Here's the story: your business is getting many visitors, better than you ever expected. The high you feel when seeing that massive number in your analytics is strong enough to get you excited for the rest of the workweek. Then, you look at your sales - the number is the same. Your visitors aren't completing purchases - what you want them to do. The high did not last long.
If this story sounds familiar, you probably have a conversion rate optimization problem, like many others in the e-commerce industry. In simplest terms, your conversion rate is how many of your store visitors complete the action you want them to, which is probably a purchase.
It can be frustrating, especially if you're confident in your product, have a strong marketing strategy in action, and everyone who does purchase your product raves about how great it is. So, where's the problem?
Conversion Rate Optimization for e-commerce is the process of increasing the number of people who complete the desired action on your website. As we mentioned above, the most common desired action is a purchase, but desired actions could be other things too: signing up for a service, social media interaction, subscribing to a newsletter, booking a demo, or clicking on a link.
In this blog post, we'll be digging deeper into CRO and some of the best practices to help you get started on optimizing your website. We also added a free Conversion Rate Checklist Master Sheet including 130+ tips to make the process less overwhelming and much more manageable.
Super easy. Take your total number of conversions (the desired action you decide) and divide that by the total number of visitors. That's your conversion rate that we'll be working on improving together.
Generally, average conversion rates in the e-commerce industry range between 1% - 4% - but take this information with a grain of salt. Conversion rates vary among industries and are everchanging. We recommend you research, check out the average conversion rate in your industry, and then focus on your numbers alone. It'll probably do more good to your business AND your customers if you're more focused on continuously improving the user experience rather than solely improving a number.
Everywhere!
There's no quick hack to boost your conversion rate instantly. It's an ongoing practice on every page on your site to optimize the experience for your customers. We know how overwhelming that sounds, so we broke it down to make it easier:
The best way to turn visitors into customers is to optimize their experience. It's crucial to ensure that users find what they're looking for on your site and that they're intrigued enough to stay even longer and possibly complete even more desired actions. A few things to look out for when understanding your site's user experience are:
Your customer wants to understand what they're buying - or what you want them to do. The primary way you're communicating with your customers is through copy. That's why avoiding text that's too long, complicated, or hard to understand is essential. You also want to ensure the most important texts (like CTAs) are effectively highlighted. A potential customer shouldn't have to look around to know where to click.
This is where the decision is made. You want to make sure that your product page has everything the customer needs to know, and you want to convince them why it's the right product for them. The experience here should be as seamless, effortless, and intuitive as possible. You're not forcing the customer to make a purchase, you're just leading the way. Some factors to look out for on your product page are:
If the product page is where the decision is made, the checkout page is where the decision is final - yay! However, some practices can make or break the decision - and we want to make sure we're on the right side of them.
Imagine this: you find the pair of sneakers you've been dreaming about for the past few months. They're in the perfect size, the right color, and on sale. Amazing!
But when you go to the checkout page - there's an extra $50 for shipping. If you're anything like me, you're out.
They may seem insignificant, but making sure the information is consistent from the product page all the way to the confirmation page is essential. You don't want your customer to feel like they're being taken advantage of.
Other practices to optimize your checkout page include:
There are many ways to improve your CRO, but in the end, it's all about trying out everything and finding out what's best for your customers and business. CRO can take time and effort, but we promise it's worth it in the end. The tips above are just the tip of the iceberg but are a great way to start. We know optimizing a website for conversion can be overwhelming, which is why we compiled this Conversion Rate Checklist Mastersheet to help you out. In this checklist, you'll be able to:
