It doesn’t matter what you sell, clothes, electronics, or toys. All eCommerce sellers face the issue of driving more traffic to their site. Then, converting more of those visitors into buyers.
That’s how you grow your eCommerce site into the booming business you’ve been striving for.
As you face challenges of growing your sales, here’s 5 quick eCommerce conversion optimization tips to try to boost your conversion rates.
Optimizing eCommerce Conversion Rate Can Grow Sales
You constantly watch the traffic to your site. You seem to have plenty of people who stop by and browse your products. The problem is that all leave empty handed.
By not optimizing your eCommerce site for conversion, you’re leaving money on the table.
Small changes to your eCommerce site experience can lead to a lift in conversion rate. This lift can result in hundreds, even thousands of more dollars a week for your business.
Growing your business means selling more. To sell more, you have to up the experience for your browsing buyers.
These 5 quick tips about eCommerce conversion optimization could be all you need to achieve the sales growth you want.
5 Quick eCommerce Conversion Optimization Tips
There’s many different ways to test and experiment with how to increase your conversion rate on your eCommerce site. This list isn’t expansive. Instead, it focuses on five major areas that are quick, sure ways to impact your conversion rate. These are the areas that you need to know about first:
1. Make Site Responsive
Mobile commerce is now 30% of all U.S. eCommerce. By 2018, U.S. mobile retail revenues are expected to amount to 204.6 billion U.S. dollars.
Mobile shoppers make up a significant chunk of your eCommerce visitors. It’s not something you can ignore any longer.
If you haven’t made your site responsive for mobile devices, now is the time do so. When your site doesn’t render for a mobile user, you can be sure those visitors will be frustrated and leave.
It’s also important to keep up with your competition. 32% of retailers stated that “advancing a mobile commerce strategy” was one of their top 10 major strategies for 2015-2016, according to the 25th Annual Retail Technology Study.
eCommerce sellers who want to stay ahead are placing an importance on mobile shopping. To increase your conversion rate, make your site responsive to better serve your mobile shoppers.
2. Improve Product Search Capabilities
When a visitor lands on your site, they need help to navigate through all your products. Your top menu or a drop down left side filter usually serves as your main navigator.
When’s the last time you looked at your product filters?
Check your filters to see how well your products are presented and organized. It should be easy for shoppers to find, navigate, and reach the products they are looking for. Test and experiment with different filter layouts and organization.
Amazon is a great company to look at how they filter products. With millions of products for customers to search through, their filter navigation makes it easy for customers to pinpoint the exact product they’re looking for.
The easier it is for a customer to find a product, the easier it is for them to purchase it. If a customer can’t find the item they’re looking for you, you’ve lost a sale.
3. Improve Product Content
30% of US online adults cite that they would consider buying from an online retailer they had never previously purchased from, if the retailer offered detailed product information.
Once your customer finds your product, you should follow-up with a detailed description of the product. Product descriptions ensure visitors that they’re buying the exact product they need.
It’s tricky to buy online. You can’t try on the product, touch it, or feel it. You can’t read the packaging to inform yourself about the product.
Customers rely on your product information to give them all the information they need.
A quick way to improve your eCommerce conversion rate is to improve your product information. Update descriptions and images to be more informative, accurate, and consistent across your site. High quality listings can lead to more sales.
Quality product information relies on how well you manage your product catalog. Read why all eCommerce merchants need product catalog management. Proper management will lead to the detailed product information your customers are searching for.
4. Combat Shopping Cart Abandonment – Improve Checkout Process
Shopping cart abandonment plagues all eCommerce sellers. But, are you doing anything about it?
There’s many factors that play into shopping cart abandonment. It could be product descriptions, site navigation, slow load times for pages, buyer intent, etc. (See some of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment.)
One of the major areas you can focus on today though is improving your checkout process. This is a critical point for when buyers complete a purchase or decide to leave your site.
A lengthy, slow, and confusing checkout process is at risk for lower conversion rates. Here’s a few ways to optimize your checkout process via Hubspot:
- Use clear, easy-to-read CTAs to guide visitors to next step
- Show progress bar to show buyers where they are in the process
- Show images of products in carts
- Allow customers to edit items in cart
- Allow customers to “go back to shopping” from cart
- Show cross-selling product suggestions
- Add upselling suggestions
- Provide customer service contact information
- Allow cart saving options
- Provide various payment options
- Make security seals visible
These ideas could help increase your number of conversions, while lowering your shopping cart abandonment.
5. Leverage Customer Reviews
61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase.
That stat alone should be enough evidence of how important customer reviews are to conversions.
Shoppers see customer reviews as a trustworthy source for your products. It’s important to display them for your products as it gives your customer more insight into what they’re buying.
Do you have customer reviews on your site? If you don’t, you should consider incorporating them into your site.
After a customer makes a purchase, a simple follow-up email can ask for customers to review a product. Some eCommerce sites even offer reward points to customers who leave reviews.
Reviews are not only beneficial to your customers, but also to you as the seller. Reviews provide customer feedback on how your business is doing and the quality of your products. You can use both positive and negative reviews as key insight into how to improve your business.
Don’t be afraid to start a dialogue with your customers.
What to Do Next
What are you waiting for? Start testing and experimenting with these eCommerce conversion optimization tips right away! See how a few small changes can make a big impact on your sales growth.
If you’re looking to keep learning about how to improve your eCommerce site, check out these other articles by Multichannel Insights, what you’re reading right now.
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