10 Ways to Increase Conversions for your Online Store
Improving the conversion rate for your online store is guaranteed to make a big difference to your bottom line, but it can be difficult to know where to start. Retailers often work very hard to drive potential customers to their site, only to find that most are leaving without purchasing anything. Abandoned carts litter their virtual store as far as the eye can see, with sales often reliant on price-led promotions, codes and offers.
This month, we chatted with web developer and founder of Gem Media, Gemma Johnson, to discover her top ten tips for improving your strike rate when it comes to converting customers online. We hope they help you convert your customers from browsers to buyers, and encourage them back next time, too!
Tip #1 - Comb your site for ‘hurdles’ and red flags
Take a fresh look at your website as though you’ve never seen it before. Better still, get someone in your target audience who has literally never seen it before to look through it with you. Identify anything that feels ‘wrong’ or is confusing or discouraging.
Examples include bad navigation (i.e. you can’t work out where you’re trying to get to), typos, not enough information, anything which makes your business feel ‘too new’ or untrustworthy, and annoying pop-ups.
Remember you’re not your target audience - it’s not about what you know or like. It’s about your customer.
Tip #2 - Streamline your checkout
The rate of customers who make it all the way to the checkout before dropping out is staggering. Yes, some are simply ‘window shopping’, adding things to cart and daydreaming. Some have the intention to buy, but the checkout process is too onerous or annoying for them. Keep your checkout as sleek and simple as you can. Shopify is excellent for this, with their own Shopify Pay option which makes things move fast.
Tip #3 - Speed it up
A site which is super slow to load, or which times out on a viewer, is never going to perform well on any metric. People get annoyed, Google gets annoyed, it’s a whole disaster. Reduce your photo file sizes, get rid of extraneous videos, photos and other large files, and if you need to move to a different host or server to speed up your site loading, then do so.
Tip #4 - Review your prices
If you’re drawing a lot of people to your site but they’re not purchasing, your problem may be pricing. One of the original 5 P’s of Marketing, price is a lever which is easy to pull, but can have catastrophic impact if mishandled. Too cheap, and people think your product is inferior, or that there’s a catch. Too expensive? They’ll add to cart, umm and ahh and then hit that little ‘x’ in the corner and leave you in the dust. The same goes for shipping…
Tip #5 - Shipping, shipping, shipping
The best tip for shipping or postage is don’t charge it. If you can, work it into the price or absorb it and offer free shipping - it genuinely helps. If you can’t, keep it as cheap as possible. It’s a critical tweak which can rapidly transform conversion rates.
Tip #6 - Have a goal for each page
The first websites were informational websites, with their standard set of pages and lottssss of copy. eCommerce sites have a different purpose, so it’s important to stop and consider what you’re trying to achieve and how each page contributes to that goal. Have a CTA (call to action) which makes sense on each page so your potential customer always has somewhere to go next and is less likely to leave without buying anything. You can do this through either adding a button link, footer menu links or suggested products list to guide your customer to the next step you want them to go.
Tip #7 - Reduce the number of steps it takes to buy
Your store visitors are either customers who have purchased from you before and know where to go, OR new potential customers. Your menu should have clear, easy access to both the shop page and to learn more about you in your about page. Make it easy to click to another product without going back to a menu. Cull unnecessary steps between landing, and checking out as much as possible.
Tip #8 - Consider your traffic sources
Do you know where your website traffic comes from? Do these sources align with your marketing plan and your current marketing efforts? Are they delivering the ‘right’ kind of people, who are likely to convert? Find out this data via Google Analytics or your own websites Insights panel and then double-down on the channels which are delivering actual shoppers and forget about those delivering browsers (or no traffic).
Tip #9 - Check your descriptions
As an online store, you don’t have a lovely salesperson there to give your products a glow-up like bricks-and-mortar shops do. Product descriptions are the online equivalent, and it’s CRUCIAL to nail these. We know it can be daunting to write if you don’t consider yourself a natural wordsmith - for this reason, descriptions are often the most neglected part of a store. But if you can craft your product descriptions so that the customer gets a feeling for the product without being able to hold the product in their hands, your conversion battle may well be over.
If you are still unsure what to write, think about if you were blindfolded and someone was describing a product - what would you need to know to determine if it's the right product for you? How would you describe it on the phone to someone?
Tip #10 - Review your product photography
The quality of the photos can make or break a site. Are the images of good quality? Do the images have good lighting? Are there enough lifestyle images to show in-use cases of the product? Deep-etched, high quality images which allow for zooming are great, but showing the product in action speaks volumes. We’ve seen businesses overhaul their photography and do nothing else, and their conversion rate increased.
