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The store is successful if it attracts legions of targeted customers, right? You can do it by paying for ads on search engines, other websites, and social media. Or go in for search engine optimization to ensure a steady flow of organic (not paid) visitors to your store.
Whatever the traffic source, what happens when people land on the page? Do they reach the final stage of the customer journey, i.e., checkout? If visitors don’t become customers, there is something wrong with the store.
To understand how your business is performing, look at the analytics. One of the critical metrics for an online store is conversion rate. What is conversion? Conversion in eCommerce is the desired action visitors make on the website. It varies from page to page and illustrates various goals:
subscribing to a newsletter;
adding products to a wish list or cart;
signing up.
But any online merchant expects prospects to complete their orders, which is the most preferred conversion you should focus on increasing. That’s where conversion rate optimization becomes critical. This guide will introduce you top five tips to increase the conversion rate of an online store.
1. Ensure Fast Load Speed
The first thing a visitor pays attention to before browsing your online store is how quickly the page is loading. On average, we wait no more than 10 seconds, after which we close the browser tab, returning to the search results.
It turns out that we, as potential customers, resort to competitors due to a site’s poor quality. Even though initially we were interested and opened the link. Therefore, site loading speed is one of the most critical factors for assessing the quality of converting traffic into a purchase and a crucial metric that affects page ranking. Visitors should receive content as fast as possible. So you’ll need to optimize Magento TTFB (Time To First Byte) or the same web performance indicator for your particular CMS.
2. Focus on the Safety of the Purchase
Due to a large number of cases of fraud, it is necessary to be positive that users are confident that you won’t deceive them. There are many ways to show that buying from your site is risk-free. They include:
Information about your company, phone number, physical address, employees. This way, visitors will understand that real people and a real enterprise stand behind the brand.
Info about the delivery or return of the product, a guarantee of confidentiality, and trust badges. The screenshot below demonstrates one of the variants of trusted symbols that the TriMark R.W. Smith online retailer implements.
Screenshot taken on the official TriMark R.W. Smith website
Post real reviews of your customers, preferably with a name and photo, as well as resolve negative situations.
Also, an important factor for making a purchase decision will be the product warranty.
3. Bring Chatbots into Service
Promptly answering the questions of the buyers means keeping them and leading them in the right direction. Chatbots such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and those provided by Facebook messenger are gradually triumphing over human online consultants and call centers.
And this is not surprising. Chatbots work autonomously and unattended. They don’t make mistakes even when working with several clients at the same time. The chatbot feature allows automating conversations that would otherwise be the responsibility of a human specialist.
The bot will not only answer frequently asked questions and tell you about the latest offers. It also remembers the client’s preferences to provide even greater order simplicity next time.
The screenshot below illustrates that the leading online retailer Wayfair fails to immediately respond to customer questions and has to apologize for the inconvenience. This may lead to a skyrocketing bounce rate and dissatisfaction as the visitors won’t find the solution and have to wait for when the team is available.
Screenshot taken on the official Wayfair website
4. Simplify the Ordering Process
Perhaps you are losing potential customers because the checkout process on the site is too complicated, confusing, or time-consuming. In this case, you should simplify this process so that customers can easily make a purchase and pay for it.
What exactly could be improved in the checkout process?
Be sure to install security certificates and place them on the payment page. This way, users will not be afraid to process a payment at your online store. Let users know that they can trust your site and not hesitate to enter their card info.
Add the function of paying for orders as a guest, that is, without registration. Don't make registration on the site compulsory, especially if the process is long and complicated. No doubt: if the client enjoys dealing with your store for the first time, he will most likely come back to it again and register in the future.
For example, the online store Vitamin World, as seen in the screenshot below, offers the function of paying for the order as a guest.
Screenshot taken on the official Vitamin World website
5. Offer Money-Back Guarantee
Every business owner understands that buyers wish to avoid risks as much as possible. They don’t want to pay money without the assurance that it will be returned to them in case of any problem.
These customer fears can be significantly reduced by giving them a money-back guarantee. Such a strategy will not only help increase your conversion rate. It will also build trust with your customers and increase their loyalty.
A great example is the “100% Happiness Guarantee” from Bombas.
Screenshot taken on the official Bombas website
Over to You
The above techniques on increasing the conversion rate will be useful for start-ups and for those working for a long time. However, go beyond these methods. There are no boundaries in how you can tweak your website features, improve content, and launch campaigns.
Conversion rate optimization is a whole science with a number of approaches and tools. Design, marketing, and sales rules are constantly revolutionizing, requiring never-ending work on conversions. Therefore, you should always look for new ways and test the options that are most beneficial to you.
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About the Author
Kate Parish
Kate Parish is the chief marketing officer at Onilab with over 8 years of experience in Digital Marketing in the sphere of eCommerce web development. Kate always aspires to broaden her competency in line with cutting-edge global trends. Her primary areas of professional interest include SEO, branding, PPC, SMM, Magento PWA development, and online retail in general.