Conversion Rate Optimization For Ecommerce: A Complete Guide

The point of setting up an online shop is to turn in a profit. If your store isn't converting visitors into customers, then you must do whatever it takes to turn the tides to your favor. In this Article you'll learn Conversion Rate Optimization for Ecommerce which can rapidly improve your sales.

The point of setting up an online shop is to turn in a profit. If your store isn’t converting visitors into customers, then you must do whatever it takes to turn the tides to your favor.

In this post, I will be talking about conversion rate optimization for Ecommerce, Which can double the sales.

In particular, I will be discussing the basics of CRO that every online shop owner must know. I will then follow it up with different tips and strategies that you can use to make fair-weather visitors into buyers of the products in your shop.

At the end, you should be able to implement the techniques elaborated in this article so you can improve user experience, raise the conversion rates of your store, and generate more revenue.

If that sounds good to you, let’s begin!

Why is conversion rate optimization important?

Some people believe that website traffic is paramount to the success of one’s online business. There’s truth to that statement – you can’t achieve your website goals if not enough people are visiting it.

However, traffic is ultimately a means to an end. If your site has thousands of visitors but are leaving it without taking any action, then there’s no difference with your website than one that receives zero traffic.

Because both of you aren’t getting any ROI from the effort you spent building  your online store!

This is where conversion rate optimization comes in.

But first, we need to backtrack and explain what “conversion” means in this context.

Normally, a person who buys something from your store counts as a conversion. Since their action on your site is in line with the goals of ecommerce, then it makes sense to focus on getting more people to pull off their credit cards on your site.

However, conversions don’t always have to directly involve money.

There are different ways that a visitor can take action on your website and still count as a conversion. Below are a few examples:

  • Signing up to your email list
  • Creating a user account
  • Filling out and submitting a form

While these actions aren’t financially motivated  in nature, they help push people down your sales funnel.

For example, by signing up to your email list, they can expect to receive emails about discount codes and deals on their favorite items. From here, they can decide to use the code to purchase the item.

Therefore, the things mentioned above will eventually lead them to buying from your site, thus growing your sales.

With these goals in mind, you want as many visitors as possible to commit to your CTA, whatever that may be in your page.

Fact of the matter is this:

Not all of them will perform your desired action.

What is the average conversion rate for ecommerce sites?

According to IRP Commerce, the average conversion rate across the different ecommerce industries in February 2020 was 1.77%. That’s a 17.91% growth from the previous year’s conversion rate (1.5%).

Of course, some industries fare much better than others. Digital Marketing Institute states that personal finance and finance in general enjoy the best conversion rates at 2.9% and 2.5%, respectively.

Conversion Rate Optimization For Ecommerce: A Complete Guide 1

On the other hand, home furnishing (0.4%) and home garden (0.6%) have some of the lowest conversion rates.

Therefore, your niche determines the actual conversion rate you can expect from your online shop. But for the sake of discussion, let’s stick to the average conversion rate provided by IRP Commerce.

Let’s say you are attracting 30,000 visits a month and you have an average transaction amount at $20, then the equation goes like this:

Average month visits (30,000) x conversion rate (0.0177) x average transaction amount (20).

The  monthly sales from these figures is $10,620.  Regardless of the other expenses you must consider, that is a rather hefty amount.

However, hitting this goal involves different variables. Aside from getting thousands of visitors every month, you need to ensure that your conversion rates are in line with your industry. At best, you should strive to reach the average rate, if not exceed.

Just by these factors alone, your work is already cut out for you. Getting consistent traffic in the thousands is difficult but ensuring that your ecommerce website is converting at the highest rate possible is another story.

How do you optimize conversion rate?

As mentioned, the more traffic your online store gets, the higher your sales will be.

However, in this post, we’ll focus on getting your conversion rate up to speed.

Instead of getting more people to visit your site, it’s better to focus on turning people into customers. And you can achieve this with a few tweaks on your website pages.

Below are ways to do conversion rate optimization on your ecommerce store:

Identify your potential customers

You can’t get everybody to visit your site and buy your products. By trying to market your business to everyone, then you will end up making no one happy.

For instance, if you are selling rock climbing shoes on your ecommerce website, you can’t expect a person with no aptitude for rock climbing to buy your shoes, let alone visit your website!

The sign of a successful website is knowing its identity. By having a full grasp of what one is selling, it can easily determine who will benefit the most from its products.

That said, you need to define who your target customers are. It all starts with your buyer persona or customer avatar.

buyer persona example

Source: Ecwid

Developing a buyer persona starts with the demographics. You must identify factors that will help shape the kind of person who you think will purchase your product online.

Below are the most important ones:

  • age brackets
  • income level
  • gender
  • educational attainment
  • marital status
  • employment

Using these variables to help you define your buyer persona, you can effectively market your  website to these people in the hopes of increasing your conversions.

Also, using the profile to develop your core message doesn’t start and end with your website.

If you’re using different strategies to reach out to an audience, i.e. social media, email marketing, you need to also use the right tone and voice to engage with them.

Therefore, by catering your entire business based on your buyer persona, you open up your ecommerce website to the right people.

Keep your site simple (stupid)

The last thing you want your visitors to do after visiting your ecommerce site is think.

Your website should be intuitive and easy enough to understand that people won’t have to use their brains to navigate the pages.

For example, the home page should present visitors a variety of ways to access the especially important and relevant pages of the site. At the same time, it shouldn’t overload users with too much information that leads to analysis paralysis.

conversion rate optimization for ecommerce - nerdwallet options

Also, having a clear navigation menu to access other sections of your website helps. This way, people can jump to those sections to learn more about your site or go straight to what they’re looking for.

this is why im broke menu

In relation, achieving a flat website architecture helps in improving navigation. This pertains to having similar pages grouped together in a clear and organized manner.

3 clicks deep site architecture

Source: Cazbah

For all intents and purposes, a flat architecture helps Google to crawl and index your pages faster. This way, they can rank on SERPs where more people can find them.

However, a simple website architecture is also beneficial to users as well.

It’s all too common for ecommerce sites to have subcategories under subcategories. This is largely in part of having various products under different types.

From a user perspective, some of the products get buried under so many sub-pages that visitors don’t get to see them while browsing the website.

Assuming that the buried pages contain the products the users want to purchase, then you’re inadvertently keeping people from becoming your customers!

At the same time, following what your customers want should be your priority.

If limiting your subcategories will prevent users from visiting your website, then you better find a way around it instead. It’s all about balancing getting more people to buy from your site and keeping your website as useful as possible.

Finally, add a search box on your site which is commonly found on the menu and sidebar.

You don’t want to provide users with too many options that will eventually prevent them from making a choice. Therefore, you can direct visitors to use the search bar to find whatever it is they’re looking for on your site.

Make your site load faster

Getting people to visit your website is one thing. Keeping them there is another.

The problem is it’s too easy to lose them from your website. In fact, if your site loads more than six seconds, then you’ve already lost a quarter of them as it offers terrible user experience.

page speed graph

Source: Section

Therefore, you need to improve your website speed for visitors to stay on your site long enough to see the call to action on your page. At the very least, this gives them a chance to decide whether to commit to your CTA or not.

Run a page speed test

For starters, you can run a speed test on your ecommerce site using Google PageSpeed Insights.

google pagespeed insights

From here, you will see issues that you must address to make your website lead faster.

Keep in mind that some problems stated in the test results require help from a professional coder or developer. Don’t fix the issues if you don’t know how to solve them as you can only make matters worse.

Install a caching plugin

But if you want to lend your hand, choosing a caching tool is a good place to start.

If you’re not using one yet, this tool helps store data of your site on the visitor’s local drive. So, when s/he visits again, instead of fetching information from the servers, the website will simply pull up the files locally. This way, the site will load much faster.

Among the different caching tools available, the WP Rocket plugin for WordPress is one of the best. 

wp rocket

It optimizes your CSS, JS, and HTML files, as well as your database, to ensure that your page loads as fast as possible.

Optimize your image file sizes

Another thing you should consider doing is compressing your image file sizes.

For ecommerce sites, high-resolution images are critical because they show to people what the product looks like.  But they bog down your website speed especially since hi-res images have massive file sizes.

To remedy this problem, use a tool like ShortPixel or WordPress. It helps you decrease the file size of all the images in your website without losing their quality.

shortpixel

The plugin also automatically compresses the images you just uploaded.  This way, you can make your images load more efficiently while still keeping their clarity, thus making the user experience much better.

Write compelling product descriptions

The closest thing that website visitors will get close to your product before purchasing it is by reading its description.

85% of discerning shoppers do their research first to help them come up with an informed decision. And it’s safe to assume that the product description plays a decisive role here.

However, writing a product description is not as simple and straightforward as, well, describing what it is.

You must use copywriting tactics to help make your words bear more weight for readers. This, in turn, helps improve your conversion rates by making visitors one step closer into become your customers.

Below are techniques you can use when writing your product descriptions.

Use descriptive, powerful words

A product isn’t the best or the greatest unless you explain why.

To make your descriptions more effective, you need to delve deep into the product and break down what makes them useful for people.

By sharing the superior features of the product,  it’s selling itself to your readers! All you must do is describe the features clear enough for readers to understand.

And to do this, you need to inject as many power words as you can. These help make your descriptions pop and stand out from the page. More importantly, you make every word mean something.

At the same time, consider removing filler words in your descriptions as they water down the effectiveness of your copy.

Tell stories

Storytelling allows writers to weave disparate elements into a unified whole using thematic devices to enhance the shopping experience.

However, the best approach to storytelling in writing product descriptions is to put yourself in the shoes of customers.

Referring to your buyer persona, tap into their interests, fears, wants, and desires. Use these variables into creating a story that resonates with your target audience.

Something, effective storytelling is as simple as sharing the emotions that using a product can give you.

The guys from DrunkMall have the storytelling department in the bag with their post about a “Hunky Jewelry Owner.”

drunkmall product

What makes their product descriptions effective is how it is reflective of their audience. People with a goofy sense of humor will not only enjoy these descriptions, but they’ll also consider buying the products.

Answer questions

The description should help quell questions your audience have on your product.

Therefore, as best practice, leave no stone unturned in your product descriptions.

Pull out all the stops by talking about the most common questions people have about the product, how does it compare with its competitors, and others.

By being transparent, you earn the trust of your audience, which could lead to a conversion sooner than later.

In fact, you can even take it to another level by giving people a chance to ask questions that you can answer on the page just like on Amazon.

customer questions and answers

At the time, you don’t want your product to look inferior against its competitors even if it’s the truth.

As the saying goes, “accentuate the positives, hide the negatives.” You want to focus on what your product or service brings to the table without deceiving people.

Track and measure your calls to action

The tips above prevent users from leaving your ecommerce site and to get them to see your call to action.

At this point, you need to optimize your CTAs to lead visitors down your sales funnel.

As mentioned, calls to action assume different forms depending on your goal. But they always come with a button.

Your goal is for people to press the button which will lead people to the next step in your conversion funnel.

To get more people to click on it, you must test your button based on these factors:

Text

The words inside the button should encourage visitors to click on it.

And if you’re thinking of writing “Click Here” as your button text, think again.

Instead of telling them what to do, make sure you give them a reason why they should click on it.

For example, if you want them to sign up to your email list, elaborate the benefits of becoming a subscriber. So, if you’re handing out discount codes to people in your list, you could say “Get Your Discount Code Now” or something to that effect.

prime video homepage

In the case of streaming sites like Prime Video, it’s a luxury to offer a free trial period to hike up conversions.

More importantly, be as clear as possible.  Use language that a fifth grader will understand. This way, you leave no room for misinterpreting your words on your way to better conversion rates.

Color

Color is a rather complex subject in the context of CTA.

The idea behind your call to action is to use a color that will convert the best.

To begin, a study conducted by Joe Hollock shows that blue is the favorite color of men (57%) and women (35%).

favorite colors

Conversion XL compiled a set of case studies that pit different CTA colors against each other. Based on the tests, red was the victor and helped increase conversion rate compared to the others.

hubspot cta color test

Source: Hubspot

Based on these studies, you can start playing around these colors and see which one converts the best.

Now, I’m not saying that you limit your choices to these colors. On the contrary, if you feel strongly about using a color that’s not blue or red, then go for it!

Here’s the thing:

As vital as color is in your call to action, you have to consider it as part of the whole.

Therefore, if you’re going to use a blue CTA color for a predominantly blue design theme, then you probably won’t generate as many conversions there.

Since there’s no absolute answer to the question of which CTA color is best, you need to run your test and decide for yourself what is the best based on the results.

Placement

Arguably the most crucial variable of your call to action button is its location on the page.

Ideally, you need to place it where most of your visitors will be able to see it. You normally see these buttons above the fold or the part in the product pages that load in the screen first.

It’s also common practice to include it at the end of the product page so people have something to do after going through your content.

However, if you do the latter, then some of your visitors won’t be able to see it because they’ll be bouncing away after reaching a certain part of the page.

Here, you need to consider adding another CTA button that serves the same function. This way, you can get more people to perform your desired action even if they don’t scroll down the bottom of your page.

unbounce cta test

Source: Unbounce

Unbounce put one of their landing pages to the test by changing the positions of the calls to action. Based on the test, the Treatment Page increased its conversion rate by 41%.

Monitoring your call to action

As you can see from the variables above, CTA variables are fluid. There are no set rules on where you must place your calls to action or what colors you need to use.

And while “it depends” is a non-answer, the characteristics of your CTA depends on how your visitors respond to them.

If you’re not getting traction on your calls to action with a blue color and placed in the middle of the page, make sure to tweak them!

However, you won’t get far if you don’t know exactly how to track them properly. This is where tools come into play.

hotjar

Heatmapping tools like Hotjar allow you to see website visitor engagement on a granular level. They show you which sections of the product pages they click on the most, up to which part of the pages they stopped scrolling before leaving, and other features.

These all contribute to helping you analyze the performance of your CTA and how you can further improve it.

taskworld hotjar

In one of their case studies, Hotjar helped project management tool Taskworld increase their conversion rate by 40%. 

Leverage testimonials

It doesn’t matter how loud you trumpet your business to your audience.

Fact of the matter is people listen to what your customers say about you more than anything else. At least, that’s what 92% of people think and feel.

If you have customer reviews lying around, it’s time to dust them off and feature them on your sales page.

This way, you let people who love your product and service do the hard work for you. And using their glowing reviews about your business, you might increase and multiply your conversion rates!

There are many ways you can field in customer reviews of your products and services. However, at this point, the assumption is that you should have testimonials from people who bought from your brand.

In that case, below are ways that you can properly leverage them for conversion rate optimization purposes:

Compile the best ones in a page on your site

If you have amassed more than enough customer testimonials for your product, you can dedicate a page for it from happy clients.

Use them to sway people who are on the fence about your product to make the right choice by turning them into customers.

oscar the grouch squarespace

Aside from other customers, SquareSpace was able to get a blurb from Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch, where his site oscartrashart.com was made using the website builder.

Also, this is a great way to organize all testimonials in one place on your site. People would then jump to that one page to read what other people say about your product.

As for the testimonials you must use on the page, it’s best to handpick the reviews you want people to see on the page.

Ideally, you want reviews from people who match your buyer persona to appear. Also, if influencers and people with celebrity status give glowing reviews to your business, then it;s best to feature them in as well!

Convert them into case studies

Taking a page from the storytelling aspect of product description, use the testimonial into a full-fledged case study that shows how useful your product is.

For this to happen, you must reach out to customers who gave the review and ask them if it’s okay to ask additional questions. Then disclose the fact that you will use the answers and write it into a case study.

If the customers agree, take time to review who some brands use case studies to increase their ecommerce conversion rate.

simply recipes success stories

Source: SEMrush

SEO tool SEMrush has a section on their site where customers talk about how the tool helped them achieve their goals.

Turn negative feedback into opportunities

It shouldn’t come as a surprise if you receive negative reviews about your ecommerce website from customers over time.

But while you can’t make everybody happy, use this as a chance to do them better and improve their perception of your brand.

At the heart of every customer complaint or issue is the desire to be heard. By taking your time to put aside whatever you’re doing and just listen to what they have to say, you’re already on the right track.

From here, make sure to try everything under your power to resolve the problem and turn their frowns upside down.

However, at the very least, address the situation. You want people to know that their opinions are valued and that you are there to answer each one of them as much as possible.

gist facebook post

People can pick up a thing or two from the owner of marketing automation tool Gist. He addressed an ongoing issue about features included in the lifetime deal owners.

It’s still a contentious issue with some of the deal owners. However, you can’t not commend what the owner did. He faced the music and took the criticisms and support just like any people with dignity does. 

Doing something like this allows you to bridge the gap between disgruntled customers in the hopes of mending the relationship and resolving the issue.

Make customer service easy to access

No matter how descriptive your copy is and how well laid-out the information is about the product, people are bound to have questions nonetheless.

And the first thing they’ll do is reach out to customer support and voice out their concerns.

But there must be a way to reach out to your support team in times of distress.

A contact form always comes in handy, but the conversation goes through email most of the time. If people want something fast and quick, then filling out a form isn’t the way to go.

To increase conversion rates, you must offer other ways that people can reach out to you for questions or inquiries about the product. It could very well be the only thing that’s keeping them from purchasing it in your online store!

You must consider adding a messenger or chatbot widget on the page so people can easily send the questions to you.

In particular, setting up a Facebook Messenger widget could help drive up conversions.  It has the most users in the US with almost 140 million users, more than twice the users of Snapchat, which is the second highest..  

As for chatbots, they work best when providing answers to user’s basic questions.

Bajaj Finance chatbot

Financial institution Bajaj Finserv raised their sales by 25% using chatbots across different verticals. Aside from answering questions, it used chatbots to push their services.

More importantly, they are beneficial to ecommerce website owners who are looking to run a lean business without help from a support team, at least for now.

Combat cart abandonment

Even if people click on your CTA and are on the verge of completing a transaction, there’s always a slim chance that it could fall through at any moment.

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest reasons for incomplete transactions.

There are various reasons why people don’t go through with their purchase. Some involve factors that you can fix within your site, while others are variables beyond your control.

For the most part, you need to recover abandoned carts and encourage people to complete their purchase. Failure to do so is a whopping 75.6% loss in sales!

average cart abandonment rate

Below are controlled variables that you must work on to carry out your ecommerce conversion rate optimization:

Put the interests of customers first

People don’t appreciate deceptive sales practices just to make a buck.

For example, 60% of shoppers leave their carts high and dry because of unexpected shipping costs. The additional fees were probably not shared to them before the checkout page.

reasons for abandonment during checkout

Source: Barilliance

Therefore, if you want to improve the shopping experience, then make sure to disclose all information regarding their purchase and not leave potential customers in the dark.

While we’re at it, and only if possible, offer free shipping to customers. If 9 out of 10 people consider free shipping as an incentive to complete their transaction, then it’s worth checking out this approach at the very least.

You can do this by including the shipping costs as part of the product cost. Another way to do this is to offer free shipping to people with a minimum number of items in their shopping cart.

Finally, a money-back guarantee policy should be in order.  A study shows that having this policy in place boosts the shopping experience and compels them to make another purchase from the same store soon.

For these changes to work, however, you need to be realistic with them. For instance, you can’t implement free shipping if customers will only purchase an item, as the shipping costs would probably end up being more expensive than the item.

Consider guest checkouts

Getting fist-time shoppers to create an account in your ecommerce store is reasonable. You as website owner can track their website activity to provide a more personal user experience.

However, creating an account is one of the biggest reasons why people abandon their carts. They want to complete the order as fast and in the fewest clicks possible on the checkout process.

For this reason, you’d think offering guests a way to make a purchase on your website without creating an account is the way.

However, it’s not as simple as it seems.

Guest checkouts don’t offer people the protection afforded to registered users. They can’t review and change their orders.

More importantly, if something goes wrong with the order during and after the checkout process, they have to manually process the request for a refund or exchange via customer support.

Therefore, the decision whether to activate guest checkouts or not is to try both out yourself.

All ecommerce websites differ from one another. So, choosing which side to take ultimately depends on which option produces the best results for you.

For this part, make sure to track your sales performance based on the number of guest and user checkouts during that period.

Send cart abandonment email

If all else fails, shopping cart abandonment email is your last hope.

For whatever reason your customers are abandoning their carts, you must send them an email reminding them to checkout their carts.

abandoned cart email example

Source: Really Good Emails

There are lots of email marketing tools that possess the cart abandonment feature.

Setting up the initial email is simple enough. But the key is creating a drip campaign that allows you to send multiple emails to increase your conversions.

When done successfully, the email can help recover 10.7% of abandoned carts.

Final words

Once you have applied the suggestions above, you still must review and analyze the results to determine how effective your ecommerce conversion rate optimization campaign is.

Aside from Hotjar, using analytics tools like Google Analytics and Search Console should help you know exactly how to improve your conversion rates especially if you set up goals in it.

From here, know conversion optimization is not a onetime thing. There is a need for your website to undergo constant optimization to make sure you’re getting the most out of your customers.

And by digging deep about growing your bottom line via conversion optimization, you should have the know-how that will help bring your website to the next level.

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