Are you looking for ways to boost your eCommerce conversion rates? Look no further! Here you’ve got 13 ways (with examples) and 2 things you should avoid doing.
As always, you have to test what actually works for your site. But you can use this list as inspiration and test what works best for you.
I could’ve made this list really long, but instead I’ve focused on stuff that isn’t too hard to implement and has the possibility to make a big impact on your conversion rate.
Here we go!
First things first
First let’s start with a few obvious ones that you should go ahead and do right now if you haven’t done them yet: make your site responsive (or make a mobile version – the most important thing is that it’s optimised for a mobile user), make it load fast, use large high quality images and clear call-to-action buttons.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here comes the list:
1. Use exit intent pop-ups.
Imagine that a visitor is on your site, puts something in the basket, and then for some reason doesn’t continue to check out and finalise the order. Instead, he moves the mouse to exit the browser or the tab.
A script on your website then triggers a pop-up with a message like ‘Use this coupon code to get 10% off’. That would increase the chances for him to buy, right? And you’ve got nothing to lose, since the visitor was going to exit anyway.
Why not even try to make the pop-up different and funny? Have a look at this list for ideas.
2.Use video for your most sold products.
You should not only use high-quality images for your products but also videos for at least the most popular ones.
Studies have shown that conversion rates can increase by over 100% when using videos:
3. Use bullet points.
You want to make it as easy as possible for a visitor to see the features of a product. Take a look at Amazon or Zalando for example, both using bullet points. It just makes it way easier for the visitor to understand what the product is all about and what features it has. You always want to make it easy for the visitor to make a decision.
4. Live chat
Visitors often have questions that remain unanswered, and that’s why they don’t buy. Using a live chat on your site is something that can help with that.
Another good thing with using a live chat is that it doesn’t only boost sales in the short-term but also in the long term. You’ll get to know many things from the visitors – what kind of questions they have and what their fears and uncertainties are. With this info, you can make an even better site that converts more overall.
Some interesting stats:
*63% were more likely to return to a website that offered live chat.
*62% reported being more likely to purchase from the site again
*38% of respondents said they had made their purchase due to the chat
5. Use a pop-up to optimise your newsletter sign-ups.
Dan Zarella made a case study showing that his subscription rate doubled when he started using pop-ups asking people to sign up for his newsletter.
We’ve seen this time and time again. A voucher code website we worked with increased their signups by 300%(!) when we introduced a pop-up asking for the visitor’s email.
Just make sure you have a relevant and good enough offer for someone wanting to give away their email.
6. Add trust badges.
A trust badge is simply an image that makes the visitor trust your website more. Depending on what you are selling and to what market, different trust badges might work better.
A case study from VWO showed an increase in sales by 32% after introducing a trust badge.
Check out this blog post for some ideas on different trust badges.
7. Improve site search.
This is often a huge problem for e-commerce sites and websites overall. The search functions on websites are often more or less worthless or at least very bad. Fix it!
Screen Pages clearly showed that people who used search before buying something spent more money than people who did not.
8. Add reviews.
By adding reviews, you let visitors get a ‘feel’ for the products and see what others think about it. Social proof is a very powerful sales tactic. If you’ve got great products, why not let other people tell your audience how great they are?
FigLeaves sells women’s apparel. After they added product reviews to their site, it made their customers 35% more likely to buy.
9. Free shipping and free returns.
These are two more retail shop-specific tips. In some countries, free shipping is getting more or less standard, at least for the big brands. And more and more shops around the world follow this example.
Also, if you can offer free returns, you should absolutely give that a try.
A survey from made by AlixPartners ranks the reasons why people abandon a shopping cart:
- Need to see or touch the item before purchasing (37%)
- Cost of delivery too high (36%)
- Concerns about quality or freshness of a product (26%)
- Ease of returning the item (20%)
10. Show best sellers.
If you want to increase your conversion rate, it only makes sense to show visitors what others have bought. Exactly in the same way that offline retail shops and supermarkets put the best-selling brands where they are most visible, so should you. And also, by writing ‘best sellers’, you show social proof; you tell visitors that others actually bought this before.
You can also add a sorting option ‘sort by popularity’ in the category pages.
11. Show related items.
When your customers have put something in the cart, you can recommend other products to them which others have bought together with that item. So for example, if you add jeans to the cart, you will then be shown a page with matching sweaters or t-shirts. This increases the chance of you buying more.
12. Add photos of real persons.
By adding photos of real persons (everybody can see through terrible stock photos) next to products and services, you might be able to increase your conversion rate by 95% or more.
Try it today!
13. Use testimonials.
This is related to tip #8 about using product reviews. If you also use testimonials where people tell your visitors how great everything worked out when they ordered from your site, you can increase your conversion rate even more. Check out this blog post about Wikijob that got a 30% higher conversion rate with testimonials.
2 DONT’S:
1. Don’t force people to register.
25.6% of online consumers would abandon a purchase if they were forced to register first.
2. Don’t use forms that are too long.
You don’t like filling out long forms, nor do your customers. Try making everything as easy as possible to fill out.
Imagescape reduced their form from 11 to 4 fields and gained a 120% conversion increase from 5.4 to 11.9%.
CONCLUSION
There you have it! 13 ways to improve your eCommerce conversion rates. You can start implementing these strategies straight away and see an increase in conversions!