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Ever heard of eCommerce conversion rate optimization?
Let’s face it: a lot goes into starting and growing an eCommerce company. You must first pick what you are going to sell. You might suppose that after you’ve decided how to acquire your items, set up your shop, and begin bringing people to your site via paid advertising, that’s it – you’re off to the races. Not so quickly! When it comes to digital purchases, there are many dos and don’ts to be aware of when you want to entice clients to buy from your company.
Conversion rate optimization is the most critical aspect of every business. First, you need to calculate your conversion rate and see if it is good enough or not. Then, you need to do everything to escalate it.
This article will look at some tips and strategies to better do conversion rate optimization for eCommerce.
Note: one way to optimize eCommerce conversion rate is using WatchThemLive’s session replay software. Keep reading to learn what it does.
What is eCommerce conversion rate optimization?
The process of increasing the number of visitors who do what you expect from them is called conversion rate optimization (CRO). To put it in a nutshell, eCommerce CRO means optimizing your eCommerce website to drive more sales.
To illustrate these desirable tasks, here are some examples:
- Donating
- Purchasing a product/service
- Filling out a form
- Subscribing to your newsletters
- Signing up
- Clicking on buttons
- Contacting your business
Simply put, CRO for eCommerce is a data-based decision-making procedure that eliminates the guesswork based on real users’ behaviors and data.
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eCommerce CRO is complicated. There are many CRO tools and strategies you can use. Here is what the thinking process of your eCommerce conversion rate optimization might look like:
One of the most common themes in conversion rate optimization is testing. You must perform many types of tests. Content testing, landing page testing, and CRO testing are just some examples. However, it is essential to know your current conversion issues and understand the basics before deciding what to test. You should also track some key eCommerce metrics, and shopping cart abandonment is one of them. First, you need to ask yourself: Why is shopping cart abandonment a problem for retailers? Then, proceed to solve the issues you run into. Moreover, you need to use some landing page optimization tools to optimize the checkout process.
Why is conversion rate optimization important in eCommerce?
eCommerce conversion optimization is crucial because it lets you obtain more value from the viewers you already have. This way, you can reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC). CRO will also help you increase revenue per visitor (RPV) and the number of your customers. Therefore, you can escalate your business to a whole other level.
Think of a landing page that has a conversion rate of 5% and receives 1000 visitors each month. This means the page generates 50 conversions a month. If we can optimize the conversion rate and increase it to 10%, the number of visitors who convert gets to 100 per month.
What affects the eCommerce conversion rate?
Lots of variables affect the eCommerce conversion rate. The first thing you need to do is monitor these variables separately and see which one is causing issues. Then, you can proceed to fix the problems and improve the eCommerce conversion rate. Here are some of the most notable factors that affect the eCommerce conversion rate:
1. Product type
The type of product that you sell affects your eCommerce conversion rate significantly. For example, food and drink have the highest conversion rate, while electronics and furniture have the lowest.
2. Traffic source
Traffic source most probably has the most significant impact on your overall eCommerce conversion rate. Warm traffic sources – referrals, email marketing, etc. – make the most conversions compared to cold traffic sources – paid advertising, social media, etc.
Watch every move of your users, from clicks to mouse movement, using WatchThemLive. Also, WatchThemLive’s session replays provide you with extensive information on why your website visitors won’t convert.
Watch this video to see how they work:
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3. Country
Some countries have the highest potential for online purchases, like Germany and the United States. Other countries, however, are different. People still do not feel ready to buy online in many countries.
4. Industry
eCommerce conversion rates vary tremendously by industry. For example, the average eCommerce conversion rate in the arts and crafts industry is around 4%, but baby and child stores are nearly 0.7%.
5 tips to boost sales using eCommerce conversion rate optimization
Here are some tips to improve eCommerce conversion rate optimization:
1. Offer free shipping
Mostly, if your store cannot provide free shipping, your customers will look elsewhere. Free shipping is a MUST in today’s world. You can increase the eCommerce conversion rate if you do this. Some stores even go to the extent of increasing the main price of the items to make this happen. Offering free shipping helps you motivate customers to buy from your eCommerce store, having the convenience of online shopping without paying more.
2. Provide coupon codes for limited times
Fear of missing out (FOMO) makes for a fantastic incentive. Implement limited-time offers, seasonal promotions, and coupon codes that expire soon. This way, you will create a sense of urgency. As a result, they will make their purchase before they get a chance to second guess. You will tremendously decrease the shopping cart abandonment rate; therefore, you will succeed in your eCommerce conversion rate optimization.
3. Use live chat software
Using live chat software is a double-edged sword. Use it only if you can use it correctly. If so, you will positively impact your eCommerce conversion rate. However, if you fail to do so, you will send inferior signals to your visitors. The subtlety here is responding immediately when a customer asks for a chat during business hours. Telling them that you are not available at the moment ruins everything. Instead, you can build direct, real-human communication and trust with your potential customers with live chat
4. Show customers your eCommerce store is safe
Safety is everything! You cannot expect strangers to trust your website out of nowhere. You can’t expect them to pay if you haven’t made them trust you.
You must make sure they can trust your website, that their personal details are protected, and that payment is safe. How? By using these elements:
- Trust seals and security badges
- Customer-trusted payment options
- SSL
5. Provide a guest checkout option
Always give your customers the option to checkout as a guest. You surely do not want to make things harder than they already are, do you? Forcing account creation will only make them lose interest. Simplifying the checkout process is necessary and requiring sign-up is a direct obstacle in the process.
eCommerce CRO Best Practices
eCommerce conversion optimization is vital if you want to improve sales and offer your customers a better journey. For this purpose, you need to learn eCommerce CRO best practices.
Your Tests Should Be Based on Data
In this line of work, everyone has their own opinion; however, whatever you do should be based on solid data. This way, you’re collecting correct information about users and reducing guesswork. Instead of asking your teammates for their opinion, use surveys, polls, and analytic software to understand how customers find out about you, where they’re getting stuck, and where they’re heading next. When you know your customers, you can start to increase eCommerce conversion rate based on their needs and expectations. The data room software offers many security features to make sure you have full control over your documents. This allows you to assign individual user permissions by allowing or restricting access to your specific files.
Collect Qualitative and Quantitative Data
Some people might think that eCommerce conversion optimization is solely based on A/B testing. But keep in mind that A/B testing only tells you which element or version of your website is performing better. To understand “why” a version performs better to increase eCommerce conversion rate, you need to gather qualitative and quantitative data as well.
Your Goals Must Be Clearly Specified
Before starting your eCommerce conversion rate optimization strategy, you need to set goals to understand what to measure and what strategy to use. Your goals should be well-defined so you can understand how successful your test was. Each test should have only one primary goal, but you can have multiple secondary goals; however, your primary goal is the one that determines your test’s success.
Conclusion
There is always room for improvement in eCommerce conversion rate optimization. So always be on the lookout for efficient methods to optimize your conversion rates. Using the methods listed above will help you drive sales and capture more revenue.
Looking for a way to optimize eCommerce conversion rate? Sign up to WatchThemLive and take your first step.
