5 Tips To Improve Your E-commerce Conversion Rates
One of the questions we often get asked as SEOs is what is the best way to improve the conversion rate of an eCommerce website? The problem with answering this question directly is that every eCommerce store and product is different. Also, how you choose to market those products will impact your conversion rates.
Take, for instance; if your CPC ads are converting, your search rankings are high and yet you do not see the needle move, (especially in the revenue department), then there is something wrong. Sometimes shoppers may be visiting your website but not adding items to their cart, but if they don’t purchase or convert, your marketing spend isn’t working for you.
If the above sounds familiar, it might be time to examine the customer’s journey. Once shoppers are hitting your page, you need to understand what is wrong.
Below, we will go into five ways to improve your conversion rate.
What is Considered an Acceptable Conversion Rate for eCommerce?
The standard eCommerce conversion rates will vary depending mainly on the product category and the geography. On average, it’s around 1.4% in the US. However, high ticket items like furniture and consumer electronics will have a conversion rate of about 0.5% or slightly less. That’s because consumers want to take some more time researching before they make a large purchase.
Higher converting items in the eCommerce industry are pet care products with a 3.28% conversion rate. Again, your industry has a lot to do with the overall average conversion rate.
The Best Way to Measure Conversion Rates for eCommerce Websites
The best way to calculate your conversion rate, is to divide the number of sales, usually over a given period like 30 days, by the number of page views within that time. For instance, if you made 100 sales in a day, divide that by 1000 page views, which will equal 0.1.
The best way to understand which marketing tactics are working segment your overall conversate rate by the number of conversions on the home page, email conversions, and product pages, amongst others. This will help you identify tactics and pages that are converting the best.
Once you know which pages are bringing about the most conversions, you can work on increasing visibility for those pages and finding out what else is making shoppers covert. For instance, some shoppers may read a compelling story and convert; others may examine your graphics and determine that you are professional enough to trust.
The important thing to remember is that your website needs to measure up to the industry standard. Once you have that tied down, you can work on the following CRO or conversate rate optimisation tactics in the next section of this article.
Offer Something for Free
The easiest thing to do is offer something for free which then motivates people to buy. The most common freebie offered by many eCommerce stores is free shipping. That’s because people hate to pay for shipping, which can account for in-cart decisions against buying the product. If the person ‘adds to cart’ and sees that they need to pay $10 for shipping, they almost always abandon it. 56% of online merchants recently surveyed said that they found free shipping a highly effective tool for improving eCommerce conversions.
2-Day Shipping
In a survey similar to the one cited above, 52% of online merchants reported that offering 2-day shipping effectively influenced customers when it came to deciding to checkout. The reported conversion rate went up by 25%. However, you can further improve shipping by guaranteeing fast shipping. Google’s initial findings reported that their shopping listings converted 9% better with 2-day shipping or quick shipping offers.
Optimise Your Content
One of the things we always tell clients is that they should work on optimising their content. Make sure that you have high-quality content, with accurate product pictures to match. This will help to improve eCommerce conversion rates, essentially decreasing return rates.
We strongly advise that eCommerce store owners add pictures from various angles. In fact, from as many angles as possible. 360-degree photos and video is a bonus since it allows prospects to examine the product virtually before making a purchase.
The other powerful tool for increasing conversions is customer reviews, aka user-generated content. You can use online marketing and automation platforms like Growaves, which simplifies the process of curating user-generated content.
Custom Tailor the Shopping Experience
If you use an eCommerce platform like WooCommerce, then a plugin that allows people who have visited your website to see what they have viewed, will help improve conversions.
The customisation helps keep people on your site until they can locate what they are looking for. Some plugins also give people the option of liking products and adding them to their ‘wish list.’
Optimise Checkout
We often tell clients that the more clicks required to check out or buy a product, the higher the odds are that people will abandon the purchase. Ideally, the process should be a single click one.
A recent survey showed that 35% of eCommerce shoppers didn’t want to create an account online. Many merchants ask that customers create an account early during their purchase process, which is then used for remarketing purposes or to run a campaign to regain buyers who have abandoned their carts. However, it may be working against you.
Interestingly around 24% of shoppers said that they abandoned carts because they couldn’t see the total price they were required to pay upfront. You will want to include shipping costs and taxes in the final purchase, which is clearly visible during the checkout process.
Final Word
Your paid advertising campaign plays a significant part in how well people convert. If your ad copy is ‘clickbait,’ but the landing page does not run with the visitor’s expectations, you will have many people not converting. Furthermore, it’s worth investing in A/B testing of your ad copy and landing pages to find what works best while lowering the cost per click for your campaign.
