How To Increase Conversion Rates On Your e-Commerce Store
As an e-commerce store owner, I’m sure you know how low conversion rates are, yep they’re painfully low and you really need some tips to increase conversion rates.
You could say they couldn’t get much lower.
Unfortunately, you’d be wrong, because if you’re not taking the steps required to convert visitors into customers, they will bounce off into the sunset.
But if you can stop sales rates from dropping, it stands to reason that you can also increase them!
The following five tips are what you should be looking at if you need to increase your conversion rates.
Improve Your Customer’s User Experience
A bad UX (user experience) is the main reason audiences bounce within the first 7 seconds of landing on your website.
They land, they look, and they leave!
No wonder conversion rates are so low.
So, what can you do to grab your visitor’s attention, get them to look at your products, and turn them into paying customers?
- Start with a fast loading website: You have 2 seconds loading time maximum (Google is pushing for 1) before visitors click back. If your site is slow, it could be due to your hosting package, incorrect image formats, or just a lousy theme, etc.
- Next, logical navigation: Your site simply has to make sense. The category lists should be well thought out, and products should be where customers would expect to find them. Think about it; they’re not going to spend any time searching for products or figuring out your website.
An excellent way of knowing you’ve laid your site out correctly is to get people to use it and provide feedback. They’ll soon tell you if it isn’t offering a positive UX.
Increase Conversion Rates: Create A Human Connection
By providing human interaction upon your website, you are instantly improving the possibility of increasing your conversion rates.
Live chat works for a couple of reasons:
- If you have a customer that`s looking for a product or service, but they are having navigation or product information problems, live chat offers them an immediate solution. And as 10% of visitors leave every second after arriving, speed is of the essence.
- That human touch! Don’t underestimate the advantages of your site having a real human available for customer interaction. By being there for them and answering their question with a direct reply and not just a generic one, you stand a far better chance of converting a sale.
Having a direct line of communication also benefits you by building customer relationships, as they will remember how you helped them (unlike an FAQs page).
And live chat can be a source of relevant information as to how your website is functioning, and you will hear about it in real-time!
But be sure that you are using the best live chat software solution for your e-commerce store because if it isn’t working as it should, or customers aren’t getting an immediate reply, this can harm your store’s reputation.
Show Your Customers How Good Your Products Are
One of the critical elements of Amazon’s success is its use of customer-based reviews on everything it sells.
Statistics show that when an e-commerce store showcases reviews using companies such as “Trust Pilot” on their platform, sales can increase by over 20%.
And this makes sense as 72% of people won’t buy a product unless it has a review!
Google accounts for 57.5% of all online reviews.
That’s great if people are researching your business before landing on your website, but to use reviews effectively, you have to have them where your customers will see them when shopping.
You can do this by adding a trust pilot widget to your platform and listing reviews with customer’s names and photos.
Also, provide your customers with the means of leaving reviews, as the more you have, the more trustworthy you will become.
Reduce Or Remove Shipping Costs Where Possible
Check out cart abandonments account for a high percentage of customer bounce rates, and usually, shipping fees are a cause of it.
You can help avoid this in the following ways:
- Transparency: Don’t shock your customers with hidden fees that they only discover when they have their credit card in hand
- Low or reduced distance-based shipping costs: By providing customers with precise data showing that you’re actively trying to reduce fees based on location, they will be more likely to accept your costs as being the best value available.
- Free shipping on specific cart prices and categories: Offering free shipping based on cart price can encourage customers to increase their purchase total to avail of free shipping.
And by offering free shipping promotions on specific product categories, you can encourage your customers to buy based on the perceived savings.
Send Abandoned Shopping Cart Reminders
If your customer has abandoned their shopping cart, and almost 70% do! You still have a chance of securing the sale by sending shopping cart reminders.
The customer is now already familiar with your store, they found it, and your hard work brought them to check out, so it stands to reason that convincing them to see the sale through is now possible.
A proven strategy that can result in an 8% to 20% recovery in sales is to use follow up emails.
Do this by sending an email within 30 minutes of the customer abandoning their cart, follow it up 24 hours later, and if the customer still hasn’t taken action, again in five days.
You don’t want to spam your customers or adopt an aggressive style sales tactic; this will drive them away.
Instead, send a polite reminder containing an image of the product, informing them that it’s still available, and if needed, offer free shipping or a discount on a future purchase.
