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From the We Make Websites blog



Krissie Leyland
As you plan to build your e-commerce business and set goals to dramatically increase your revenue, it is vitally important to focus on optimizing conversion rates once a customer lands on your website.

The e-commerce world has far too much competition for you to just develop and launch a great product, get customers to your site and then sit and hope for visitors to purchase from your website. You’ve got to be creative and think of effective ways to convert visitors into shoppers by optimizing the customer journey from start to finish. 

A conversion rate in e-commerce is the percentage of users who take a desired action you want them to take when visiting your website. 

Conversion rates vary depending on your e-commerce business goals. The desired action could be something like:

  • A customer adding products to their cart
  • A shopper creates a wishlist within your website or they create an account
  • A visitor downloading a discount code or guide
  • A visitor signing up to your email newsletter or blog
  • Social media likes, shares or comments
  • Online sales

If your conversion rates have been low this year or you're just starting out, our expert tips in this article will help you to smash your conversion rate goals.

Live Chat

More and more e-commerce businesses are choosing to implement Live Chat to replicate the in-store experience. Live Chat allows brands to be available 24/7 and quickly respond to any customer service related questions or product concerns. 

You can trigger live chat on specific pages, such as product pages. For example, if you’re a brand selling high-value products that have a higher average order value, you might want to trigger live chat so that customers can ask questions about the details of a product: reassuring them that they are making the right decision to purchase the product. 

Optimize your product pages

Many e-commerce managers don’t realize the potential of product pages and don’t recognize the importance of optimizing them. Product pages can be the determining factor for someone to add a product to their cart, (or not). 

Could you be missing a trick by neglecting your product pages? 

Product pages are where your customers make the final decision to add a product to their cart, or leave your website, depending on how well optimized they are. So optimizing product pages is super important if your goal is to get more sales. 

Here are a few quick tips to optimize product pages:


1)   Make sure your product pages match your copy elsewhere, you’ll confuse your customers and they will lose trust in your brand if they don’t coincide 
2)   Understand what motivates your customers and write copy to spark interest in your products
3)   Don’t make it a chore for people to find essential information about a product. Instead, make it crystal clear right away in product descriptions. Tell the customer why the product is valuable in the first instance
4)   You should always provide a detailed, refined summary of each product, cutting out the fluff and digging into the good stuff: the product’s functionality, the size and so on


Utilize customer reviews

From your home page to your checkout, it is extremely important to build trust in your brand for people to believe in your products. One of the most effective ways to build trust in your e-commerce brand and ultimately increase sales is to showcase your reviews. 

Shopify found that nearly 95% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. Shoppers want to be reassured that they are making the right decision: spending their money on something worthwhile.

Place your reviews in key places on your website to persuade shoppers to add more items to their cart. You can integrate AI-powered widgets that display your past shoppers’ reviews at exactly the right moment. For example, if a shopper has been repeatedly coming back to the same product, these widgets can track their behavior and display a review about that specific product.

Additionally, use AI to track when a customer is hovering over a product and trigger a pop-up review after a certain amount of time. Consider highlighting star ratings and reviews alongside products, especially the higher priced items.

Or, upsell products at the checkout by showing your highest rated products with the best reviews to spark interest in similar products and encourage customers to add another item to their cart.

Shoppable Visual Content

In 2019, we will see more e-commerce brands utilizing social media for compelling imagery marketing. Visual marketing can contain actionable purchase links or product recommendations, bridging the gap between browsing and purchasing in one click.

For example, Instagram allows customers to click on products in the gallery, view the price and be taken directly to the website to purchase the product. 

This will increase conversions because it pleases shoppers with it’s convenient and fast shopping experience via familiar platforms.

Examples

Online retailer ASOS built an ongoing photo sharing campaign to target millennials and Gen Z. The campaign features a group of stylish 20 something-year-olds, male and female from all over the world. Insiders post photos of themselves wearing clothes available from ASOS on their Instagram profiles, tagging #ASSEENONME. With clickable links, listing the cost of the products in the image which is linked directly to the product page on ASOS.


Luxury fashion brand, Net-a-Porter, has combined content with commerce with their online magazine. Allowing readers to keep up with fashion trends and offer a seamless click and buy option right from the pages; similar to Instagram galleries.

 

Persuasive copywriting

Having an understanding of persuasive copywriting techniques can accelerate your conversion rates and put you well ahead of the competition without investing in getting more shoppers to your website. But, you need to do it right:

1)   Define your audience and personas 
2)   Define your goal and a list of questions you want to be answered from that audience
3)   Create and conduct strategic qualitative research: internal interviews, customer interviews, surveys, etc…
4)   It’s time to identify and document patterns in the research. Note things like words and phrases that stand out or any patterns/themes...
5)   Have a look at any objections, product benefits, and questions that keep being asked...
6)   And finally, define the messaging, noting the most important messaging based on your research and use that to create a strategy which clearly lays out your copy and plans.

Conclusion

That's our top tips for optimizing conversion in 2019! Unfortunately, you cannot just rely on developing and launching a great product, putting it on the internet and waiting for the customers to roll in. Your website needs to constantly be updated and optimized and being at the forefront of e-commerce developments are essential to keep your conversion rates up and get ahead of your competitors.

We hope you found this useful, like any of our suggestions? Have we missed any? Let us know!

Contact us today and we can chat about what we can do for your brand.

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