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How to Increase Conversion at an E-commerce Site

Building a profitable e-commerce website isn’t just about driving traffic to it. You may have spent thousands of dollars on social media campaigns and promotions to drive traffic to your website, but it is only the beginning of the battle.

Now the skill for success is how to convert these visitors into buyers, ideally repeat buyers.  Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who purchased a product from your e-commerce website within a specific period of time.  In other words of all the people who reached your website, what is the proportion that became customers?

Usually, conversion rates are a few percent, say 2%. So if you get 1000 visitors, you should get 20 new clients (simply put, without taking into account repeat visitors). In this case 2% of the people became interested in what you have to offer, but 98% did not. And you may wonder why these; 98% or 980 were not interested, even though they came to your site.

If you want to drive sales and generate revenue, your conversion rate should obviously be as high as possible.  If you now manage to get a 3% conversion rate instead of 2%, this is an extra 10 new clients in the example above. So with just a 1% rise in conversion rate, you have increased your sales by 50%. Amazing!

But conversion doesn’t just happen by magic.  You have to put in the work and optimize for it.  You need to clearly define your end goal and determine conversion metrics with which to measure your conversion rate. You have to split test various ideas to determine your best options. It could be the design, your images, your purchasing process users when adding an item to the cart, your retargeting campaigns even, etc. Many angles can be explored in this respect. Let’s look at some great ways to increase conversion rates at your e-commerce site.

Simplify Your Website

You may have tons of products for sale on your site, but this doesn’t mean you should cram them all up on the homepage. Having too many products on one page is a conversion killer. It clutters the page and overwhelms your customers.  Instead, you should display near the top the best-selling products with the highest profit margins, and have a simple-to-use navigation bar for customers to find your other products.

A simple website makes users more comfortable and allows them to think better, and to make decisions batter. It also makes people want to spend money which is great for you. Having a complicated font makes it harder for your customers to process information. You should borrow a leaf from one of the most popular websites in the world, Apple. It is one of the simplest e-commerce websites and generates tons of revenue every year.

Use high-quality product images

Online shopping limits customers from directly assessing a product, so you should give them the next best thing – high-quality images. Make sure the images are as detailed as possible. Take close-up images of important product features and have them in different angles.

Have pictures of people using your product. High-quality images allow customers to zoom into the pictures and know exactly what they are buying.

Provide detailed product descriptions

While some products like clothes require simple descriptions, others are more complicated and need more detailed descriptions. Nonetheless, you need to provide detailed descriptions of all your products whether they are simple or complex to use.

People are more likely to buy a product if they know the size and color and are sure about its purpose and function. You don’t want your customers going to others sites to find more information about a product. So you should provide an accurate and detailed description as they can help close the sale.

Provide accessible customer service

If a customer has a question about the product, they should be able to easily talk to someone from your store and have their questions answered. Unlike in a physical store, customers can’t walk up to an attendant and ask for help. So you should always have customer support available at all times, such as in customer service chat. Be sure to provide them with different ways to reach you. You can have a live chat, phone or email.

Make the checkout process easy

Having a smooth and simple checkout process can significantly increase your conversion rate. A complicated checkout can make customers abandon their cart, and cart abandonment is a leading cause of poor conversion rates. The checkout form should be easy to understand and use, convenient and fast without hurdles, and require the minimum information needed. Also, obviously accept as many payment methods as you can; not everyone has a credit card.

You don’t want your customer to pick items only for them to abandon their cart because you don’t accept their preferred payment method. The checkout process should also be trusted and secure so that customers can feel safe about entering their credit card information.

Use the above tips to boost your conversion rate and you can thank us later.