Want to Double Your Conversions? Check Out These E-commerce Tips
In order to generate more revenue for your store, you need to optimize your conversion rate. Marketing is an excellent investment and can drive people to your website, but what if no one is actually buying anything? All that time, money, and effort is then just going to waste!
If you're having some trouble with trying to increase your e-commerce conversion rate, read on! In this article, we'll be going over some hacks that can help you double your conversions before you know it.
Keep to the 80/20 Rule
If you've never heard of the 80/20 rule, it states that 80% of your results stem from 20% of your efforts. When optimizing your store for conversions, you'll want to focus on the traffic that actually converts.
MonesterInsights has an e-commerce addon that allows you to easily find your top conversion sources - the websites that are generating the most revenue for your store. Using this addon, you can check out the sites that send you the most customers and figure out how to get even more visitors from these sources. This can bring about great opportunities for promotional partnerships, guest posting, and advertising.
Show Product Reviews
Adding product ratings and reviews by other customers is one of the best ways to improve your conversion rates - in fact, it can increase them by 270%!
By including authentic product reviews and ratings from your customers, you're providing a sense of trust and reassurance to new customers that they are making the right decision in buying from you. There are several different plugins out there that can add product reviews to your e-commerce store, such as WP Product Review.
With the WP Product Review plugin, you can add pros and cons, images, and star ratings to any post, as well as collect user-submitted reviews and ratings and display them in a widget.
Display Popular Products with Full-Screen Popups
Show your audience your top-selling products with a full-screen welcome mat. These popups slide over and take up the entire screen on the user's device, hiding other parts of your store until the user either scrolls down the page, opts out, or clicks on it. Here is an example of Slumberkins' full-screen welcome mat:
These full-screen popups grab your visitors' attention, and by showing your best products or offers, you can narrow down the number of products they might have an interest in. Removing the clutter of other products for your visitors increases your chances of doubling your conversions.
Add Recent Sale Notifications to Your Website
Have you ever been to a website, and as you were scrolling through the products, a small popup announcing that someone just bought a particular item showed up at the bottom of the screen? These notifications can easily and instantly increase conversions on your store.
Recent sale notifications are notifications that automatically show up on your website and allow visitors to see a product another user purchased just a few minutes ago. These popups are great for creating a sense of urgency since they use the FOMO principle. FOMO is "fear of missing out," and when people feel this way, they're more likely to take action right away.
TrustPulse offers an easy way to add recent sale notifications. This program is free to get started, and it can be used on any type of e-commerce website, including Shopify and WooCommerce. TrustPulse uses real-time tracking to display actions that your customers can take, such as buying a product, signing up for newsletters, and more.
Create Urgency with Countdown Timers
Another fast and easy way to boost your conversions is by displaying a limited-time offer with a countdown timer. Countdown timers are another great way to create a sense of urgency and scarcity among your visitors, thus boosting your conversion rate.
Consider adding a timer for a flash sale that will be ending soon or when stock is about to run out. Below is an example of Shop Priceless' countdown timer for their Black Friday sale.
Use Incentives to Convert Customers
A lot of your visitors might be interested in some of your products but just can't quite make up their mind if they want to take the leap yet. Convert these interested visitors into customers with a little extra push in the way of a discount incentive.
You can offer exclusive discount codes to returning visitors, new visitors, or people who have viewed a certain number of pages on your website. Here is an example from Red Dress Boutique:
Use a Spin-the-Wheel Popup
Another way you can increase your conversions is by adding a spin-the-wheel popup on your store. This method works because it uses the principle of gamification - when a customer spins the wheel and wins a prize, their brain is filled with a rush of dopamine, which is a hormone that makes them feel great. Here is an example of Bag Nation's spin-the-wheel popup:
Offer prizes such as free shipping, discounts, and other deals on your spinning wheel. All the customer needs to do is enter their email and spin the wheel to see what they get!
Run Flash Sales for the Holidays and Special Events
Flash sales can also be used to increase your e-commerce conversions, and these sales can be advertised on your website and to your email list.
Email is a powerful channel that you can use to attract more customers to your store. Emails are especially useful during the holiday season and major events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With email, you can instantly inform your subscribers about promotional deals and sales.
For some more details, check out our post on creating email newsletters.
Use Exit-intent Popups
On average, about 70% of visitors will leave your website and won't return. But what if you could get their attention right before the exit out, and offer them a great deal?
With exit-intent popups, you can offer great incentives such as discounts and free shipping, to the visitors who are about to leave without making a purchase.
You can also add these exit-intent popups on your checkout page to reduce cart abandonment. If visitors have items in their cart but are about to leave the site without completing their purchase, you can have a popup appear to remind them about those items.
Convert Abandoned Customers with Retargeting Ads
Another great way to convert customers that leave your site or abandon their carts is by retargeting them with Facebook ads. Retargeting markets your products to someone who has visited your site before and helps to bring them back and convert them into customers.
You can show these people the products they were exploring on your website or the things they added to their carts but never purchased.
Update Your Product Descriptions
You'll want to provide as much detail as possible in your product descriptions. People want to know exactly what you're offering so they can determine whether or not it meets their needs before feeling comfortable about buying it.
Include basic product details such as weight, color, size, etc. But also include the story behind the product and how it can improve the lives of your customers. You can also include a before and after picture so they can envision the results they might get from using the product.
Add Product Images and Videos
Product images play a significant role in e-commerce conversions. Without pictures, your customers are just taking a blind leap of faith. Make it easy for your visitors to decide to purchase your products by adding some more high-quality images to your products.
You can also use video demonstrations to show how a product works and explain it's key features and uses.
Use Live Chat to Guide Users through the Checkout Process
One way you can simplify your checkout process is by adding a live chat feature. There are lots of benefits to having live chat on your website - you can provide answers to your customers' questions, provide them with more product information, and guide them through the checkout process.
When customers have the option to talk to a real person while they shop, they're more likely to make a purchase. Live Chat is pretty easy to set up, and there are several different live chat plugins you can use for your store, such as LiveChat.
LiveChat offers a clean interface and allows you to change its design to match your store. Using this plugin, you can communicate with your customers using any device. LiveChat offers a free plugin if you are using WordPress.
Split Test You Product Pages
One of the big parts of conversion optimization is testing your product pages to see which is working better. You can boost your conversions by finding the right image, copy, CTA, and page layout that works best.
You can use Google Optimize to test your product pages. Google Optimize is a free tool by Google that lets you conduct experiments on your website. Once you've added it to your e-commerce site, you can test any changes made on your website to see if they help boost conversions.
Some changes you could test out on your website include:
- Offer free shipping
- Move buttons to a more prominent area
- Change the colors of your "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons
- Use different product image sizes
Make Your Call-to-Action Copies Stand Out
CTAs play a significant role in increasing your conversions, and one way to make your CTAs stand out is by communicating their value to your visitors.
On a typical e-commerce store, you'll see phrases like "Buy Now," "Submit," and "Order." But you can go one step further and improve your CTA by adding an incentive. Here are some tips on writing a compelling call to action:
- Create a sense of urgency and scarcity
- Focus on value
- Use action words
- Get personal
- Create a sense of curiosity and anticipation
- Show benefits and social proof
- Invite readers inside
- Minimize risk
- Avoid friction words
Even just making subtle changes can boost your conversions almost instantly. Check out our post on creating enticing CTAs for some more tips, and take a look at the 8 types of CTAs your website needs.
Provide Multiple Payment Options
One of the biggest problems some e-commerce store owners deal with is having too few payment options. Because people can't find their preferred payment option, they often abandon their carts, thus reducing the conversion rate of the website.
When you provide multiple payment options, you're reducing the number of barriers to closing a deal. The best way to add these payment options is by using an e-commerce platform, such as WooCommerce. This platform allows you to accept payments through Stripe, PayPal, debit card, and credit card, among others.
Streamline Your Checkout Form
The final stage of closing a sale on your online store is the checkout process. However, customers are most likely to abandon their carts and leave without finishing their purchase if the checkout form is too complicated or lengthy.
A simple way to overcome this is by reducing the number of fields in your checkout form. You want to make it so your customers have to put in as little information as possible to buy your products.
Offer Guest Checkout
Another quick way to increase your conversions is to offer guest checkout to your customers. A lot of people don't like being forced to create an account before checkout, which leads to higher rates of cart abandonment.
However, to combat this, you can add a guest checkout option using WooCommerce. If you're using WooCommerce, go into Settings, which can be found in the dashboard. Under Account & Privacy, turn on the option to allow customers to place orders without an account.
Guest checkouts are great because they save the visitor some time and allow them to complete their purchase more quickly.
Optimize Your E-commerce Website for Mobile
Over 5 billion people own mobile devices and are using them on a daily basis. If your website isn't optimized for mobile devices, you'll have a harder time converting customers. People tend to prefer using their phones over their desktops when visiting websites, but oftentimes don't buy through their mobile devices because many online stores aren't mobile responsive.
To improve your conversions, optimize your website with a responsive WordPress theme that will look great on every screen size.
Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly
Website loading speed is critical and is another key to increasing your conversion rate. If your website takes too long to load, you're losing customers.
One way you can make your website load quicker is by compressing all of your product images. You can do this with tools like Tinypng, which compresses the size of your images without lowering the quality.
Show People You Are Trustworthy with Safety Badges
People prefer websites that are safe and secure when shopping online. Increase your conversions by making sure your website is trustworthy. One simple way to do this is by adding security badges. You can add security seals such as McAfee, Verisign, and Norton on product pages, your footer, homepage, and checkout pages.
Add Product Tags
When aiming to increase your conversions, you should make sure your website is easy to navigate through. Online stores can sometimes be disorganized, and customers find it hard to look for the products they want.
One easy way to improve navigation is by adding product tags. Not only do these tags help increase conversions, but they also give your store an SEO boost.
An example of product tags for a store that sells dresses might be: formal, maxi, midi, mini, casual, wedding, prom, or bridesmaid.
Conclusion
We hope you have found these tips helpful in increasing the conversion rate for your e-commerce store! Don't forget to check out some of our other blogs for some more e-commerce tips and guides!
Let's bring the spotlight to your business today.
From brainstorming to implementation, AnoLogix has successfully designed, created, developed and implemented websites for people and businesses since 2000.
With AnoLogix your business can skyrocket. Do you want to learn how we can help?
or call us for a FREE consultation at (904) 807-8961