Three conversion rate optimisation tips to help you boost online sales.
Every user who leaves your eCommerce website without making a purchase is a missed opportunity.
There are several factors that affect your eCommerce conversion rate: website speed, design, navigation, the relevance of your products to your target audience, prices, shipping and your returns policy, to name but a few.
Trust plays an essential role in increasing your eCommerce conversion rates. A user who visits your website and loves your products may not purchase just because he or she is insecure about your brand.
In this post, we will give you three tips on how to improve your website conversion rate. So let’s get started!
Jump ahead:
Tip 1. Implement eCommerce Checkout Best Practices
Our first tip to improve your eCommerce conversion rate is to optimise your checkout process. This offers users a smooth online experience and reassures them that it will be safe to buy from you.
eCommerce Checkout Best Practices
Place the shopping cart icon in a visible place in the upper right corner of the page. Most users expect to find the shopping cart there, so avoid being creative here.
Confirm when items are added to the shopping cart. There’s nothing more confusing than clicking ‘Add to cart’ only to find nothing happening. Confirm when items are added to the cart without sending users directly to checkout. This way, they can continue browsing and proceed to checkout when they are ready.
Show the number of items added to the cart, and use other visual cues to draw attention to it. You want users to continue browsing and shopping, but this will help remind them that there are items in their cart. That way, when they’ve finished browsing, they won’t forget about what they’ve already added.
Set up a shopping cart dropdown or drawer instead of taking customers directly to checkout, so that they can continue buying and proceed to checkout when they are ready.
Keep the checkout process short. Ideally, you want to fit the entire checkout process into one single page. If your eCommerce platform doesn’t allow you to do that, try to reduce the number of checkout steps to the minimum possible.
Reinforce the trustworthiness of your site. Include security badges, lock icons, information on shipping and returns and on taxes/shipping/duty for international customers. Accept multiple payment options, such as PayPal or Google Checkout. Include customer service contacts or a live chat. All these elements will reinforce the trustworthiness of your site.
Make sure offers and discounts are visible at checkout. Whether it is a discount code, promotion or gift with purchase, make sure users can clearly view the offer at checkout.
After implementing these best practices, you need to continue optimising your checkout process. To do that, here are some tools that can help you understand how users behave on your website and at what stage they abandon the checkout process:
Setting up funnels in Google Analytics can help you track your checkout funnel and measure cart abandonment.
Heatmaps like Crazy Egg show you how people interact with your website, and you can then use that information to improve user experience.
A/B testing your messaging and calls to action and reaching out directly to website visitors through surveys can also help you test and discover what would work best for your business.
Tip 2. Set Up Email Marketing Automation
There are several email marketing automation strategies that you can use to boost your eCommerce sales. In this post, we will introduce two strategies that are easy to implement and have a high impact.
Acquire New Customers By Offering A Discount In Their First Order
Set up a pop up offering a discount to new newsletter subscribers, and follow up immediately with a welcome email.
This strategy can be quite effective in helping you to build a mailing list (which you should use to nurture your relationship with your clients) and in driving conversions from new customers.
Pop Up and Welcome Email Best Practices:
Define a minimum order value for the welcome discount. This way, you not only boost your eCommerce conversion rate, but you also increase the average order value (AOV), which is the average value of all eCommerce transactions.
To prevent users from navigating away from the site, automatically apply the discount code to the cart or include the discount code in the thank you message, so that users can simply copy it without having to leave the site. For users who are not ready to purchase right away, the email can be used for them to access the discount at any time.
Follow up with a welcome email reminder. A few days after sending the welcome email with the discount code, send another email to all users who haven’t yet used it.
Welcome Email Examples:
Encourage Users To Complete The Purchase With An Abandoned Cart Email Series
According to the Baymard Institute, the average checkout abandonment rate is 69.80%. In your eCommerce store, four out of every five people who add something to their cart leave without completing the purchase.
To encourage users to complete their purchase, set up a cart recovery email series. We recommend setting up a series of up to three emails to avoid getting your email flagged as spam.
Abandoned Cart Email 1
This should contain a simple reminder containing the products left in the cart, a call to action for the customer to return to their cart and the customer service contact details (in case the customer needs some help). We recommend sending this email one hour after a user abandons a cart from your store.
Abandoned Cart Email 2
With the first email, you may recover some abandoned carts. But there’s still more you can do. For those who received the first email but haven’t completed a purchase, you can send a second email with a small incentive, e.g. offering free shipping or a discount code. We recommend sending this email up to 24 hours after a user abandons a cart from your store.
Abandoned Cart Email 3
Use this opportunity to send a last chance email reminder or offer the best possible discount. We recommend waiting 48 hours after a user abandons a cart from your store.
Abandoned Cart Email Examples:
Tip 3. Set Up Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are a great way to boost the eCommerce conversion rate by increasing users’ trust in a website. According to Spiegel, displaying reviews can increase conversion by up to 270%.
Reviews are also great for SEO purposes as they continually generate new content, which helps your business rank higher in search results.
Start by implementing reviews in your eCommerce website, and ask customers for reviews.
How to request reviews from clients:
Via thank you pages/emails
On receipts/invoices
Via email (setting up an automated email that is sent to clients a few days after they complete their purchase)
Via customer service interactions (via email, telephone, chat, social media or any other channel)
Conclusion
In this post, we wanted to share with you three tips for conversion rate optimisation that would be easy to implement and have a high impact on your conversion rate.
We’ve tested these strategies ourselves and saw conversion rates double for three of our clients.
Every eCommerce business is different, and there is no magic formula that works for all. For each of the strategies you implement in your eCommerce store, you need to continually monitor its impact on conversion rate. Keep testing, keep learning! This is the only way to continually improve your business and grow over time.
If you need help developing your eCommerce and Digital Marketing strategy, feel free to reach out. We will be glad to help you!