How to Increase E-Commerce Conversion Rate

Chances are, the conversion rate of your e-commerce store is far from its possible maximum. To fix this problem, you have to find out why your visitors aren’t doing the things you want them to do. This information will help you to create effective methods for fixing the problem. The entire process of finding out and fixing is called Conversion Rate Optimization. The core principle of Conversion Rate Optimization is to generate more sales on your e-commerce store without bringing in additional traffic. This makes your online business more effective, and as a result, profitable.

Inchoo proposes 5 tips to increase a homepage conversion rate. First of all, create 2 or 3 buyer personas. A buyer persona is a list of everything you know about your typical customer. The description consists of buyer name, age, photo, buying habits, and many other features. With correct descriptions of your typical customers you will show them what to expect from your e-commerce store. Here you can read more about buyer personas.

Make your store as simple as possible, but don’t get carried away with the simplification. People don’t like irrelevant content, so try to declutter your store. Also, you should remember, that some features can be useless, so don’t use them just because you can.

Pay more attention to the most important content. Place it above the fold – the area of every website, which is visible without scrolling.

Use CTA (Call-To-Action) buttons. Combined with a great offer, they can work as the most important optimizers of the conversion rate for your e-commerce store. Choose the correct placement, color, size and text.

Use A/B testing for different elements of your homepage. For example, for Call-To-Action buttons. This will help you to make them more effective.

You should also optimize a landing page of your e-commerce store for the right audience. In Google Analytics, you can not only see the ratio of new returning visitors, you can even get the information about the conversion rate of your store. In a situation where returning visitors buy more than new visitors, you should invest into acquiring new customers.

In general, new and returning visitors have different requirements for a landing page. So you should use different landing pages for both categories. In order to do this you should go to your Google Analytics account and navigate to Content > Site Content > Landing Pages. Use the Advanced Segments option to choose only returning visitors. Or perform the same actions for new visitors. As a result, both categories will land on different parts of your online store. Optimize these parts for the specific needs of your new and returning visitors, and you will get better conversion rates.

In its turn, Verve Search tells about 21 secrets to improve the conversion rate of every e-commerce store. Some of them are general advices which can be applied to any other sector of e-commerce business. But there are also useful tips and tricks.

Online users decide whether to buy your product or not within just 7 seconds, so make your unique value and unique campaign propositions simple and effective. You should also use relevant and persuasive offers, like “Free Shipping”. Reinforce offers across the website, but leave the checkout page as clean as possible. Use imagery and colours as visual clues for your customers. Try to impress your new visitors, and to optimize your store for their different types. Use A/B testing.

Listen to your customers and satisfy their propositions. Add a rating system to your store. Turn your visitors into participants of conversion rate optimisation: use their reviews, comments and social network activities. Use different persuasive statements: tell your customers that goods are on sale for a limited time, for example. Use the “thank you” page and don’t forget, that a brand design and colors should be everywhere on your e-commerce store.

Try not to delay your responses to customers. Ensure that all your emails have correct texts, attractive design, and are readable without downloading images. You should also make the checkout as short as possible, use customer referral programs, and provide your visitors with a sense of security.

All these advices will help you to get a higher conversion rates. But there are also other useful solutions. Search Engine Journal considers this question from the perspective of SEO. According to the publication, you can increase the conversion rate of your e-commerce store by optimizing your product pages’ content, navigation and shopping funnel; using re-targeting; and targeting long tail product intrinsic keywords.

As you can see, there are dozens of helpful advices aimed at Conversion Rate Optimization. Use them wisely and get better conversion rates for your online business.