33 Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Steps Guaranteed to Increase Sales in 2022

This act is called a conversion, and it’s just about the most important metric you’ll need to watch as you plan on building your business and increasing revenue.

Conversion rate is defined as the percentage of visitors that land on your website who complete the desired action.

Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving the shopping experience to drive a specific KPI — usually, sales.

Even if you are doing everything right, you can still expect to win the sale around 2% of the time.

Before we go through what to do to increase conversions, we need to know exactly what your current visitors are doing to set up proper eCommerce conversion rate benchmarks for your online store.

As a heat-mapping tool, you get the functionality of click, cursor movement, and scroll-depth mapping.

The easiest way to explain Quantcast is that it’s a tag-based analytics tool that fills a niche between Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics in that it measures users’ site usage and provides advanced demographic data on a per-click basis.

This underutilized conversion optimization tactic helps you bridge the gap between what your customers are looking for and your on-site language and content.

I suggest using high-quality images and videos on the product pages as that helps the user visualize the product better and increases conversion rates.

Online shoppers have come to expect a certain standard that they have grown accustomed to on Amazon.

Think you can’t offer free shipping? Keep in mind that this is often a psychological game.

Increase your product prices to cover shipping costs if that’s what needs to be done.

3. Provide limited-time coupon codes.

When your coupon code expires this will drive urgency and shoppers will more likely go through with the purchase and not get distracted.

4. Be competitively priced.

If you are selling brand-name items that a lot of other stores offer, unfortunately, you need to price your products at or below the average price in order to compete.

Be sure to adjust your prices frequently to see what resonates.

Just check out the article in the New Yorker praising Outdoor Voices’ products.

They have clearly targeted the right audience.

Market your brand to the right audience, with the right messaging and the right imagery, and the revenue will come in.

5. Tweak and test your eCommerce checkout process.

If your store checkout process is too long, complicated, or unconventional, you may lose a lot of customers right as they are ready to buy.

For example, BigCommerce offers an optimized checkout out-of-the-box that is technically a single page (with a few drop downs and a persistent view of the product(s) being bought).

Out-of-the-box optimized checkout example.

BigCommerce allows you to customize every pixel on your checkout too through their Checkout SDK.

Multiple BigCommerce partners can help you create a custom checkout experience that fits your brand and customers.

One page checkout skin example, powered by Intuit Solutions.

6. Use cart abandonment software.

If you are getting a lot of abandoned carts – i.e. someone lands on your site, puts an item in the cart, and then leaves – then abandoned cart software can greatly increase your store conversion rates.

This software works with users that have added items to their shopping cart, entered their email and details, and then left your store.

Their software allows you to create follow-up emails that will send the user an email with their cart contents as well as allow you to give them a coupon code to get a discount as an incentive to complete their order.

The success of this software is different for every store, but there is no doubt that it helps pretty much 100% of eCommerce stores that use it.

Some stores see as much as a 30% increase in their website conversion rates.

Acting on cart abandonment by itself can take you from a low to average conversion rate.

I have had mixed results with this.

That sends a bad signal.

It would be better to not implement it at all if you can’t be there when they want to chat.

What this does, though, is build a direct communication line from your potential customer to you.

Creating a real human connection will help build trust for this purchase as well as lifetime loyalty in the future.

8. Let customers know your eCommerce store is safe.

This is subtle, but a really big deal.

You need to build a certain level of trust in a short amount of time for customers to be willing to enter their credit card information on your website.

Customers want to know that they are dealing with a legitimate store that has industry-standard security measures in place.

This ensures them that their credit card information will be protected. Here are a few things that help:

1. Install SSL at checkout (out-of-the-box on most eCommerce platforms) and site-wide if possible.
2. Show small images of credit cards, PayPal, and other payment options as a visual signal that you use customer-trust payment options.
3. Display some sort of McAfee, GeoTrust, or other security badges, and make sure that you actually have an active account with them. Don’t just add an image if you aren’t truly secure.

Structure your product categories in a logical manner, but make sure you use as few levels as possible to allow a user to reach a product as fast as possible.

I simplified mine like the above.

Oftentimes, it is also necessary to allow customers to Shop by Color or other various fields.

Set up a rotating banner to showcase top products.

Here is an example from Trust the Bum.

Rotating image 1

Rotating image 2

Rotating image 3

Also, implement a website search to allow customers to find products easily.

The faster a visitor can find a product, the more likely they are to buy from you.

10. Make your checkout form easy to understand.

Make sure that everything on your checkout form is completely understood, such as CVV and input formats.

In fact, if you can, I would have the fields limit only what can be typed into certain fields to make it easier for users.

So, when a user types a credit card number, format it for them as they go along to make it easier to read and harder to mess up.

In a date field, don’t let the user type, but have a date picker or dropdown.

Digital wallets are payment processors like PayPal Express, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and others.

These systems allow users to sign in with their account information and then pre-populate everything for them.

It is faster for them and more secure for everyone.

Learn more about what Couture Candy and other stores are seeing from implementing Digital Wallet solutions like Amazon Pay.

11. Always show shopping cart contents.

Show a shopping cart icon with a link to get to it after the user has entered an item into the cart.

As mentioned earlier, an optimized checkout does this out of the box.

Example of an out-of-the-box checkout.

12. Let customers checkout as guests.

Allow users to checkout without signing up for an account.

You will have their name and email address when they buy anyway.

13. Give detailed product descriptions.

Make sure you describe the product in great detail so the customer knows exactly what they are getting.

Even better: add a product video or demonstration.

All of Sierra Designs’ products have videos featured on their product page showing the product off and in use.

All of this helps to build your SEO ranking as well – so it is beneficial for you for multiple reasons.

14. Allow customers to review products.

Did you search for reviews before buying? I bet you did.

You could even offer customers a coupon code or other type of incentive next time they purchase as a reward for providing a review.

Also, ask the customer to voice any complaints to you so you have the opportunity to address any issues as this will help you receive more positive reviews.

15. Make your “Add to Cart” and “Checkout” buttons prevalent.

Sometimes a user is thinking of buying and can be further prompted to do so by an actionable button that says exactly what to do and that stands out from all the other surrounding text and images.

The absence of these buttons is often the result of marketers overthinking things.

“Simply changing our CTA from black to a blue color has reduced abandoned carts by up to 50%”

Jeremy Hagon, Marketing Manager, Andreas Carter Sports

16. Provide product testimonials if applicable.

Ever heard the statement ‘Facts Tell, but Stories Sell’?

Well, it’s true.

Prove your product works by using real testimonials.

Start by offering your product for review to prominent review websites (that give honest reviews) and use this as a starting point for your testimonials.

Hint – press reviews count!

17. Have a great product return policy.

This may not sound like conversion optimization, but is another example of basic business practices acting as CRO.

18. Optimize for mobile devices.

According to Forrester, mobile devices will account for more than one-third of retail sales in 2018.

19. Display Your Phone Number Prominently

Having a phone number prominently displayed on your website will reduce the anxiety of your customers.

They will know that they can always pick up the phone and talk to someone if something goes wrong.

This touch of authenticity can go a long way in increasing your conversion rates.

20. Provide valuable content.

Write useful and valuable content to supplement your products.

This will also help to increase organic SEO traffic.

Again, this is not traditional conversion rate optimization, but it still moves the needle.

See below how Kap7 uses content about water polo drills and tips to supplement their expertise in water polo swimwear.

21. Capture Emails

Visitors may take more than one session on your website to convert.

That is why capturing emails on your site is crucial.

22. Grab visitors’ attention quickly.

23. Use “Calls to Action” sparingly.

Don’t overwhelm a visitor with too many options and CTAs on one screen.

Drive the user to the call-to-action that you want them to perform on that page. If they are on a product page, then use ‘Add to Cart’. If they are on the Cart page use: ‘Proceed to Checkout’.

24. Clearly state your unique selling proposition

Explain why a visitor should buy from you.

What makes you different from all the others selling the same products? What is your unique value proposition? Why would I buy from you?

Yes, you read that right.

26. Measure your eCommerce conversion rate optimization success.

There are a couple of ways to make sure your tweaks and changes are working.

The obvious one is to verify that your conversion rates are increasing.

Make sure to track your store’s conversion rates day-over-day, week-over-week, month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year, and in any customizable way, you want to see it. You can view this easily on your dashboard, or on the Analytics Dashboard.

There is more than just increasing conversions, though, as you want to make sure your value per customer or bottom line is increasing as well.

27. Implement a Browse Abandonment Campaign

28. Always Be Testing

29. Chatbots

Using chatbots to interact with customers can help your customers quickly get answers to their questions.

This will also reduce the overhead needed to staff up a live chat.

30. Personalization

By using tools such as Google Optimize, you can personalize your website to your customers.

For example, if I go to a watch website and look at women’s watches the next time I come to the Homepage you can feature women’s watches and remove any of the men’s watches.

Add a progress bar to your checkout. This will let your customers know where they are in the process and how much longer it will take to complete their purchase.

32. Add Filters to Your Category Pages

Filters are crucial in helping your customers navigate and drill down to the right products.

33. User Personalization

With the powerful user tracking and communication software available off the shelf, there’s no excuse for not personalizing the user experience.

For example, one common combo that’s super easy to set up is the pop-up tool Privy with your email marketing system – something like Klaviyo that will be sending transactional emails based on user behavior.

Now, if you’re offering a coupon code you, of course, will send the coupon in the email, but what’s going to happen when the user clicks the email?

If the code isn’t being applied automatically, you’re hurting your performance by making the user fend for themselves.

Instead, Privy makes it simple to trigger a welcome bar or notification based on a variety of triggers including URL parameters.

Pop a code in the URL of the email’s button and have the coupon easily accessible on the site and voilà, you’ve personalized your user’s experience and made it significantly easier for them to use and remember your offer.

What to Do With Your New Customers

The conversion optimization game doesn’t end when you make the first sale.

It doesn’t end when you make your 100th sale either.

It’s great that you now have customers, but now is the time you go from that 2% conversion rate to something much higher.

Why predictable? Because once you have a baseline average conversion rate for your site and a steady repeat purchase rate from already existing customers – you can better determine how much to spend on advertising to win a customer over.

This is because your ROAS (return on ad spend) lowers as repeat purchases increase.

Ecommerce expert Bryan Bowman calls this the “Value Ladder.”

At 2017’s PROSPER Show in Las Vegas, he gave a fantastic presentation about how to build a value ladder, beginning with free educational content (i.e. your blog) and moving people up the awareness ladder to increase sales with your brand.

Here is how he drew it out.

Literally, he hand drew it.

Here are the steps he described – paraphrased here – to build a value ladder.

The free stage:

Potential customers begin at an unaware stage.

They don’t know they are looking for your product.

Maybe only one of those reasons is fishing lures.

At this stage, work to capture emails via pop-ups as described below, or retarget visitors with ads to pull them back to the site.

They are now aware they might have a fishing lure problem.

The $ Stage:

This is similar to the Badass Beard Care “free product” offer mentioned earlier.

At this point, you will have the customer’s email and can begin using an email nurture stream, rather than additional advertising dollars to continue them up the value ladder.

The $$ Stage:

Now, they have tried your lure and like it.

Offer them a subscription service to multiple lures, or monthly lures.

Or, offer them a bundle. Either way, you are moving them up the value ladder.

The $$$ Stage:

Often, each stage will require a new “awareness” problem.

For instance, say you now want to sell someone a tackle box for all their new lures.

First, you have to educate them on why their current tackle box isn’t fitting the bill.

In this way, the value ladder often starts over.

The difference, however, is that you already have the customer’s business and email address.

You don’t need to re-advertise to them.

At this point, your eCommerce business is more mature and it may make sense to partner with other brands to offer fishing trips (for example) to your audience and move them even further up both the value and engagement ladder.

Beyond how well your store converts, there are a few other metrics that matter when discussing conversion.

That’s because they are indicative of engaged or disengaged user behavior.

Moving these metrics in the right direction will generally help your overall store conversion rate.

• Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who leave after viewing a single page. A high bounce rate is not a good thing – for some reason (or reasons), people aren’t finding what they’re looking for on your store, so they are leaving immediately after landing on your site.
• Exit Rate, often confused with bounce rate, is the percentage of people who leave after viewing the page. Your exit rate lets you know the last page that users view before they move on. A very high exit rate on a specific page can be a red flag — this is one metric you can look to drive down with landing page optimization.
• Click through rate: The number of people who click a link to your website from an ad or email. Optimization for AdWords or email marketing campaigns often focuses on getting more users to click through to your website and take an action — or even engage on social media.
• You can find these metrics in your Google Analytics account under “Behavior > Overview”.
• Average Session Duration is an engagement metric that gives you a general idea of how long people are sticking around your site. A high bounce rate means a low average time on site — visitors aren’t sticking around long enough to do whatever it is you want them to do (convert).
• Average Page Depth (AKA Pages per Session in Google Analytics) is an engagement metric that tells you how many pages a potential shopper visited before leaving. This metric is simply total pageviews per session duration. Note that more page views can mean more engagement but also can mean a lack of clarity in your conversion funnel if no conversion is present.

You can find these metrics in your Google Analytics account under “Audience > Overview”.

A MICRO CASE STUDY BY INFLOW

The value ladder isn’t perfect for everyone, but it does do a great job at explaining why it is important for you to think through what you will do with your customer once you get them in.

Driving repeat business is extremely valuable, both in terms of revenue as well as brand engagement and interaction.

It is how you actually build a brand – not just a flash sale site.

Have questions? Leave them in the comments below!