If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely that you’ve put plenty of time and energy into choosing your product and setting up your eCommerce website. Unfortunately, it takes more than simply creating a website and running a few paid ads to build a successful business.
You are competing against billions of other websites. Granted, if you’ve done your homework and tried to understand your target market, that number will be significantly smaller. However, the nature of the internet means that you aren’t alone. There are others trying to compete for your sales.
This is why the most important metric that you should be focusing on is conversion. You could have a million people visit your website and see your social media ads, but if no one makes a purchase, these numbers don’t mean much!
So, if conversion is the aim of the game, how can you optimise your conversation rate to boost your sales as much as possible?
Before we find out, we’ll take a moment to explore exactly what your conversion rate is.
Your eCommerce conversion rate is the number of people who visit your online store or website and make a purchase within a given period. You may measure this in a day, week, month, or any other period of time.
There is a bit more to it, however. There are several important metrics that factor into this figure such as the number of times a product is being added to a cart and items being added to a wishlist.
You may be surprised to know that the average conversion rates are roughly 1-2%.
So, what can you do to boost this number as much as possible? Here are our top tips to boost your eCommerce conversion rate.
When it comes to online shopping, speed is essential. The whole point of shopping online is convenience – “I want something, and I want it now”. You may be surprised to know that if your site takes longer than two seconds to load, on average over 50% of your customers will lose interest and even abandon your website altogether.
This can be very detrimental to your conversions. Improving the speed of your website will see an increase in your sales and boost your conversion rate.
Perform regular tests on your site to ensure your loading speed is high, and make changes to ensure it’s performing at its peak.
Just to clarify for anyone who may not be 100% certain:
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
CRO – Conversion Rate Optimisaiton
You’ve probably, at one point or another stumbled across a website that seems like it was written by a robot. This is because they’ve written their copy with a focus on keywords, and ignored the quality of the content on the page.
So, whilst it’s important to have keywords on your website to boost your ranking in search, your copy needs to be of high quality too.
Use keyword tools and CRO tools, such as google analytics, to ensure your SEO and CRO is as high as possible.
One of the biggest differences between shopping online verses in-store is the ability to see what you’re purchasing. When in-store, we can pick it up, look at it, try it on, and maybe even test it before we buy it.
When shopping online, however, we’re putting our faith solely in the information provided. So, to allow your customers to buy with confidence, include as much product information as possible.
For example, if you’re selling clothing you could include a size guide. If you’re selling camping equipment, include measurements and features of your products.The more information that you can provide, the more likely people will be to buy.
Customer reviews are a great way to boost your sales. Having them clearly visible on your page will help to build trust with your consumers and show the quality of what you’re selling.
It’s estimated that as many as 95% of customers will read online reviews before making a purchase. So, with the number being that high, you’re only hurting your sales if you don’t have reviews available.
Make sure you have a number of high-quality images and videos of your products. This will allow your customers to visualise the purchase, gain a better understanding of your product, and feel more confident to click buy.
All of these factors will help your customers to feel more comfortable with their purchase, and in turn, increase your sales.
There is nothing more frustrating than going through the process of selecting an item online, picking your size, proceeding to the end of the checkout, and getting surprised by a high shipping or postage fee out of the blue. This can lead to a high cart abandonment rate.
So, make your shipping costs (if you have any) as transparent as possible. If someone can get the same product from another site without shipping, they’ll go elsewhere.
People are more cautious with their money online than ever before, so put your customer’s minds at ease by offering them a verified secure checkout. Furthermore, make checking out as simple as possible.
Returns are important for customers today, so make sure your returns policy is clearly displayed on your website. This will help customers to purchase with confidence as they know what will happen if they have any issues with your product.
Our final tip is to create a sense of urgency with purchases. This could be a count down timer for sales, or even a timer like “purchase by Xpm today for next day shipping”. These small prompts create the need for a quick purchase, which will help to boost your conversions.
Given that sales are the aim of the eCommerce game, it’s important that you’re doing everything you can to increase your conversions. So, follow these tips and you’ll be enjoying a better conversion rate.
