5 Most Efficient Conversion Techniques for eCommerce Websites

You’ve created an appealing eCommerce website and added some outstanding products. You’ve also optimized your website and started generating considerable traffic to your store. But, what is the percentage of your visitors making an actual purchase?

Growing the traffic to your eCommerce site is the foundation of running a successful online business. Converting your site visitors into customers is one of the biggest concerns for eCommerce business owners.

Your conversion rate gauges the success of your e-commerce business. Today, we’ll look at the most successful eCommerce conversion rate optimization tips and how you can implement them to bring out more customers from your traffic.

What is the conversion rate in e-commerce?

An eCommerce conversion rate is the number of your website visitors who made a purchase compared to the total number of visitors.

However, any activity visitors perform on your website that leads them to make a purchase can be called a conversion. A typical conversion for an eCommerce website may include:

•  An online purchase.
• Adding products to a cart.
• Email signup.
• Social media shares.
• Adding products to a wishlist.

Your company may also add any KPI that you consider valuable to be a conversion indicator. Ultimately, e-commerce conversion is the percentage of visitors who make an actual purchase.

Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (eCRO) is the practice of enhancing the rate at which your visitors take action (convert) by adjusting elements of your eCommerce website. You can optimize your landing pages, category pages, and every customer touchpoint and improve the customers’ shopping experience.

Shopify, an eCommerce website we can benchmark, indicates that a good conversion rate should be around 2.5-3%. But, Shopify reports that the average eCommerce rate for the stores on the platform is 1.4%. How can you get your eCommerce website to the 3% conversion range?

Let’s look at some techniques you use to increase the conversion rate of your eCommerce website.

Make the User Experience as Satisfying as Possible

Customers will spend more when they get a good customer experience. In fact, 86% of buyers will pay more for a great customer experience. Research shows that 49% of buyers have made an impulse purchase after getting a personalized experience.

As you build your eCommerce website, remember web design and performance determine your customer experience. How can you optimize your online store for the best customer experience?

• Make your website easy to navigate– Display all your product categories in parent categories and sub-categories that are easy to navigate. You can use a keyword tool to develop relevant searchable terms and enable product filtering by your customers.
• Website design– A look at the most successful eCommerce sites, and you’ll notice clean and simple web designs with a catchy and memorable logo design. Use an instantly recognizable color and background combination, and have a noticeable search bar and a conventional navigation design.
• Usability testing -Testing a website’s usability means evaluating how simple it is for users to interact with it. The goal is to identify any areas that can be improved to enhance the user experience. One of the benefits of usability testing is that it can show you any locations where users are having trouble using your website. This can range from not being able to find what they are seeking for to not being able to comprehend how to use a specific feature. You can then make improvements to enhance the usability of your site by identifying these problem areas. The possibility to increase your conversion rate is another advantage of usability testing. This is because they are more likely to make a purchase or complete the action you want them to if they can easily use your website.
• Boost your page loading speed– if your website takes too long to load, your traffic will bounce off at different stages of their buying process. Research by Potent shows that the best eCommerce conversion rates occur when the page load time is between 0-2%.
• Use high-quality visuals- Your images and videos should be well lit, super detailed, and show a 360° view of the product. Additionally, ensure the photos are easy to zoom in and can be viewed from all screen sizes at the original quality.
• Improve your copy- Well-detailed product descriptions give more information than just your product. Use your website copy to arouse curiosity and answer all customer questions even before they raise them. 
• Be accessible- Being easy to reach by potential customers is highly important in establishing confidence. Try to diversify your communication channels, enabling direct messaging with the support, website chatbots, calls and text messages. Over the time, investing in a  unified communication tools might be beneficial. 

Optimize for Mobile Devices

Mobile commerce has risen to become dominant. Today, 82% of all internet users in the US have used a mobile device to shop. Also, mobile-friendly eCommerce sites are 67% more likely to drive conversions than websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.

The goal of making a website mobile-friendly goes beyond having buttons and images that fit a smaller screen. Consider improving your mobile UX by taking a mobile-first approach. This way, your design choice will factor in the restrictions that come with smaller screens, weak browsers, and slower bandwidth.

Besides making your website responsive, simplify your navigation and position your CTAs clearly. You can also avoid flash and pop-ups to ensure the user experience on mobile is not interrupted.

Simplify the Checkout Process

The checkout process has to be one of the most crucial and delicate steps within the customer’s journey. A study on shopping cart abandonment shows that 21% of shoppers abandoned their carts because the checkout process was complicated or took too long.

Think about that loss for a second. You have people who want to buy your product but only change their minds because of a checkout inconvenience.

Consider reducing the steps in your checkout process and reducing the chance of the visitors changing their minds. If possible, condense the whole process to a page or screen. Just collect the information that is necessary to process the sale.

Tip: Add a progress bar to show the steps required to finalize the purchase. Also, enable the checkout page to autofill the customer details and reduce time.

Additionally, making the shopping cart visible on all pages is a great conversion driver. Here is a simplified Udemy checkout.

Even though you may have the simplest checkout, you will always have to cope with abandoned carts. Shopify for instance, enables platform users to set up an automated abandoned cart email to the users who initiated but haven’t completed their checkout. 

Create Urgency and FOMO to Get Visitors Hooked

Time is running out. Hesitant customers can turn into buyers when you create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). You can introduce limited-time discount coupons and promotions that create a sense of urgency and prompt action.

You can also induce FOMO by displaying the limited number of products left in stock. Use raving customer reviews to highlight the exclusivity of your products and create a sense of urgency. Below is an example of Urgency from Udemy courses.

Place Trust Signals to Show your eCommerce Store is Safe.

A Statista report indicates that 36% of cart abandonment was caused by “concerns about payment security.”

It would be best if you built trust quickly for your visitors to be willing to enter their credit card details on your website. Customers must be assured that your eCommerce business is legitimate and meeting industry-standard security measures.

Enhancing your on-site trust and credibility is a basis for conversion rate optimization. Some red flags that your customers may spot easily include:

• No “about us” page.
• No clearly displayed contact details (phone, email, or physical location).
• No prices (or suspicious pricing)
• No documentation of terms, returns, shipping guidelines, and warranties.
• Broken links and spammy URLs.

Your potential clients also look for trust symbols (green flags) that show your website is trustworthy. Here are some trust symbols you can use to show your eCommerce site is safe:

•  Include positive reviews or a list of testimonials from satisfied custome
• Install SSL at checkout and throughout the site.
•  Show small images of multiple payment options, such as PayPal and credit cards. This is a visual signal that your payment options are trustworthy.
• Open an account with GeoTrust or McAfee and display their badge or any other security badge you have on your eCommerce website.

Suggested reading: Alibaba Payment

With trust signals, just add enough to help your audience but don’t overdo it to rouse suspicion. You may even add a few negative reviews. As shown above, Chewy, a leading eCommerce store for pet food still displays its trust signals.

One More Thing!

Increasing your conversion rate is not a one-off process. You need to continually test every strategy you implement and know what is working.

To find out what is working, decide on the metrics you want to highlight. These may include cart abandonment rate, traffic, account creation percentages, etc. Frequent testing enables you to analyze data and introduce other optimization solutions in good time to improve your bottom line.

To calculate your eCommerce conversion rate, divide the number of conversions for a certain period by the no of web visitors for the same period. Multiply by 100 to get the percentage.