.
3) Show only what’s necessary
Don’t confuse your potential customers with too much text in the cart, and only use the buttons you need. A person’s attention span is short, so a lot of buttons and text can cost you his patience and the sale itself.
Example of a good cart:
The best way to increase sales on your website is by creating a discount or a special offer.
You can also mention your promo on your checkout page to reduce the pain of buying by reminding your customer he’s getting special treatment. It will increase your conversion rate by making more people initiate to checkout from your cart.
Free shipping is a competitive necessity for some online retailers. But with growing customer expectations, free shipping has become common and beneficial to many sellers.
It's important to remember that many shoppers would pay in a situation like a last-minute gift. Or when your product is useful for a specific season or holiday.
Nevertheless, most of the time, the customer would rather not pay for shipping.
Include the shipping price in your products. It's simple as that.
OR you can...
Make the shipping price free after a certain spent amount, so the free shipping would increase your customer's average order value and pay off. If providing free shipping regularly, you can use this tactic for express shipping instead.
BONUS TIP: Offer a tracking code. It will ease the waiting process because if your customer receives nothing and hears nothing from your brand after weeks, it creates a frustrating experience for people who want to know their shipment's accurate status.
These tips and tricks will help soften your visitors' perspective on your long waiting times. Increasing your conversion rate by rendering people more likely to make a purchase.
The use of online messaging on websites for customer care has become the medium. Think about how you message your friends and family. You send an iMessage, SMS, Facebook, or What’s App message and go about your other business. When your friend responds, you get a notification on your home screen or app. The same applies to communicating with brands. In fact, nine out of 10 people would prefer to message a business because doing so is convenient and does not interrupt their day.
This feature allows visitors to reach you in real-time.
Don't make your potential customer wait for an answer; reply to any questions or concerns they might have before they leave your site.
Using live chat is also a great way to support people who already bought from your store. Because of the quicker and more natural communication, it's easier to sway your customer to leave a positive review or to refrain him from leaving a bad one.
One of the best and free solutions for this feature is Facebook Messenger, which integrates into any website or e-store development platform. It allows you to reach and communicate with your site visitors.
Automating your customer care has never been this easy!
You can do it now by merging Messenger with the most popular Facebook chat management tool, Manychat. And it's all according to Facebook's rules.
This site feature will reduce your work and allow you to focus your time and your team's resources on higher priority tasks.
If you set up the tool correctly, visitors will be satisfied with the quality of customer service and will potentially choose you instead of a competitor, whose response they would have to wait.
If you want to boost your e-store conversions and decrease bounce rate, use payment methods based on your target audience location. It will help skip all the confusion, and people will be more comfortable buying.
But to keep this short, I’ll only talk about the must-have payment methods for the most popular country and region choices.
So if you’re planning to sell outside of your local audience, these options will suit you well.
The top three online payment methods are MasterCard, VISA, and American Express. To accept them from your website, I recommend using Stripe since it’s well known worldwide and easily integrates to most eCommerce platforms.
These credit cards are followed by PayPal and Discover (credit card). Apple Pay and Amazon Pay are becoming more and more popular. And for installment payments, Klarna is the top choice.
If you’re using Shopify, it’s also a good idea to include Shop Pay since it’s also on the rise.
Adding installment payments can massively increase your conversion rate if it's common in your target audience. However, if you don't know whenever you should use them—look at your top competitors. And only provide installments when you can afford them, or they could be the crashing point for your business.
