When you run an e-commerce business, traffic is definitely one of the important things you focus on. Without internet traffic, your business will struggle to make sales.
Traffic, however, doesn’t guarantee revenue either. It is one thing for visitors to make it to your website and it’s another to successfully sell your products or services to them. The latter refers to conversion, and it is the real determiner of an e-commerce site’s success.
Conversion is simply when visitors to your website actually make purchases that bring in revenue for you.
If you wish to increase your online store’s revenue, one way to achieve this is by improving its conversion rate. Here are 40 well-explained ways to improve store conversion.
1. Experimenting with the “Cart-Addition” Experience
The “Add to Cart” button is a common feature in a lot of e-commerce websites. It used to place an item or product on a virtual cart for the check-out process. Some websites have a cart page where buyers are sent to after they click on the “add to cart” button. They can then take to the checkout page after confirming the items.
This process can be very slow and tedious for some visitors or prospective buyers, leading to the cancellation of their orders.
One way to resolve this is by removing the cart page and skipping that part of the process. This results in buyers being taken straight to the checkout page. You can also make use of an overlay model that proceeds straight to checkout upon completion.
2. Progression Rate Monitoring
Converting a visitor into a buyer requires an elaborate process that involves a few crucial factors. It is impossible to get vital information from just the conversion without looking at these factors that contribute to the conversion process.
By having detailed knowledge of your visitors’ behaviors right from the order section through billing, and finally, at the checkout page, you are equipped with all the necessary details that are needed to improve your site’s conversion rate.
3. Dynamic Overlays
Admittedly, overlays can be quite irritating when they pop up on a web page. They are overused and can even push visitors away when poorly used. Nevertheless, if you use an overlay to convey strategic marketing content, like coupon deals and product promotions, it can truly help to improve conversions.
You should be careful not to overdo it though as that can be annoying.
4. Geo-Specific Messaging
This uses the concept of marketing psychology to manipulate visitors into making purchases. By tracking the IP address of each visitor and using a sales copy that is geo-specific to target the individual, the visitor actually feels compelled to make a purchase. This practice has been proven to be successful in increasing a site’s conversion rate.
5. Trust Badges
E-commerce for buyers solely functions on trust. Without it, the whole industry will collapse. What else will you call paying for a product without actually seeing it?
Buyers are always hesitant to make purchases on e-commerce sites because they are scared of being scammed or having their card details stolen.
Having trust badges from reputable security companies embedded in your site gives web visitors more confidence to continue with the checkout process.
6. Additional Payment Methods (Primarily PayPal)
Not all prospective buyers are comfortable entering card details into e-commerce sites for purchases. For this reason, you must have other payment options available if you want your site to be accessible to numerous buyers.
PayPal is perhaps the most popular internet payment method, and enabling it on your e-commerce site will certainly improve its conversion rate.
7. Auto Populating City and State after ZIP Code
Filling in a registration form before purchasing a product can be a pain in the neck. Many visitors are dissuaded by this and they often choose to exit the website before making purchases.
One way to resolve this is to make use of an API that automatically fills in the rest of the billing information once the zip code is entered. This practice has been proven to improve the conversion rate by as much as 8%.
8. Form Analytics
While web analytics is a very common tool used by e-commerce platforms, not many see the need for a form analytics tool. Unfortunately, this is important so that you can know which parts of the checkout form give visitors issues.
9. Save For Later
Not all web visitors make purchases on their first visits; some just carry out basic research on items. If they are unable to save their research progress for later, it will be difficult for them to buy the items when they want.
So you must make certain that your e-commerce store has a “save for later” feature.
10. Exit Interruption
This is a marketing ploy that is used to stop a visitor from leaving by simply displaying an alluring offer before exit. Often times, this strategy proves to be successful by halting the visitor’s exit plan. What makes it so impressive is that it basically converts a visitor that was about leaving the site due to dissatisfaction.
11. Abandon Cart Emails
This is a system that sends the checkout form via email to a visitor who abandons the e-commerce process before it is completed. It basically helps to force the completion of the transaction even if the visitor isn’t registered yet.
12. Testing Free Shipping Thresholds
Free shipping is a marketing strategy that is often used to increase conversion rates in e-commerce sites. There are times, though, when it isn’t viable simply because sales aren’t much. When you’re faced with this challenge, you can test the free shipping threshold of your site by setting a price that maintains profit margins and boosts conversion rate.
13. Infinite scroll and Sticky Headers
Having all the products arranged on one page has been proven to be more effective than using multiple pages. The former, also known as infinite scroll, effectively improve your store’s conversion rate by a significant margin.
14. Product Badging
This is an effective way of boosting sales in your e-commerce store. Adding a catchy sales copy to each displayed product directly influences the buyers to make a swift decision on the product.
15. Showing Discounts
This practice involves the display of an old price which is usually slashed and a new lower price right below or beside it. It employs basic marketing psychology that has been proven to be quite effective in improving conversion rates.
16. Email Me My Cart on Mobile and Persistent Cart
With most internet users visiting e-commerce sites via their mobile devices, it can be a little difficult to complete e-commerce transactions. That is why you should enable your site to allow visitors be able to email shopping carts to themselves. This way they can complete transactions later on more effective devices.
17. Delivery & Ship Info at the Product Page
Including these details in the product page helps improve precision, making the checkout process swift and effortless.
18. Product Page QA
This is a page that assists visitors in making purchases by answering questions about products that are for sale. It is often run with the JavaScript language and also stores answers so that they can be used for future questions.
19. Related Searches and Auto-Suggestion for Search
Apart from the normal onsite-search tool, your site should also make use of related searches as well as auto-suggestion. This will help widen the pool of results for your visitors, increasing the chances of a purchase being made.
20. Caching
This is a necessity for all websites that wish to improve its conversion rate. Ensure that you make use of the best caching technology for your e-commerce site so that revisits are executed instantly and without any issue.
21. Prominent Pricing
Studies have shown that having the price tag of the product clear and bold is crucial for conversion. The ease of accessibility helps convince a buyer to make a purchase. For this to be effective though, the price tag must be near the call-to-action button.
22. Out Of Stock Reminders
If your products go out of stock very quickly, having a reminder in the display image could help to increase urgency and lead to an increase in the number of purchases. You can also send these reminders via emails to clients so as to urge them to make a purchase.
23. Video Analytics and Product Videos
Watching an elaborate video of your site’s operations makes you have in-depth knowledge of how it functions. With the detailed information, you can craft a strategy that will boost performance and of course, improve its conversion rate.
Product videos are also crucial tools that help convert visitors into reliable buyers.
24. Optimize Category Layouts
The category and sub-category pages of your e-commerce store are crucial for conversion. You must, hence, optimize their design and the layout to make them easily accessible.
25. Unique Copy at Product Level
As expected, the product copy that is written for each individual product is important for conversion. Ensure that the content is short, straight to the point, and more importantly, engaging.
26. International Messaging
You should make it known throughout the pages of your e-commerce site if you ship internationally to countries outside your base location. This automatically increases your customer base, which in turn boosts your conversion rate.
27. Product Targeting By Clickstream
This allows products to be targeted based on product views, clicks, and reviews from past visitors. It ensures that a product highly regarded by customers remains strategically placed to be purchased regularly, thus improving conversion and increasing overall revenue.
28. Clear Error Messaging
When error messages are only delivered after page load on a checkout form, it can be very frustrating and lead to the loss of the visitor. To combat this, ensure that the errors are displayed when the prospective buyer is still filling the form.
29. Intelligent Emails
It is now possible to control the mailing process so that it is target-specific. Instead of sending emails to all subscribed users on your e-commerce site, you can automatically select a specific group of users depending on their shopping behaviours on your platform.
30. Sales Section
Every buyer loves a bargain. This is why the sales section is usually the most visited section of any e-commerce site. Creating such a page on your site will not only increase traffic, but it also increases the number of visitors reaching the checkout page.
31. Live Chat in the Cart and Bot Messengers
Communicating with buyers during the shopping process is a sure-fire way to ensure the successful completion of the transaction. You can either make use of bot messengers or incorporate a live chat button within the cart section.
32. Progress Indicators in Checkout
Web visitors are an impatient group so you must ensure that the whole checkout process is spelt out for them with clear illustrations. This drastically reduces the chance of the process being abandoned before completion.
33. Visual Credit Card Icons within Checkout
By using a virtual layout and structure of a credit card on your e-commerce site, payment becomes very easy since the positioning of the virtual card form is almost identical to that of the original. The inclusion of the icons is also necessary to make it look realistic.
34. Guest Checkout
Many buyers don’t see the need to register for an account before making a purchase. If you do this to your visitors, it will result in a low conversion rate. It is advisable for you to enable guest checkout so as to improve your site’s conversion.
35. Maximize Thank You Page
Make great use of your site’s “thank you” page by incorporating product deals, coupon codes and bargain offers that are likely to lead to a purchase.
36. Facebook Remarketing (Contextual Ads)
Making use of contextual ads mostly via the Facebook platform has been proven to be highly effective in not only drawing traffic to a site but also converting traffic. Compared to other digital marketing mediums, this is both effective and cheap.
37. Security Assurance
A lot of web visitors refuse to continue to the checkout pages of e-commerce sites because they are scared of losing valuable credit card information to untrustworthy sites. To ease the minds of visitors and ensure that they make purchases, upgrade the URL of your site to “https” and make use of payment gateways that are 100% safe.
38. Mega Menus
The menus of your site are quite crucial to your marketing goal. You must ensure that you maximize their use by inserting as much valuable content that can be accommodated.
39. Timer Countdowns
This simple psychology trick creates a sense of urgency in a buyer, spurring the individual to make a purchase before time runs out. You must be careful when using this technique though as it can be construed as authoritative when it is done excessively.
40. Gift Guides and Lists
Gift guides and editorial lists are publishing tools that are used to create awareness about a product and rouse interest in visitors. Both of these tools have been proven to be quite effective in increasing traffic and boosting conversion.
Other part of the equation
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