According to Statista.com, there are over 2.14 billion digital buyers in 2021, a 4.4% increase from the previous year. This clearly shows the staggering growth eCommerce is experiencing over the years.
However, because of the saturation of the eCommerce industry, conversion rates that used to hover around 3% have gone down to a little over 1.7% in a July 2021 report.
What does this mean?
It means that getting visitors to take the expected action you want them to make within your website is getting more challenging. They either do not sign up, do not subscribe, or abandon their shopping carts.
Getting tons of traffic is one thing, but getting visitors to take action is a whole different success level.
If you’re in a pickle trying to come up with a plan, this post will provide you with 11 proven ways to attract the ideal client and increase your website or store’s conversion rate, in turn making way for a profitable business.
By the end of this post, you’ll be equipped with actionable measures to grow website conversions.
Let’s get right to it.
What Is A Good Conversion Rate?
Kinsta.com puts it nicely when it said, “a good conversion rate is better than what you had last month”. There is no black and white standard conversion rate for all eCommerce stores because different niches have different “good” conversion rates.
The graph above shows that for 2021, the conversion rate peaked at a little below 2.2% and slumped at around 1.8%. As long as your conversion rate goes on an upward trend each month, you can safely say you’re at a good conversion rate.
Now how do you make this happen?
Here’s a list of things you can do.
Research And Assess
You can take a whole lot of direction when it comes to implementing conversion strategies but it’ll all be futile unless the results align with your goals.
There are 4 sub-steps you need to take in this stage:
- Define website goals
- Analyze visitor data
- Do competitor analysis
- Assess the current conversion funnel
Define Website Goals
What do you want visitors to do on your website? Sign up? Subscribe? Purchase? Defining what you want them to do will help you determine what visitor data to track and analyze so you can come up with action plans on the right areas.
If you want visitors to sign up or subscribe, you can track form submissions. Do you want them to purchase? You can track link clicks, element clicks, add-to-carts, and checkouts.
Analyze Data
When making decisions for your website, it’s always best to steer clear from estimations and assumptions. Decisions should be backed up by real data to get real results.
Track visitor behavior and preferences to help you optimize your current conversion funnel.
You can track:
- User behavior on the landing page
- Traffic sources
- Returning visitor or customer rate
- Bounce rates
- Cart abandonment rates
- Average order values
These quantifiable data will help you pinpoint which part of the funnel the huge drop-off is happening so you can make the needed changes.
It will also help you create buyer personas or the representation of the ideal buyer so you can target the right people. Reaching out to targeted groups will increase conversion rates since you’re assured of a level of interest on the user's end.
Do Competitor Analysis
You need to know who and what you’re up against and how you measure up to them. This will help you assess your strengths and weaknesses and the competitors as well so know what to leverage and what to reciprocate.
Buyers don’t usually purchase what is initially presented to them. They’ll research options to pacify themselves that they’ve made the right choices.
If you find out about the competitor’s weakness, you can craft unique selling propositions that will highlight your strengths to help buyers decide to choose you instead of them.
Assess The Current Conversion Funnel
Defining goals and analyzing data will be most useful for this step. Assessing the current behavior of users when on your website will help you understand where they hesitate and why.
For example, a predictive dialer SaaS service will have the goal of monthly subscriptions to the service. To do this, part of their funnel is offering a 14-day free trial. If they notice huge traffic but minimal free trial opt-ins, they can conclude that the offer is not appealing enough so they can work on giving more value.
Optimize Important Pages’ Layout
Important pages include landing pages, product pages, and about us pages. Visitors have to get great user experience on these critical pages to retain interest until he is moved to convert.
For this stage, there are 6 sub-steps you can do:
- Utilize heat maps
- Highlight value proposition
- Improve page load speed
- Make it mobile-friendly
- Add a live chat
- Add a frequently asked questions section
Utilize Heat Maps
Heat maps will help optimize pages by showing you which elements of the page users aren’t clicking so you can get rid of these parts. It also shows you which area of the page they’re most interacting with so you can put a strong copy or CTA on that area.
Highlight Value Proposition
Critical pages must include a clear explanation of why the user should purchase or subscribe to your service instead of your competitors.
Ideally, this selling point must be crafted in roughly 10 words. Users have a short attention span, you must relay your message in a split second and you can do this by keeping the value proposition short and clear.
A great example of this is how Spores crafted their value proposition on the top-fold of their landing page. The value proposition phrase is around 10 words and because they have more to offer, they put it in a bulleted list, making any user get the message in a split second.
Improve Page Load Speed
Studies found out that a 1.5 second load time has a 38.24% bounce rate and worse, a 3 second load time increased by 44.28%. Improving the page's load speed will minimize bounce rates from impatient visitors and thus increase the time spent on the page for more chances of conversions.
To do this, use high-quality but light-sized images, videos, and other page elements so the page speed isn’t compromised. Google’s PageSpeed Insights will help you determine if your page is loading fast enough.
Make It Mobile-Friendly
Statista.com reports that 54% of eCommerce sales are made from mobile phones. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you’ll risk losing 50% chances of conversions.
Plus, Google uses mobile-first indexing so being mobile-friendly will help you rank better in search engines.
To do this you can either build a responsive website or a mobile app of your website to make it easier for users to browse and convert.
You can even add Google Translate to WordPress sites so your visitors can view the contents of the site in their native languages.
Add A Live Chat
Again, users don’t convert in the initial exposure. Many will be on the fence because of lingering doubts and unanswered queries. A live chat tool, just like what you can find on this Amazon FBA listing website and online mannequin seller’s website will help users get immediate answers to their questions.
Here’s another example from a Minneapolis window replacement company.
The more responsive and proactive you are, the more likely for users to convert.
Add An FAQs Section
You can’t be answering the same questions in a live chat all day. You can make wise use of your time if you provide answers to common questions before users even ask for them. This is exactly what Twine did for their “hiring an illustrator” page and what ReferralRock did for their landing page.
Create Strategic, Strong, And Behavior-Triggered CTAs
There are higher chances of users converting when they’re told what they’re expected to do.
Research from Google indicates that the most viewable CTA position is not at the top of the page, the best location is right above the fold. One of the best examples of this is Everytale’s landing page.
To create a strong CTA, you must do better than just “start trial” or “sign up”. You can make it more personal for users like what this CTA did from an online ordering system website when it said: “get your own…”.
A strong CTA also means you remove unnecessary fields to make it easier to finish filling up. CrazyEgg reports having only essential fields on the CTA made signups grew by 10%.
Behavior-triggered pop-ups will give another push for users to convert if they don’t do so on the first encounter with the CTA. You can do this by:
- Triggering a pop up when the visitor tries to exit the page
- Trigger pop-ups if the user visited a specified number of pages or visited a specific page
Also, try to test out different offers to see what works best and then use that moving forward.
Easy Site Navigation
Good user experience has a lot to do with good conversion rates. If the site is intuitive and easy to navigate, users will likely stay longer to explore.
Easy navigation means users immediately find what they’re looking for. To make way for this, you can:
- Add a search feature. This also helps you determine user needs
- Categorize products just like what 3Wishes, an online sexy costume seller did
- Limit elements on the page. Getting pulled in too many directions will make users bounce off
Limiting elements mean sticking only to what users need to know. If possible, the page should only have headlines, benefits and features, testimonials, FAQs and live chat, and a context of what you offer.
Ideally, you’ll want to minimize visual clutter and the clicks required to get them to take action, like adding a booking button if the conversion you want is directly doing business with the user.
Create Powerful Sales Copy
At the outset, it has been said that analyzing data will help determine buyer personas. Knowing the buyer persona, or who to sell to will help you create powerful and relevant sales copy.
The more the user can relate to your product or service, the more likely they’ll convert.
For this, the headline is very critical. According to Copyblogger, roughly 8 of 10 people read the headline, and 2 out of 10 will read past it. So you have to wrap up a powerful sales pitch on the headline to create an impact and heighten interest enough to keep users reading.
Impactful headlines can either be:
- Direct headlines
- Command headlines
- Problem-solving headlines
- Question headlines
- How-to or instructional headlines
Great examples of question headlines are how GrowthRocks did it with their growth hacking content and Roketto’s landing page.
Here’s another great example from Advantage, a Kansas City pest control company. Nobody wants to be even more stressed about finding the right pest control service, so Advantage clears that right off the bat.
These wisely created headlines lessen the risk of losing potential leads.
Another thing to keep in mind to create a powerful sales copy is to match web copy with ad copy. Ad copies are optimized to make customers feel it’s personalized for them and replicating that on web copies will make users feel the product or service is made just for them, thus moving them to convert.
Add Reviews, Testimonials, And Logos
Social proof is a powerful tool to validate your sales pitch to potential customers. Naturally, visitors won’t take your word for it, but they’ll take those they can relate to.
Reviews and testimonials help users identify themselves with others and turn their hesitation into conviction. It makes users feel at ease knowing other people used it in the past and are satisfied with it.
Econsultancy’s study even shows 61% of users check online reviews before making a purchase decision.
A great example of this is how Mixam online printing service incorporated Trustpilot reviews to its landing page. It effectively utilized a trusted review platform to build trust to make users convert.
Including logos of trusted brands also boost trust, just be sure the partnership is legit or else it’ll backfire.
An exceptional example of this is an SEO company called Avidon Marketing Group that featured 5 logos, including one of Google’s to grow confidence in their services.
Create The Right Content To The Right Audience
Content doesn’t just build brand awareness, it also positions your brand as a thought leader in the industry and that builds trust leading to conversions.
What’s a website for without targeted visitors right? The right content will help you get that. Content can either be blog posts, videos, or even visuals like infographics and photos from social media as another way to provide social proof.
The tone and language you use must reflect that of your target audience. To be safe, avoid being superfluous and be conversational.
Improve Security
For a website that does financial transactions, users must be ensured of utmost security. For this, you have to get familiar with cybersecurity and add an SSL certificate to your website to make users at ease browsing knowing it's a secure website.
It’s also a good idea to take advantage of verified payment systems and trust badges.
Send Abandoned Cart Reminder And Post-Purchase Emails
Shopify reports almost 60% of online shopping carts are left abandoned. One of the reasons is a lack of motivation to finish a purchase. A reminder email goes a long way in persuading the user to finish the purchase.
Also, another email sequence can be focused on post-purchase. It’s more costly to get new customers than to retain those who you’ve already served, thus also increasing customer lifetime value.
You can show them that you keep on caring about them by:
- Providing customer order information on transaction emails
- Asking for testimonials or feedback to help with improvement and to add to social proof
- Offering upsells or cross-sells to related products and services
Optimize Pricing And Payment
There are 4 sub-steps to optimize for pricing and payment:
- Offer multiple payment options
- Offer reduced or free shipping
- Make use of odd pricing
- Deploy price anchoring
Multiple Payment Options
Users are more likely to finish a purchase when they’re given payment options that suit their preferences. Some like to pay with credit or debit cards, but others prefer electronic payment or cash on delivery for safety. Added to that, some also like to pay using gift cards while others want to use cryptocurrency.
Increasing their payment options will lessen the chances of them not converting because you’ve suited the payment process to their preferences.
Reduced Or Free Shipping
Naturally, the product price is what a customer is most willing to pay for, seeing an added fee for shipping might cause them to take a step back. By providing reduced or free shipping, you reduce the chances of them being dissuaded from finishing a purchase.
Odd Pricing
It’s funny how a few cents can decide over a product’s sales performance. According to a study by the University of New Zealand, a price point like $12.49 will have 222% better conversion than rounded-off pricing.
Price Anchoring
Price anchoring capitalized on the idea that buyers rely on the initial price point seen when buying something. It’s their reference in gauging if the product is worth considering.
There are 2 ways to do this:
- Show the price before the discount
- Display the higher price first
Once they see the deal is cost-effective, they’ll be more likely to convert.
Simplified Checkout Process
Friction on the checkout process is a recipe for failed conversions. This friction is usually caused by a complicated checkout process that leaves the user too exhausted to continue.
To avoid friction, bring down the number of steps needed to complete checkout by:
- Reducing the number of pages between the product page and checkout page
- Simplifying the checkout navigation
- Requesting only the important info, limiting the form fields to be filled
Conclusion
These 11 steps are a great place to start for improving conversion rates. The main idea is to reduce friction and make it easy for the user to do what you want them to by making the site user-friendly, creating crystal clear CTAs, and simplifying the conversion process.
Keep in mind though that comparing conversion rates with other niches won’t do much good. It’s always best to compare your past performance with your current one, that’s what defines a good conversion.
Author Bio
Burkhard Berger is the founder of Novum. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on novumhq.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.
