How to improve your Ecommerce conversion rate?

2 June 2020

Your conversion rate is a measurement of how your Ecommerce website can turn visitors into customers. How many of your visitors will convert? While gaining more traffic to your website is always a positive step, increasing the conversion rate and, thus, the sales tend to be the ultimate goal of any Ecommerce strategy. So let’s look at steps you can take to better understand, and then improve, your Ecommerce conversion rate.

Use software in order to monitor your conversion rate

Before you start to improve your conversion rate, you need to be able to actually know what it is. Your Google Analytics can offer some vital data, but to get a more precise look, there are free tools like Hot Jar that can show you more specific details of how customers interact with your website, including heat maps showing which parts of the page are getting more attention. Knowing how they’re using your site is important to better guiding them towards conversion.

Track your goals

Having realistic goals for any conversion rate optimisation campaign is key. You cannot just go into a campaign expecting 50% of all the visitors to end up finally converting. The average conversion rate for Ecommerce websites that are performing well is between 1% and 2%. Setting some realistic goals means aiming for the higher end of this range. If you exceed them, then you’re doing very well. Just don’t set yourself unobtainable goals.

Remind your customers of what they left behind

Set up an automated email system that gets in touch with your registered customers under specific circumstances. One of those circumstances is shopping basket abandonment. The customers who were that close to buying might be the easiest to convince to change their mind and convert. All you have to do is send an automated email that, for instance, make a slightly better price or offer a promotional voucher for their next order. A simple reminder works wonders, however, so don’t feel like you have to make big offers if your margins are tight.

Use great media

Improving your conversion rate is all about winning the visitors over, and getting them to click more and more, bringing them closer to the point of actual purchase. In the physical world, this is done with visual merchandising, putting your most visually attractive products on display in the shop window and through the store to entice shoppers to come closer. In the digital world, high-quality photos and videos of your products can make just about any product into your most dynamic and attractive product. Pages with great media have been shown to consistently have far better conversion rates, with video tending to outperform photos.

Reduce your delivery prices

Money talks. If you help your customers save money and advertise it well on the site, especially when they’re getting closer to actually making an order, the message will get home! Online retail giants like Amazon have effectively forced the hand of many smaller Ecommerce companies, meaning they offer free shipping even at a loss! If you have incredibly tight margins, don’t feel like you have to match to compete. Lowering your delivery charges to thresholds just above the margins can be very effective.