5 Tips to Improve eCommerce Business Conversion Rates
Creating and running an eCommerce business takes a lot of time and effort. First, you need to decide what products you will be selling and how you will source them. Once you have that lined up, you need to set up your store and start driving traffic to your website using paid marketing techniques.
However, with competition in online shopping always increasing, there is still a lot you need to do to ensure your visitors convert into customers. This blog discusses a few simple tips to improve your conversion rate.
Improving eCommerce Conversion
A visitor converts into a customer when he or she is encouraged to make a purchase from your store. The act of buying is called conversion, and it is one of the most important metrics to monitor in any business. Sales recruitment agencies have conversions just like an electronics accessories store. The nature of conversion may vary, but its purpose remains the same; getting people to buy from your business.
You may already be getting some conversions on your store, but there is always room for improvement. Remember, conversions are not 100% arbitrary. There are certain steps you can take to improve your conversion rate, also known as conversion optimization. These include the following:
- Free Shipping Can Encourage Purchases
- Product Pages Should Include High-Res Images/Videos
- Competitively Pricing Your Products Attracts Buyers
- Limited-Time-Only Coupons Encourage Impulse Buying
- Optimize Your Checkout Process for Conversions
Let’s examine these in more detail below.
Free Shipping Can Encourage Purchases
Ecommerce giants like Amazon have changed customer expectations from digital marketplaces forever. Customers expect prompt delivery and free shipping with their purchases. If you don’t offer free shipping with your products, you are likely to lose customers to a competitor that does.
Of course, offering free shipping may not always be easy, especially for an eCommerce store just starting out. Free shipping means that the seller (you) absorbs the cost of delivering the products to the purchaser.
However, don’t be alarmed if you can’t offer free shipping. In most cases, free shipping is a psychological game. You can increase the price of your products to include the shipping you would have to pay for. This way the customer still thinks they get free shipping, while you don’t have to absorb unnecessary costs to sell.
Product Pages Should Include High-Res Images/Videos
Many new customers will be wary of buying products from you because you don’t have a relationship of trust with them yet. This is entirely natural. After all, when shopping online for shoes, you can’t touch them or try them on. So one of the ways you can build trust with your customers is to offer high-resolution pictures and videos of products on the product page.
This shows a visitor on your website exactly what they can expect from a product. When a customer is able to visualize the product he or she will be getting, the chances of them converting increase significantly.
Competitively Pricing Your Products Attracts Buyers
Nobody likes to pay more than necessary for anything, and that includes the products on your eCommerce store. When you’re selling the same brand products as many of your competitors, you can’t afford to raise your prices above theirs. Consumers are intelligent, and will not buy from a seller that sells above the average price of a specific branded product.
You will only end up losing business to your competitors. Instead, analyze your competitors’ price points. Use this to price your product at or below average, ensuring you attract more customers than them.
Limited-Time Coupons Encourage Impulse Buying
Coupon codes for your eCommerce store are easy to create and can pay off immensely when you need to trigger short-term buying. Coupons should offer a percentage or specific amount off the price of an order. When you add a time-limit to the coupon, it adds a sense of urgency to the purchase in the purchaser’s mind.
If the coupon offers enough value, and the product is worth it, you will see more purchases. You may even see purchases from bargain-hunters who may not need the product but can’t resist a good offer.
Optimize Your Checkout Process for Conversions
To put it simply, in order to get more purchases, your checkout process needs to be as simple as possible. Unconventional or complicated checkout processes will see customers abandoning their carts and not completing the purchase. That is revenue from a willing customer that you are losing out on.
You need to evaluate your checkout process thoroughly, using A/B testing methods among other techniques. Once you have evaluated the process, you will need to optimize it to make buying as easy and as intuitive as possible.
Many of these tips are things that you can do yourself and start seeing improvements in conversion rates right away. But some of them may be more technical, and require you to hire a full-time or part-time eCommerce marketing resource. Reach out to your local marketing recruitment agency to source high-quality candidates who can get the job done for you. That leaves you free to concentrate on other aspects of running an eCommerce business.
