Article

Top 5 Actions to Master eCommerce Conversion Rates

Written by Megha Parikh

Topic: Business Start-upPublished January 23, 2017

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Conversion is one of the most essential KPIsor determinants for performance of an ecommerce website. Due to whopping average abandonment rate of customers from the shopping cart, it is essential to leave no stone unturned so as to boost conversions from each and every device. With conversion rates from smart phones being lower than 2% globally and less than 3.5% on an average from all devices, it is imperative to focus on Ecommerce conversion optimization.

With stiff competition in the Ecommerce space, business owners need to meticulously device their conversion optimization strategy. Knowing the type of visitors, average order value of different kinds of audiences are important parameters to improve the traffic on a website. Website owners need to focus on repeat customers, have increased traffic with display advertising, social media marketing, affiliate marketing and promote with sale or discounts too. Not just that, having a well-defined optimization plays a vital role too.

Here are the 5 most important aspects to watch out for to boost conversions!

1. Are Customers Attracted to Your Website?

Just like customers get instantly attracted to well-organized brick-and-mortar stores with neat arrangements and helpful guidance, same is true about ecommerce sites. Not only do they buy from sites with great form and functionality, but also refer these sites to others. A huge majority of visitors 94% create the first impression of the website based on its design. So your eCommerce website needs to capture the visitor’s attention in the initial few seconds itself.

Make sure your site’s user interface and design boasts of features like:

Large icons and high resolution images that provide detailed product views
Engaging videos that showcase products from different angles
Responsiveness so that the site is equally easy-to-use on desktops, tabs and phones
Highlighted product prices, USPs and ‘Add to Cart Buttons’
Quick product reviews as well as testimonials from real buyers
Contact details. Let these be displayed on every single page
Call to Action lines that actually inspire visitors to take the action
Image sliders or carousels with only the most attention-grabbing content used concisely
Properly used white space which enhances the visual elements
Search tools and auto complete feature to help users find close matches even for wrongly typed search items
Error messages to guide users out of the messed-up situations

With these simple additions and tweaks, you can easily bring in a huge difference in conversion rate.

2. How Visible Are You to Customers? Strategize Your SEO

In this era of cut-throat competition online, your ecommerce site should register a buzzing performance on the search engine result pages. Not only that, it should be fully optimized to encompass every possible element that may affect the conversion rate.

Here are some tips to optimize your site for search engines as well as for the visitors:

Research, choose and use the most important keywords for homepage, product page, blogs and other pages.

Avoid the attempts to get multiple pages ranked for the same keyword. Try variations.

Create tempting landing pages with precise information as well as special offers and coupons to meet the expectations of the incoming visitors.

Avoid duplicate content. Rather, bring variations by adding images for products in the same category.

Perform A/B testing to compare conversion rates for two different pages.

Monitor your competitors’ sites, especially those performing extremely well. While you need to track their keywords and link sources, also focus on making your site distinguishable.

Perform on-page (keyword usage, internal linking, social media integration and so on) and off-page optimization (link building using articles, blogs, press releases etc.)

Don’t forget optimizing for local audiences through submissions to local directories.

Consider use of video marketing too.

3. How Much Do Customers Trust Your Website? – Safety and Security Aspects

Trust is vital when you run an ecommerce site and want visitors to share their valuable private information while purchasing with you. With SSL certificates, secure check out options, hacker-safe seal and trust seals, you would find more number of visitors actually turning into buyers. This is because SSL certificates ensure that no attackers, hackers and intruders intervene in your site’s interactions with visitors’ browsers and all transactions are safe and secure.

While choosing SSL certificates, you must get them from the best issuing authorities and also consider browser compatibility. Fear of online frauds and dis-trust amongst the customers about payment security is one of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment. With trust being a critical factor for converting customers, use of EV SSL certificate is recommended. This ensures that customers can distinguish between businesses whose identity is not-verified from the ones that are verified and trust-worthy. Most of the customers expect that security features should be a part and parcel of any online business i.e. the padlock visible before the URL or the one visible at the checkout as indicated in the below image.

4. How Is the Customer’s Shopping Experience? – Master the UX Part

Persuasive Product Pages & High Resolution Images

Did you know that the brain takes only 13 milliseconds to process information given in an image? Therefore, images are one of the most important aspects, when it comes to converting customers on an eCommerce platform. Customers definitely wish to have a visualization of what they are going to buy. The right size of pictures, pictures that are zoomable, photos close to your real product, high quality photos taken from different angles can truly boost conversion rates (Source: ConversionXl.com) as it builds up customer engagement.

Nike.com does this just the right way and makes way to a superb first impression.

Let’s see how

Uses high resolution compelling images
Having the top navigation that allows a full view
Having all critical elements labeled – that too in familiar locations.
Perfect call to action
Gives an overview of the testimonial in the same color as the product image

Website Speed and Page Loading Speed

Speed is another important metric for boosting conversions. Monitor both i.e. the website speed as well as per page loading speed. Moreover, measuring the page load time as well as page interactive time, both are important. 3 seconds is decent as the website loading time, but if it takes up to 7 seconds, there is scope for improvement. If the loading speed is close to 10 seconds, it is indeed a thing you should look into (Source: Master the CRO Essentials).

You can start looking at page loading time of the most visited pages of your website by looking at the ‘Behavior Site Speed Page Timings’ in Google Analytics and analyze the issues found for pages from Google Page Speed Insights which have sub-optimal loading speed and start fixing it one by one. You can also identify scripts that load slowly using Pingdom.

Focus on Overall User Experience (UX)

88% customers do not return to a website with bad UX. Better user experience comes when the website has the following:

Usability and Value Delivery for Buyers
Ease of Navigation
Attractive and Intelligent Designing
Right Placement of Key Information
Easily Accessible and Desirable Content
Credibility

5. Are You Able to Retain the Customer? – Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment

Abandonment of shopping cart is the biggest issue that eCommerce websites face, so remarketing becomes very important. The infographic from Eystudios sums up the reasons for card abandonment perfectly!

Keeping the top reasons in mind, you need to ensure that your eCommerce site does not fall prey to such issues. Some of the top actions to consider are:

Having clearly visible add/delete/update option in the shopping cart
Easy and simple (small) checkout process asking only required details
Competitive shipping rates
Transparency in shipping cost (visible on product page itself) i.e. avoiding last minute surprises
Self-explanatory invoice format
Choice of buying as a guest (Without a complex user account sign-up process)
Link to FAQ, Delivery and Return Policy page from the check-out page
Secured checkout process

Mastering the art of customer conversion for an eCommerce website is a thought-provoking and research-demanding process. It needs a meticulous planning and an eye for detail for each and every aspect listed above.

Article author

About the Author

Megha Parikh is a digital marketing expert and has been journeying through the world of digital marketing for more than 7 years. She especially enjoys learning about social media marketing and conversion rate optimization while exploring her social and interpersonal skills.

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