Every eCommerce business needs customers to succeed in a competitive market. Converting leads into customers to further boost sales requires effort and dedication. However, conversion doesn’t necessarily have to mean sales. Conversion can mean any vital action taken by your consumers that delivers value to your business, such as email newsletter subscription, adding items to the shopping cart, sharing or liking your social media content, and so on.
Nevertheless, every valuable action that leads to conversion shares one thing in common: you have to encourage your potential customers to take the desired action. This is where your efforts will come into play. That being said, here are a few tips on how to increase e-commerce conversion rates.
Know your target audience
Before you start developing any conversion strategies, you must make an effort to know your target audience first. Market research can help you identify your target audience, learn their expectations, needs, and preferences, as well as understand their demographics.
This will help you tailor specific messages, improve marketing efforts and deliver value that will encourage your leads to convert. It will also help you provide a seamless experience to consumers that will boost conversions and help you foster engagement and loyalty with your customers.
Work on your website
Website performance and functionality are crucial for customer satisfaction. A seamless experience on your website helps people convert and not drive them away. Make sure your website is fast, secure, responsive, easy to navigate, and user-friendly, as well as enriched with valuable and relevant content.
That way, you ensure that leads can browse through your website with no interruptions and that you can provide them with an exceptional experience while on your website. The less friction there is, the less frustrated your consumers will be, which will help them convert.
Optimize your eCommerce platform
As mentioned before, website performance and functionality are crucial. That also applies to the e-commerce platform you have integrated into your website. Products in your store must be well categorized and organized.
It’s also crucial to display proper images and videos to boost user engagement. You can even consider opting for a Shopify agency solution to optimize your eCommerce platform further. In essence, it’s essential to provide potential customers with an exceptional shopping experience to have more reasons to convert.
Be upfront with customers.
Many e-commerce stores have different policies for their shipment, packaging, delivery process, return policies, etc. Not disclosing such information leads to inconveniences. Therefore make sure you have such information available and easily findable for your audience. For example, you can implement a frequently asked questions page (FAQ) or a knowledge base for your customers to inform themselves about your company and your operations.
Offer free shipping
Free shipping is essential for consumers these days. Consumers will browse multiple e-commerce websites until they find the one that offers free shipping. However, offering free shipping usually means there’s a higher price involved or an additional fee that compensates for the loss for the store.
Nevertheless, consumers don’t seem to mind this little fact, as long as they believe they’re getting something for free. Therefore, you can implement a free shipment strategy to customers that don’t hurt your profits or bottom line—for example, free shipment for every order above $100 or every additional purchase made.
Offer multiple payment options.
A bit of convenience on your part can significantly boost conversion rates. Customers generally prefer to have various options made available to them. A good example is offering multiple payment options. Consumers who prefer to pay via invoice won’t be driven away if you accept multiple payment options.
Otherwise, if you only accept credit or debit cards as payment, consumers who prefer to pay via another method will go elsewhere. In addition, make sure you accept various currencies as well. This is especially beneficial if you operate on the global market and have customers from different parts of the world in your consumer base.
Optimize your checkout process
Many e-commerce stores lose customers and conversions due to shopping cart abandonment. Unfortunately, that means that there’s an issue at your checkout process that drives consumers away. In most cases, those issues revolve around hidden costs and unexpected payments, lack of security measures, a requirement to create an account and log in, or subscribe to some newsletter.
That being said, it’s essential to monitor your cart abandonment rate and determine the problem that causes consumers to abandon their carts. Once you identify the issues, make sure you resolve them right away and remind your customers about their abandoned carts. Most customers will finish the checkout process once the problems have been dealt with, thus improving both your sales and conversion rates.
Converting leads is more complex than it may seem. Conversion rates for e-commerce stores are around only 2%, even when they’re implementing the best strategies. However, with a bit of effort and good planning, you can improve your efforts and deliver an exceptional experience to your potential customers that will encourage them to convert.
