Do you sell online? Do you want to learn how to sell even more of your products online by using the audience you already have? Want to increase your ecommerce conversion rate and boost sales from your current website traffic? You should try eCommerce conversion optimization.
Getting more website traffic does not guarantee you’ll get more sales. If you notice a lot of people leaving your website without making a purchase, we’d suggest focusing on increasing your ecommerce conversions before trying to drive new traffic to your pages.
E-Commerce Optimization is the process of improving your e-commerce conversion rate by making small, effective improvements. This includes examining your eCommerce website, identifying and listing out the areas that can be improved, and making the required changes that’ll impact your overall conversion rate.
In this article, you’ll learn what CRO is, why it matters for your business, and best practices for achieving the best conversion rate possible. We will share easy tips you can use to start to increase your eCommerce conversion rate now! These eCommerce conversion rate optimization tips can help you get more conversions and grow your business.
What is a CRO in eCommerce?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that converts into customers, or more generally, takes any desired action.
These actions can be anything from filling out a registration form, signing up for a service to clicking on a link, clicking on “add to cart”, or purchasing a product on your social media channels, on your website, or any other online marketing campaigns.
This involves understanding how users interact with your website content, browse and navigate your website, and, ultimately, take the actions that result in conversions, sales, and revenue for your business.
Is CRO important for eCommerce websites?
When it comes to website SEO, conversion rate optimization brings unique advantages and benefits, which all are experienced by SEO professionals and the businesses they work with.
Some benefits of CRO include:
- Increased User Engagement
- Expands Your Customer Base
- Lowers Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)
- Increase Profits Without Adding Marketing Dollars
- Provides Opportunities for Growth
- Better ROI
- Valuable User Insights
- Enhanced Customer Trust
- Scalability
What are eCommerce CRO best practices?
CRO best practices are, by definition, practices that have been planned, executed, and worked for businesses before. This means that it might be possible that in the modern days, these quick CRO “hacks” may not be mandatory applied to your business, nor might they be relevant to businesses.
Keeping this in mind, businesses should be capable enough of adopting any CRO best practices without proper estimations and evaluations, and extensive knowledge and understanding of their own target audience.
For example, to improve conversions, there are a few simple tweaks that are commonly used by businesses. These “tips” often include:
- A/B testing headlines because 56% of marketers believe that A/B testing is one of the CRO methods they prefer the most.
- Changing the color of CTAs.
- Including contact forms on every page.
- Always adding customer testimonials.
- Offering discounts.
It’s a fact that just because some tactics and tips worked for one business doesn’t mean it’s going to work perfectly for your business too. Your main aim is to focus on what’s working perfectly with your target audience, and then apply those tips using your own creativity to make improvements and adjustments that will increase your conversion rates over time.
How to increase your eCommerce conversion rate?
After going through what CRO is and how it will help you to increase your store sales, you might be thinking that now “How do I optimize my conversion rate?”.
Don’t get stressed, we are here with some tips, or you can say the conversion rate optimization checklist provided by our experts to help improve your conversion rates.
1. Track Accurate Data:
First, you need to understand where your business currently stands, to improve conversion rates. This will require setting up a Google Analytics account if you don’t already have one and inputting the conversions you would like to track, such as online purchases or cart additions.
Google Analytics will also help your business understand how visitors find your website, how long they stay on your website, where they are from, measure traffic numbers, goal completions, bounce rates, audience engagement, traffic sources, what browsers and devices they use, as well as how many of them are actual converting.
Google Analytics provides data that can be used to analyze conversion rates.
2. Use high-quality images and videos
Show off the products you sell by displaying top-notch images and high-quality videos to your customers. While being at home, people can’t exactly interact with your products or services.
So your website should give them a platform where they’ll browse and have a detailed look at your product and also track when their order arrives. Through high-resolution images and multimedia, you will be able to give a better understanding of your company’s value with a close-up or an explainer video walking users through your services and products.
3. Give detailed product descriptions
Again, customers and visitors cannot see products in person when buying online. So make sure to give them all the specific details and product information to help them make a better purchase decision. If you don’t, your product descriptions will be too vague to attract customers to make a purchase, leading to fewer website conversions.
4. Clearly state your unique selling propositions (USPs)
Do you know what makes your business, service or product stand out from your competitors? Why customers should purchase from you? Make these USPS clear to your audience – they may just be the deciding factor for your customers to purchase your service or product. Add USP’s to your product titles, product descriptions, or buttons. Get creative and try different options until you get the one that fits best for your business.
5. Ensure the data security to your customers
During pandemics, online shopping continues to rise and gain popularity. But still few people don’t prefer online shopping due to lack of data security. So make your customers believe that their data is secure and safe with you by displaying them data security badges (if you have them). You can even display the visual cues for a secure credit card or other payment options that your online store offers.
6. Make sure your “add to cart” and “checkout” buttons stand out
Don’t make users browse for how they can add products to their cart or start the checkout process to complete the order. Ensure that all these necessary buttons stand out on your website page, whether it be in color, size, or all three. You can even adjust and customize the button’s positioning to a more prominent location for a better shopping experience.
7. Let customers checkout as guests
There are times when customers are in hurry or not interested to fill the login or registration form during checkout. And why should you force them to? If they are already registered to your website then they are already your customers and if not then also you’ll already have their name and email ID when they check out, so there’s no mandatory reason for customers to register or log in to their account.
If you force them to log in or register, that might can turn people away and right to your competitors’ websites. So allow your customers to check out as guest users.
So if you want to improve your conversion rates, you need to ensure that the checkout process you offer on your website is quick, seamless, and simple to navigate. Autofill options, clear directions, and multiple payment options are a few of the must-have features to add to your checkout process. Easy checkout will provide a better holistic shopping experience for customers on your website.
8. Re-engage with the customers who abandoned their carts
Almost 80% of online buyers abandon the shopping carts and if you try to follow up on those orders, you can secure extra sales and also increase your conversion rates.
Make sure that you have an eye on abandoned carts, and they don’t go unnoticed. Try to reach out to these customers who left without making a purchase and for further potential conversion try to remarket your product to them via email. It is beneficial for your business.
Let customers know that they forgot something in the cart last time and that they don’t want to miss out on any offers, promotions, or deals you’re currently running on your website. Use these remarketing emails for more sales and conversions by offering discounts and coupons, such as 20% off a user’s cart, to further encourage them to complete their pending purchase.
Source-baymard.com
The most important thing you have to keep eye on for improving your conversion rate over time is your customer buying behavior data and monitoring and tracking how users interact with your website.
Conclusion:
There is no fixed strategy or tip for a great CRO. What works for your business will be totally dependent on the customer’s behaviors and interests, the offers and deals you are promoting, the website layout, how easy the checkout process is and so much more. Thus, try to implement the UX best practices, writing better sales copy, A/B testing CRO adjustments, or fine-tuning your CTAs for better conversions.
At the end of the day, keep in mind that tons of traffic on your website will not guarantee sales automatically. So if you wish to improve your store sales and want to increase your conversion rates, engage people on your website for longer and invite them to actively engage with specific elements on it.
About the Guest Author
Vishal Lakhani: CEO and Magento Solution Specialist at Rock Technolabs with over 10+ years of experience in eCommerce. Apart from blogging and playing with Magento, he loves to read, travel, and learn new technologies that help make the development process easier and more appealing to clients.