Are you interested in improving the conversion rates on your eCommerce website? If so, you’re in the right place!
Believe it or not, only 22% of business owners say they are happy with their current conversion rate. For reference, conversions signify the number of people taking a specific action on your website.
Examples include:
- Buying a product
- Signing up for an email list
- Sharing a post on social media
- Adding items to a shopping cart
Businesses with low conversion rates struggle to build brand awareness and connect with their target audience. It’s hard to reach people who don’t bother interacting with your online store.
Today, I’ll show you several powerful ways you can improve your eCommerce conversion rate. We’ve used the following strategies with our brands over the last several years and have seen tremendous success. I firmly believe you can see similar results.
Let’s get started!
Offer Visitors Something Valuable
One of the best ways to improve your conversion rate is to offer your readers something valuable. People have the chance to interact with millions of brands. If you want users to turn to your online store when they make a purchase, you have to stand out from everyone else.
Content marketing is an excellent way to build rapport with visitors and turn them into subscribers and, eventually, customers. Creating a wide range of content will help add value to your brand and capture visitors’ attention, regardless of where they are in your sales funnel.
You can’t talk about content marketing without mentioning blogging. Nearly 80% of internet users read blogs regularly, and that number is not going to go down any time soon. The key to creating high-impact content for your blog is to focus on your intended audience’s goals, needs, and pain points.
Your content should be relevant and address your audience’s questions, concerns, and fears. Once people realize that you have top-notch content and want to help them reach their goals, they will turn to you in the future.
Lead magnets are a specific type of content you can use to grow your email list. Essentially, lead magnets (content upgrades) are unique content or offers that add immediate value to users’ lives. For instance, you could create a step-by-step guide that helps users build their first website. Alternatively, you can offer a special 30% discount to first-time customers.
In order for users to get their hands on your lead magnet, they need to sign up for your newsletter. Every time a user joins, you’ll improve your email conversion rate. Now, you can nurture these leads and convince them that your product or service is worth their time.
Research shows that lead magnets work. Over half of the marketers using these growth tools said they saw a significant boost in conversions after implementing content upgrades on their eCommerce websites.
Develop a Multi-Layered SEO Strategy
Believe it or not, around 68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. You need a diverse, multi-layered search engine optimization strategy to improve your conversion rate.
First and foremost, make sure you use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to discover relevant industry keywords. You should include these words in your blog posts and on key parts of your site, such as your product landing pages.
Google looks at keywords and figures out the main topics of your website. Choosing the right combination of keywords means you’ll have a better chance of reaching the people who are likely interested in your product or service.
I also recommend adding schema markup to your online store. Schema markup gives Google extra information about the products on your site, such as pricing and availability. You’ve likely seen results with this additional data when searching online.
Schema markup is also important in optimizing for mobile and voice search. Mobile users will have an easier time seeing if you have the product they need in stock.
Voice search has grown tremendously over the last several years. At this point, it’s estimated that around 30% of all searches happen without a screen. People are using their voices to ask Google questions and find online stores. Schema markup improves your odds of getting a featured snippet, which accounts for over 40% of all voice searches.
Optimizing your content for a wide range of customers will help draw more people to your eCommerce website, creating new conversion opportunities.
Highlight Positive Reviews
When you shop online, do you look at user reviews before purchasing a product online? A majority of people do, and for a good reason! We like to look at reviews to understand other people’s experiences with the product we want to buy.
We will likely follow through with our order if everyone has good things to say. If a product has 1 out of 5 stars with 1000s of reviews, we would likely steer clear.
This behavior is a psychological phenomenon known as “social proof.” Simply put, social proof is our primal urge to do what we see others doing. If everyone is going to see the latest movie, we feel compelled to go too.
You can trigger social proof on your website by highlighting positive reviews on key parts of your site. We typically include reviews in the following places:
- Email newsletters
- Homepage
- Product landing pages
- Checkout page
All four areas are heavily trafficked by potential customers. Seeing positive feedback from someone who recently purchased something from your eCommerce website could inspire them to take action.
If you need more reviews, consider incentivizing existing customers to share their feedback in exchange for an exclusive discount on their first order. Similarly, you can add a customer feedback form to each product page, allowing users to share their thoughts freely.
Still skeptical about the power of user reviews? Consider this; 88% of people trust customer reviews on products more than they trust brand advertising.
Improve Your Checkout Process
Many potential customers leave eCommerce websites because of poorly performing checkout pages. Business owners and marketers are guilty of putting more effort into their marketing than creating a positive user experience, and it shows.
There are quite a few ways to streamline your checkout process and create a well-rounded experience for your audience.
Here are a few quick fixes you can make today:
- Allow users to choose their own payment method
- Show trust seals
- Add a progress bar
- Trim your forms
- Let visitors see their cart from anywhere on the site
I recommend split testing if you want to make other changes to your checkout page. Split testing is when you change one element of a page or ad for half of your audience. For instance, one button may say “checkout now,” and another might say “place my order.” This type of testing will help refine your strategy and reach a point where you’re maximizing conversions.
Recover Lost Sales
Finally, if you’re not trying to recover lost sales, you’re missing out on more conversions than you know. Across all industries, the average abandonment rate is a whopping 68%! In other words, for every 100 people who add an item to their shopping cart, 68 will leave without paying for their order.
You can take steps to capture the attention of these users and bring them back to your site.
Creating a cart abandonment email campaign is one of the best ways to recover lost sales. These emails go out to subscribers after they leave without placing an order. We’ve found that sending out three emails within one week of the abandonment helped us recover over 50% of our “lost” sales.
If visitors add items to their cart and they haven’t joined your email list, you can show a well-timed pop up that asks if they would like to join and save on their first order. Many consumers look for these deals when they shop with a business for the first time.
At the very least, the people who accept the offer will join your email list. If they decide not to place an order, you can now nurture them and show that your product is worth their time and money.
Back to You
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to improve your conversion rate. The strategies outlined today have helped us grow our brands over the last decade, and they can do the same for you. The key is to be patient and experiment until you find a conversion rate optimization strategy that works for your eCommerce website.
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