Your ecommerce conversion rate is the percentage of users visiting your website who have purchased something from your online store. In a set period of time). The average conversion rate of an online store is around 1-2%. In this article, we’ll share techniques to increase your eCommerce conversion rates.
Calculating eCommerce Conversion Rates
Before discussing the formula, let’s define what we mean by conversion. This broad term can refer to anything from signing up for a newsletter, purchasing a product or service, downloading an ebook, filling out a form, and more. Basically, conversion occurs when a website visitor performs a desired action.
You need to know what you want to measure to calculate your conversion rate. It’s about setting business goals and turning them into quantifiable website metrics. To find your conversion rate, divide the number of goals achieved in a given period by the total number of website visitors, then multiply that by 100.
Conversion rate = (conversions or goals achieved/total number of visitors) * 100.
So, if your landing page had 16,982 visitors and 3,604 of those visitors took the desired action, your conversion rate would be 21.22%.
Increase eCommerce Conversion Rate
Okay, let’s get to the good stuff. We all know that slight changes to your online store can have an incredible impact on your sales. So here are a few of our favorite online store tweaks you can implement to make a real difference.
1- Customer Pain Points
Pain points are specific problems faced by potential customers of your company. In other words, you can think of pain points as problems. As with any problem, customer pain points are as diverse as your prospects.
However, not all potential customers are aware of the problems they face. This can make marketing to these people difficult because you need to effectively help potential customers identify their problems and convince them that your product or service will help solve them.
2- Images And Videos To Increase Conversions Rates
When purchasing products online, customers can’t touch and feel your product. They can’t even properly see if its color matches the one presented to them on screen.
To alleviate these concerns, provide clear, high-quality, and accurate images that represent what you’re selling. Add lifestyle shots to indicate the size, and ensure your customer can zoom in on an image to see the detail. 69% of consumers believe a product demo best assists them when purchasing. So, it increases conversion rates.
Online stores are now embracing video’s impact on their ecommerce sales fully. Even a simple video showcasing the product from different angles could be the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.
3- Ask Questions And Reply
When visiting your site for the first or second time, most potential customers know nothing about you or your online store. If they purchase anything, they trust you to deliver what you say you’re going to. At the same time, the customer may instantly have many questions about your product that you need to answer before you lose them. Things like:
- Shipping free
- Is there a warranty?
- Pay with PayPal
- How long will the shipping take?
- Cancel or return policy
All of these questions can be pre-answered by you in a FAQ on the product page to increase conversion rates. Ensure the answers to these questions are obvious, honest, and simple to understand.
Another way to showcase the answers to some of these questions is to have the answers as prompts throughout the buyer’s journey or on the product page.
4- Live Chat Increase eCommerce Conversion Rates
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t know all the questions a potential customer might have. If your product is more of an investment, i.e., it will take a little more time or money from your customer, it might be worth adding chat functionality to your site.
With this in place, customers can alleviate their concerns quickly and easily instead of having to wait for an email to reply.
5- Checkout Optimization
If you’ve done everything right, your product images are top-notch, and you’ve answered all possible questions and are still not making sales, your checkout may be at fault. I’ve mentioned previously that customers need to trust you when purchasing a product. Well, it’s at the checkout where this trust needs to ramp up.
By creating a simple checkout with payment logos, testimonials, and trust seals, you can make sure that your site is seen as trustworthy. We’ve already broken down our favorite sales-optimizing checkout techniques, which you can read in another post.