When it comes to tracking metrics for your ecommerce business, conversion rate is an important number to monitor. While traffic lets you know that potential customers are able to find your website, your revenue won’t reflect those numbers if customers aren’t actually buying anything. In ecommerce, a conversion is typically represented by a purchase—simply put, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who complete a transaction and become paying customers.
If you’re putting in the energy to , the conversion rate will let you know if your efforts are effective or if you’re just spinning your wheels. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) for e-commerce involves taking strategic measures to tweak various aspects of your website in order to increase the number of paying visitors to your website. If you’re wondering how to increase your e-commerce conversion rate (CR), we’ll cover a few of the most important points to consider, including:
- What is a good conversion rate?
- What drives conversions?
- What measures can you take to boost your conversion rate?
When you approach CRO for e-commerce armed with the right tips and strategies, you’ll be able to make adjustments to your website that effectively convert customers and increase your sales and revenue.
Conversion Rates: Optimal vs. Average
Across all ecommerce industries, the . Some industries see predictably higher conversion rates (health and wellness stays between 3-4%) while some stay lower ( hovers around 1%). Your CRO for e-commerce goals and strategies should reflect your specific industry as well as your current conversion rate. If your numbers sit well below the average for your industry, you’ll want to pinpoint any basic issues that may be dissuading customers from making a purchase. If your CR is already average, or even above average, there is still plenty of room to increase your ecommerce conversion rate—businesses in the top tier see numbers as high as 10-15%!
Understanding the Consumer
Wherever your goals begin, leveraging CRO for e-commerce starts with a deep understanding of your specific target customers. After all, if you don’t know what your customer needs, how will you know how to design and populate your online shop? While your audience will be highly unique to your industry and specific ecommerce niche, there are a few basic optimizations that will help move your customers through the sales funnel.
Explain the Product
It may seem overly basic, but customers won’t feel safe making a purchase if they can’t fully envision how the product will fit into and improve their life. If you’ve prioritized quantity over quality of product listings, it could be negatively impacting CRO for your ecommerce business. The downside of online shopping is that customers can’t see and feel a product for themselves. Important selling points like color, durability, size, and texture are much harder to experience through a screen. Optimizing your product descriptions to offset these disadvantages is a simple way to increase your ecommerce conversion rate. Make sure that you’re including high-quality photographs that represent multiple angles of your product. Even better, incorporate short videos that dive into the unique selling points of your product or give a more comprehensive idea of how the product will enhance the customer’s life.
Make It Easy to Buy
An important aspect of targeting CRO for ecommerce involves clearing the sales funnel of any obstructions that could get in the way of a customer making a purchase. The following roadblocks are common ecommerce issues that might prevent a customer from converting—consider how implementing some of the corresponding solutions could help increase the ecommerce conversion rate for your website.
The Price is too high:
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- Promote an installment payment plan option.
- Offer a discount for engagement, like leaving a review, signing up for the newsletter, or following on social media.
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The customer is unsure of certain product details like sizing or compatibility:
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- Offer free/easy returns.
- Incorporate sizing/compatibility guidelines.
- Make customer service easy and instantaneous to access with either a Live Chat or Chatbot option.
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The customer thinks they saw a similar product elsewhere for a better price:
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- Include and feature customer reviews—positive reviews add clout and can increase the perceived value of your product.
- If a price match guarantee isn’t a good fit for your industry, consider the more vague “satisfaction guarantee.”
- Unexpected shipping prices can be a customer stumbling block in the final stretch of the sales funnel. If you can’t offer free shipping, consider offering a flat rate shipping price or free shipping promotions (with membership, newsletter signup, etc).
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Carefully listen to your customer base. They’re likely already communicating the stumbling blocks that are specific to your business. Make sure that your existing customers feel heard, and work to target their complaints and concerns as you address CRO for your ecommerce business.
Close the Deal
Regardless of your industry, an increase in ecommerce conversion rate means more sales and more revenue for your business. Focusing on CRO for your ecommerce business can help turn window shoppers into paying (and repeat!) customers. However, many of the most important tactics, like optimizing product descriptions, can be time-consuming to implement on a large scale. At , we’re experts at pinpointing and resolving specific issues that could be lowering conversion rates for our clients’ online businesses. to see how Coalition can help boost your business with our extensive experience in CRO for ecommerce.
