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15 WAYS TO IMPROVE ECOMMERCE CONVERSION RATES

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Shivraj Dhaygude
15 WAYS TO IMPROVE ECOMMERCE CONVERSION RATES

The massive success of eCommerce giants Amazon and Flipkart is why the eCommerce industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years and is predicted to hit a global revenue count of $4.88 trillion by 2021!  


Launching and building an eCommerce business is not that easy. According to reports, there are approximately 13 million eCommerce sites active in the United States alone.


It does not matter whether the people visit your online store via content marketing, paid ads, affiliates, etc. Still, every visitor who leaves your website without buying anything is a missed opportunity.


For many online shop owners, maintaining healthy eCommerce conversion rates is a significant issue. Optimal conversion rates can make the difference between their profit and loss. The abandoned shopping carts rate is one of the greatest frustrations among them. Even worse is a steady flow of website traffic who checks products and checks out the site with empty hands. Those visitors are like money left on the table. You’ve done everything to attract visitors, but now you can’t close the deal. That is the reason why optimizing your eCommerce website is so important.


In this competitive online buying world, some do’s and don’ts are motivating customers to buy items from your eCommerce shop. This article will discuss eCommerce conversion rates and share the best ways to improve eCommerce conversion rate optimization.


What is Conversion in eCommerce?

The conversion in eCommerce is recorded when someone takes a desired action on your site. A conversion rate in eCommerce is the percentage of total users who take a predefined action on a website. A conversion rate is typically a sale, although sometimes it might be adding an item to a wishlist, signing up for a subscription, or any KPI your company finds valuable. 


In Simple words, the eCommerce conversion rate is the percent of total site visitors that actually buy something from you.


How to Calculate Conversion Rate?

To calculate the conversion rate, all you have to do is divide the number of conversions you get during a specific time frame by the total number of people who visited your site or landing page and multiply it by 100.


Conversion Rate = (Conversions / Total Visitors) X 100 

For example, if you had 40,000 visitors to your site in one month and it had 8,640 conversions, your conversion rate is 21.6%.


What is a Good eCommerce Conversion Rate?

According to a study and personal interview conducted with more than 70 eCommerce marketers, 64% experienced an eCommerce conversion rate between 2% and 5%.


Any eCommerce business’s conversion rate varies based on industry, price point, target demographics, etc. For example, low-cost products like food and clothing witness high conversion rates because customers don’t think twice to spend less. At the same time, high-cost goods and services like travel and home decor have lower conversion rates. 


Three Crucial Benefits of Increased Conversion Rate: 

Revenue: Increased conversion rate is the most cost-effective way and plays a crucial role in generating income for your eCommerce shop, instead of spending a significant amount on advertising, which ultimately reduces website traffic quality. Invest in Conversion Rate Optimization(CRO) is the most trusted and tested formula to generate more sales. 


Value: Improving conversion rate means optimizing the website that offers more actionable value to the customer. Paying attention to UI and UX, reducing Ambiguity, reassuring your customers, or adding persuasive content to your website, adding value to the products. 


Remarketing: Any marketer will tell you, the best audience for the upcoming sales campaign is past customers. Re-marketing is an essential part of an effective marketing strategy, but you can’t use this data unless you have a decent past conversion rate.


Tools To Improve Ecommerce Conversion Rates:

  • Google Analytics: This tool gives you a great view into your website visitors including, unified sessions, location of the visitor, bounce rate, goal conversion, and event tracking
  • HotJar: An excellent tool that discovers how users interact with your website using a heat-mapping. Along with this, HotJar offers scroll-depth, click functionality, movement of cursor mapping.
  • CrazyEgg: This tool gives a visual glimpse of how your users are navigating your site. With heat maps, click maps, scroll maps, A/B testing, user recordings, and many more.
  • Quantcast Measure: This is a tag-based web analytics tool that offers similar features and functionality like Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics. 
  • Mixpanel: It is a product analytics tool that incorporates well with financial services, consumer tech, SaaS, media, and entertainment sectors.
  • Clicky: It is a real-time web analytics tool for eCommerce websites and blogs.
  • Google PageSpeed Insights: With this tool’s help, you will find the website loading speed issue for both desktop and mobile versions.
  • Gtmetrix: This is a website speed reporting tool. Submit your URL, and it will give a detailed analyzed report on what slows your site and what need to fix on a higher priority.
  • Jaco Session Recording: It is a session replay tool to see every visitor interaction with your site, including dynamic content and CSS animations.
  • Formisimo: This is an in-depth form analytics tool. That will show you a detailed analysis of your CTA forms and from field people are dropping off.
  • Typeform: It is a survey design tool.
  • Optimizely: This is a leading A/B testing tool.
  • LeadChat: This 24/7 live chat will power your live chat service. So no need to depend on a customer support person or team anymore.
  • Hello Bar: This tool lets you easily create lead capture bars, modals, sliders, and full-screen popups.


Ways to Boost Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates:

1) Offer free shipping.


 According to the NRF study, 75% of US consumers expect free shipping, even on orders under $50. Nowadays, Online shoppers expect more than free shipping. They want a certain standard that they have experience with Amazon. If you do not offer free shipping, customers are going to look for alternatives. Providing free shipping is costly to optimize eCommerce conversion rates, but one of the most important to survive in stiff competition. 2BigFeet, when introduced free shipping for orders over $100, their conversions increased by 50%. According to Baymard, 50% of consumers abandoned items in the shopping cart due to extra shipping costs at checkout.


2) Use High-Quality Product Images


Think about what customers want to see while shopping on your site. It’s images. When people shop online, they can’t touch the product or put it on. In this scenario, the best thing you can do is show high-quality product images so that the customer knows exactly what they are getting. It is one of the best tactics to boost eCommerce conversion rates. Show the products from different angles and in context; make them zoomable.


3) Optimize Website Speed

According to Google, over 53% of mobile users will lose interest in your site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Even a one-second delay can cost you 7% reduction in conversions. For example, an eCommerce site making $5,000 per day, a 1-second delay could potentially cost you $125,000 in lost revenue. The bounce rate of your website is connected to loading time across all platforms.

Your site visitors’ Internet connection is not your responsibility, but optimizing the website is your highest priority.


4) Reduce Number of Step in Checkout

If you want to increase your conversion rate, the most important tip is to lower the number of checkout processes. In the study, Facebook found that “87% of consumers experience complex checkout steps will stop them from shopping online” One of the easiest ways to correct this is to reduce the number of pages in the checkout process. When possible, make checkout a single page. Ask for only essential customer information.


5) Offer Limited Period Coupon Codes

It’s a basic human tendency to fear for loss more than gain. Consumers hate missing out on a good deal on their favorite items. This opportunity will drive urgency among shoppers, and they will more likely go through with the purchase without getting distracted. eCommerce owners can take advantage of this psychology by providing a limited period coupon code in a popup or an email.


6) Product Video

Images are good, but the video’s best option to introduce the product to the visitors. It is the next step before the customer touches and feels the item. If you’re not creating product videos yet, do it soon as a part of your marketing strategy, and It also helps you increase the conversion rate for your eCommerce site.


7) Attractive and Personalize Product Copy

Product descriptions are vital for the eCommerce shop. Make sure you do not copy-paste the same product description for all products. Take your time and write a unique and personalize product copy. So the customer knows what they are getting and reading, product description customers are convinced about the product. Always remember to talk about the benefits of your products for the consumers with detailed functionalities. For example, Rowan made a blanket from cotton, but what the customer is interested in is keeping them warm. The best sales copy is full and without hype.


8) Offer Live Chat Support

These days, potential customers seek immediate support on the website. Setting up chatbots and live chat software can help answer questions immediately and increase your conversions just by being helpful and attentive. An immediate response from your chatbot or customer service agents feels delightful to your customers when they are stuck somewhere.


Chatbots make sure 24/7 support and swift query resolution of customers. Chatbots can improve your sales and engagement by initiating conversations with customers about various offers or lead them to other products.


Also Read: Ten Tips to Make Your eCommerce Store Festive Sale Ready


9) Painless Product Return Policy

According to a survey, over 50% of customers read the return policy before buying any item online. So don’t over-promise here. Design a painless and as easy as possible product return policy for your customer.


This may not sound like optimizing conversion for eCommerce, but it is an example of basic business practices acting as Conversion Rate Optimization(CRO).


10) Allow Customers to Leave Review

Do you remember when you went to buy a product online and search for reviews before buying? I bet you did.


Positive reviews and testimonials from customers are incredibly important, as they showcase the reliability of your brand. This trustworthiness helps you in increasing conversion rates and assists consumers in their decision-making process.


Also, don’t delete negative reviews—they help sales if there are only a few of them.


11) Use Simple Design Layout and Navigation

You have one single goal to focus on: to sell products, but unfortunately, we often let intricate design and other fancy elements get in the way of that simple goal.


It would be best if you designed navigation as simple as possible. On average, 30% of e-commerce site visitors will use the site’s search and navigation functionality. If your customers can’t find what they are looking for, they will immediately go to a competitor. Take your time to design and structure your website correctly – it could give you that edge over the competitor.


12) Multiple Payment Options

A survey carried out by independent firm YouGov on 2,000 British adults found that 50% of them who regularly purchased online said they would abandon the shopping cart if their preferred payment option is not available. So the moral of the story is integrating the customer’s desired payment method as a payment gateway is the best way to improve the eCommerce conversion rate.


13) Clear and Concise CTA

Test your call-to-action button color and design, and it does have a significant impact on conversion rate and your customers. Have a clear and attractive CTA that people can find within 3 seconds. Users have short attention spans, and when it comes to eCommerce websites, you have an even shorter time to grab their attention and take action. I’ve seen that many websites have grey or white or some other bland color CTA button that fades into the background. Help your customers know what you want them to do quickly, don’t hide your CTA button from them, or sacrifice sales on the design style’s altar.


14) Add Social Proof

If you want to be a successful eCommerce shop, an extremely valuable tip is to include authentic social proof such as reviews, testimonials, pictures on your product/landing pages. If people are buying products from your site, let your audience know. People want to buy products that others are using and enjoying. They read and trust online reviews and testimonials. 92% of them consider it while purchasing. And 88% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Each of these reviews and testimonials will increase the credibility of your site and your products.


15) Personalization

The last and most important tip for improving conversions is personalization. Customers always like new things and having a different look from other websites. By using tools such as Google Optimize, OptinMonster you can personalize your website for your target audience


For example, suppose you visit an online watch eCommerce website and looking for men’s watches the next time. Whenever you come back to the Homepage, only men’s watches feature and remove any women’s watches.


These personalization things can help catch people’s attention and even improve their chances of buying items from your eCommerce site.


Conclusion,

There are so many ways that you can choose to improve your conversion rate. You need to know where to begin after eCommerce website development.


FYI SEO is the highest-converting traffic source for most of our eCommerce sites

Just act on a few of these eCommerce conversion hacks you’ll see a positive results

Start with simple things like optimizing your site’s speed. Make one change every week, or every month and follow these 15 steps mentioned here will make a difference in your eCommerce conversion rates.


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Shivraj Dhaygude
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