If you're running an online business, ecommerce conversion rate is what drives your bottom line and keeps your business profitable. But even if you're getting lots of impressions on your website, if your bounce rate is too high, you'll need to optimize your current conversion rate in order to remain scalable for growth.
Northsail knows the importance of creating a strong customer relationship built on honesty and transparency, which is why we always deliver projects on-time, on-spec, and on-budget. Anytime we don't think we can, we simply won't take a project on.
You need to build that same level of trust in your potential customers if you're looking to create a user experience that maximizes your site's conversions, which is why we've put together some tips for how to increase conversion rates for ecommerce businesses.
Before we get to that. Let's talk about what a conversion rate is for ecommerce websites, as well as some common differences between ecommerce website designs and other types of sites.
Your current conversion rate is calculated by taking the total number of people that convert through your website and dividing it by the total number of interactions that you can track from any traffic sources (i.e., ad clicks, search engine click-through rate, etc.).
This tells you exactly which percentage of visitors are moving all the way through your sales funnel, and how many are leaving before they complete the checkout process.
The average conversion rate for online businesses is around 2.5%, but some of the best companies manage to achieve numbers as high as 5% or more.
How do they do it? Through a well-designed marketing strategy that drives customers effectively through the ecommerce platform to the checkout process, with as little distractions or roadblocks as possible.
While many other forms of websites may provide substantial pieces of content on their site, such as blogs, case studies, or educational articles, the vast majority of ecommerce website designs are geared specifically towards driving conversions.
This means that they usually don't have a ton of written content on each page; typically, this is reserved for product descriptions, customer testimonials, and various call-to-action initiatives meant to nudge customers towards the all-important 'BUY NOW' button.
If there is going to be written content added above and beyond the product description, in most cases, having a short section about the history or origin of the product being sold is most effective.
Unlike other types of pages that may be designed largely for the purposes of educating, or creating brand affinity with customers, the purpose of an ecommerce page is strictly to drive sales.
Regardless of what's on each page, every ecommerce website design is created to get visitors to click the action button that adds products to their shopping cart, and then remain engaged enough to complete the checkout process without changing their minds.
If you're really aiming to get the most ecommerce conversion rate optimization out of your website, you need to be providing customers with meaningful content alongside your products.
Part of that entails giving customers valuable pieces of information in your product descriptions that help demonstrate exactly how and why your products are better and more beneficial to customers than your competitors' offerings.
Take time to tell customers about exactly how your products solve problems. Why is your brand or style of product superior to alternatives? Are there customization or aesthetic-specific designs that set your product apart? How many different varieties of the product are there? Is this a new version, and if so, how is it an improvement over the most recent one before it?
All of these factors play a role in providing valuable information for customers that they can use to help make their purchase decisions. More than that, offering up beneficial product information creates a better shopping experience for your users, which in turn, will help drive conversions.
If you're going to include product images or videos alongside product descriptions to try and drive online purchases, be sure that you're always only including high-quality versions of these forms of media.
We're not saying that every image needs to be uploaded in 8K glorious resolution (in fact, too much high-resolution content could impact your website loading time), but you never want to upload anything blurry, unclear, or pixelated.
Finding a balance between high-quality images and videos and providing fast website load times and customer service is vital to making the most out of the visual marketing materials that you're using.
If there are other products that you want to cross-promote alongside certain items, be sure to include images of those items somewhere on the product page too, as they could encourage customers to add to their basket size.
You may not want to do this, especially if your shipping costs are limiting your maximum conversions, but the truth is that this is a good way to build customer trust.
Customers want to know you're being transparent with them, and a percentage of people will choose to abandon their virtual shopping cart if they're hit with high shipping costs or long delivery times after they've already started the checkout process.
Reducing shopping cart abandonment is half the battle with conversion rate optimization strategies, and creating a transparent checkout experience that doesn't add costs at the end is a good way to gain loyal customers.
Plus, if your business offers free shipping to certain areas or after a certain purchase amount, be sure to list that on the product pages as well!
Everyone loves getting something for free, and free delivery options are often appealing to people ordering online, as it appears as a savings for them above what they expect to pay.
If it's a possibility for your business, we'd say it's one of the most valuable features a company in the ecommerce industry can offer.
We're all familiar with the 'BUY NOW' or 'ADD TO CART' buttons that so many ecommerce businesses adopt for their product pages, but sometimes it pays to think a little more outside the box.
Does your product make life better or easier for customers? Make it clear with buttons like 'Start Your Better Life Today' or things with a similarly positive vibe.
No one wants to spend money, that's just a fact of life. However, we can lessen the blow that making ecommerce purchases has on customers emotionally by not making the purchase feel like an expense, but rather a value-add to their daily lives.
Adding a bit of variety and emotional triggers to your action buttons can not only improve your click-through rate to the checkout, but it can be a form of positive customer service as well.
Then, your customers won't feel like they're making a purchase. Instead, it will feel like they're finding solutions to the challenges they face each day.
In the same way that social media marketing is great for connecting and engaging with your target audiences, you can utilize online reviews in your product pages to build social proof.
Building customer trust is an ongoing process that takes time, but when you can show customers proof of other existing customers that have had positive personalized experiences with your products, it can help sway customers that aren't sure whether or not they want to go through with the purchase yet.
Product reviews can also help you identify where there might be different forms of value in your products that you haven't yet built into your product recommendations.
Customer reviews may not always be good, but as long as you address the negative ones directly with actionable solutions, direct problem-solving with existing customer accounts can be a great way to show your brand isn't afraid to deal with problems effectively and respectfully when they arise.
You always want your pages to have dynamic content that engages and excites customers, but too much advertising on product pages can feel overwhelming.
Customers don't like to continue on when they feel bombarded with an excessive amount of advertising or PPC content, especially on product pages. They're on your product page because they want that product, not because they want to browse 30 other ones.
Cross-promotional content is fine, as long as it's limited. Otherwise, focus on the reasons the customer should finish converting on this product, before you worry about trying to sell them on a dozen other ones.
It's easy to get lost in the idea of building basket size to increase profitability, but remember that customers typically only want to think about a few products at a time. Any more than that, and it can start to become obtrusive and off-putting.
One of the hardest challenges facing ecommerce businesses is cart abandonment. It skews data that's being tracked, and ultimately, amounts to the same for the business as if someone clicked away from the site immediately upon visiting.
Thankfully, there are some things that you can do to help reduce the impacts of this issue. One of which is sending customers a cart abandonment email.
Cart abandonment emails are gentle reminders to customers that they forgot to complete the checkout process when they were done adding things to their cart. In some cases, this may be a simple customer oversight.
Or, in some cases, this can be the nudge that a customer needs to actually complete the checkout process. We know that seems convoluted, but in the increasingly complicated world of ecommerce, you have to take every avenue you can to maximize your conversions.
For businesses that are looking to scale up and increase their ecommerce offerings, building the websites can become a time-consuming and expensive process, especially when the costs of a developer are worked into the mix.
Thankfully, you won't have to worry about that anymore with Northsail's newest service, Horizon. Horizon allows you to quickly and easily create high-performance product pages that are completely customizable to meet your business’ needs.
Not only that, you can build and add customer data collection forms to any page, or even build and add your own widgets to any project. Best of all, you can try Horizon completely free for 30 days - no obligation or credit card information required.
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