Let’s be honest—creating a new ecommerce business can take a lot of your time. The first step, naturally, is to figure out what exactly it is you’ll be selling. Then you need to find vendors from whom you can source your stock, you need to build your site, and you need to begin advertising.
But there’s one area many budding business-owners often forget to learn about: how to improve website conversion rate.
While phrases like ‘eCommerce conversion rate optimisation’ do admittedly sound like something a surgeon might call out while operating on an android, you don’t have to feel intimidated. All we’re really talking about is how to increase the amount of sales you get on your online shop. Which is lovely!
Now, let’s get down to the nitty gritty of how to improve conversion rate, AKA, how to gently encourage people to buy more of your products…
Starting us off: what exactly makes a ‘conversion’?
Nope, what we’re talking about has nothing to do with switching religions, and it’s not something you do in rugby league after a try. In the context of online shopping, a conversion refers to the process whereby a visitor to your site ‘converts’ into being a customer, i.e. buying from you.
Also Read: How Content Marketing Can Transform Your Business.
Your site’s conversion rate, therefore, refers to the percentage of people who visit and end up buying something. The average rate is somewhere between 1-2%. Even the very best sites won’t have much higher than 2%—that’s just the nature of shopping.
Our aim today is to get your conversion rate as high as it can be!
So: how to improve website conversion
1. Use great quality images
When learning how to improve ecommerce conversion rate, the first step may seem glaringly obvious, but you’d be amazed how many sites get this wrong. Your products have to look good in order to sell! Make sure your images are high-quality, and that each product looks as good as it possibly can. Taking a blurry photograph of it lying on the floor won’t cut the mustard!
2. Offer free shipping
Many of the bigger online retailers ship for free, so you sort of have to as well. Sorry. But we’ll let you in on a little secret: you don’t have to fork out for this. Just up the cost of the product to cover shipping costs and you’re golden. The customer will see that postage is free, and will feel they’re getting a bargain, even if ultimately the cost ends up the same. Brill!
3. Dish out the limited-time-only coupons
Giving your customers coupon codes with expiry dates can gently prod your customers along the buyers’ conveyor belt, adding a little urgency to their decision-making. Many visitors to your site will browse, ponder and leave. By adding some time-constrained coupons, you can ensure they stick around and make that purchase.
Also Read: The Definitive Guide For WooCommerce SEO.
4. Iron out the kinks in your checkout process
Test buy a few products from yourself. Are there any blockers? Were there any hiccups in the process? Glitches, or unnecessary steps? You can lose customers over things as seemingly unimportant as a slow-loading page or confusing shopping cart layout. Make sure you streamline it, to keep your customer sailing down that sales funnel!
5. Prevent cart abandonment
We’ve all done it before: visited a website, loaded our online shopping cart with goodies, then for one reason or another, lost interest and closed the site. Millions of potential sales every day end this way—but they don’t have to.
By adding cart abandonment software to your website, you can ensure that every customer who adds to their cart then leaves will later receive an email politely reminding them of their unpurchased items. Just this one tip alone can raise your conversion rate dramatically!
6. Structure your site clearly
There’s no sense in having your visitors disappear down rabbit holes, never to be seen again. If you want people to buy, they need to be able to browse your products easily. Try to make it so that a new visitor to your site can reach any product in three or four clicks. Too many levels to your site makes it very easy to get lost.
7. Make the checkout option visible!
Imagine building a physical store, and deciding to set up the tills in some gloomy secret grotto in the back of the store. That’s what you’re doing when your ‘checkout’ or ‘cart’ options aren’t immediately obvious. Even if people are actively seeking to buy, they won’t stick around long if they can’t see an obvious way to do so.
8. Allow ‘checkout as guest’
This is an underrated way to improve eCommerce conversion rate. By allowing your customers to checkout as guests, rather than requiring them to hand over their personal details and create an account, you’ll lose fewer customers at the checkout. Many people, surprisingly enough, aren’t keen to sign their life away every time they purchase something, and will baulk if there is no alternative presented to them. Let them checkout as a guest!
9. Answer as many questions about the product as you can
Customers want to know stuff about what they’re buying—you can’t begrudge them that! Make their lives easier by writing detailed product descriptions, detailing any relevant attributes such as size, weight, and anything else that might factor into their decision to buy. You’ll get fewer returns, too, as people will be more clued-up on what exactly they’re shelling out for.
Also Read: Why You Should Avoid DIY Website Builders.
As an added bonus, a couple of paragraphs worth of text as a product description is great for your site’s SEO—that is, determining where you appear in Google’s results when people search for key terms relevant to your business. Lovely stuff.
10. Allow reviews
Granted, this can be a scary part of learning how to improve conversion rate. By checking the box to allow reviews on your site, you are essentially allowing the general public to say what they like about you and your products. However, if you stand by the quality of your products, allowing reviews enables other visitors to feel safe in purchasing from you.
Admit it—there are very few of us who don’t browse at least a couple of reviews prior to making a purchase… if not dozens!
Conclusion
And there you have it: ten top tips on how to improve your eCommerce website conversion rate. See, that phrase doesn’t sound quite so unpleasant anymore, does it?
If you’d like any more help with getting your site performing at its absolute best, give us a call at Suki Marketing. We’re always ready to chat about how we can help your business boom.
