17 Things You Probably Have Not Tried That Will Improve Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

1. Make Your Store Responsive

Having a response store design has multiple benefits including a higher conversion rate. If your ecommerce store doesn’t work for mobile devices, you’ll lose mobile traffic right away. Low traffic means a low conversion rate.

But this doesn’t end here.

A study found that responsive websites have 11% higher conversion rates than non-responsive websites. This is because it isn’t easier for your visitors to view the desktop website on a mobile device and proceed with the purchase. It gets too complex.

And visitors don’t have any other option but to quit.

How critical responsive design is for your store, check this out: O´Neill Clothing increased its conversion rate by 407% on Android and 65.71% on iOS when it switched to a responsive design.

If your ecommerce store isn’t responsive, switch it today to improve conversion rate.

2. Improve Load Time

How quickly your ecommerce store loads have a huge impact on its conversion rate. Here is what the statistics show:

• 79% of customers who aren’t satisfied with the website’s performance are less likely to convert and buy.
• 47% of visitors expected a website to load in less than 2 seconds.
• A single second delay in website load time reduces conversion rate by 7%.

If your store doesn’t load quickly within seconds, you are already losing customers. Here is how to improve your store’s speed:

1. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your store’s load time. You’ll see a range of suggestions to improve speed, follow all the suggestions to achieve 100 score.
2. Optimize images. Compress them and switch to lazy loading.
3. Use browser caching.
4. Switch to a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
5. Use a reliable host and stick with a dedicated hosting plan.

3. Add Product Images

Product images are crucial for conversion and sales for any ecommerce store. Images are easy-to-remember, the human brain can easily process images, and images are considered highly persuasive. An average person can remember over 2000 pictures with 90% accuracy quite comfortably.

Adding quality product images on your e commerce store helps potential customers see the product and this helps them with decision-making. In the absence of product images, your ideal customers won’t have any clue of what they’re ordering, and this kills conversion rate.

Using 360-degree images perform even better. They’re known to increase conversion rate by a whopping 27%.

Why?

Because your customer can see the product from all possible angles, and it gives them a better idea of what they’re about to buy – thus increasing conversions.

4. Add Product Videos

Product images are important but have no match with product videos. Videos increase conversion rate by a whopping 80%.

Eight out of 10 people have reported that they purchased a product after watching its video. 77% of those who saw a video testimonial about the product were ready to buy.

Product videos are more important than ever because videos provide a clear and realistic view of your product.

Here are a few advanced tips to create product videos that will guarantee more conversions on your e commerce marketplace:

• Keep it professional.
• Avoid low-quality videos.
• Keep it short (Videos under 30 seconds perform best)
• The video must be entertaining yet informative
• Add a real human in the video as it develops trust and increases the conversion rate

With these simple tips, you’re more likely to do more online sales than before!

5. Simplify Checkout Process

The checkout process plays a significant role in conversion rate and cart abandonment. As much as 35% of people say that they abandon cart due to forced account creation and another 27% said too long or complicated checkout process forces them to abandon cart:

Simplifying your checkout process and making it easier for buyers to pay for their orders quickly is the best thing you can do to improve conversions. Here are a few steps that you can take to simplify the checkout process:

• Use single-page checkout
• Offer guest checkout where buyers don’t have to create an account
• Use a progress bar during checkout to show them how long or short the process is.

6. Manage Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment is a big issue for ecommerce as it kills conversion rate. Cart abandonment has several reasons (e.g. high cost, security concerns, no return policy, etc.), and ideally, you must deal with all the reasons to reduce cart abandonment to boost conversion rate.

However, what’s more important is your cart abandonment strategy. How you handle people who have abandoned the cart is more crucial. Getting in touch with cart abandoners and persuading them to complete their checkout process is one of the best ways to increase conversions and sales.

Here are a few quick ways to manage cart abandonment effectively and to persuade potential customers to complete checkout process:

• Use exit-intent powered popups or other widgets to immediately interact with cart abandoners
• Send personalized emails with discount coupons to people who have abandoned the cart
• Offer free shipping so they can complete the purchase to avail it
• Send a survey to ask them what made them abandon the cart. Use insights to fix issues and improve CX.

7. Add White Space

Do you have enough white space on your store, product pages, and other essential pages? White space increases comprehension by 20% as it makes it easier to read and digest content. Check out the following example:

White space looks pleasing yet professional.

The best part: White space boosts conversion rate. The gDiapers added white space on its homepage that increased conversion rate by 20%.

Adding white space on product pages help you improve conversion rate as you can guide users visually to important elements on the page.

8. Improve Store Layout

How easy and straightforward your ecommerce store is? Can visitors find what they’re looking for quickly with a single click?

Poor store structure and ambiguous layout are lethal for conversion rate in ecommerce. Take inspiration from Amazon. You can easily and quickly move to any page with a single click. A poorly structured ecommerce store will make it hard for visitors to find products and information they’re looking for – leading to a poor conversion rate.

Follow these best practices to improve your store’s structure and layout to lift conversions:

• Add a search bar so visitors can find what they’re looking for
• Make sure all the pages are no more than 2-clicks away from the homepage
• All the pages should be interlinked. There shouldn’t be any standalone pages.
• To achieve a user-friendly store design and smooth navigation consider using headless commerce as a possible option

9. Make Call to Action Prominent

Call to Action (CTA) is an essential part of your store structure that has a direct impact on conversion rate. A prominent CTA button will grab attention right away and it stands out from the crowd. If visitors can’t find the CTA button, they won’t convert.

CTAs guide visitors what action they’re supposed to take to achieve a desired outcome.

Here is how to make CTAs prominent to boost conversion:

• Use a contrasting color to make CTAs stand out from the crowd
• Add whitespace around the CTA button
• Add button border
• Adding an arrow on the CTA button makes it prominent
• Include social proof close to CTAs

10. Show Items Left in Stock

Listing items left in stock is a known way to increase conversion rate. It creates urgency that persuades visitors to act quickly. It is due to the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) which means people fear missing things that others might have fun with.

This works great when there are limited products left in the stock. This gives a positive signal to the visitors that this product must be of high quality as people are buying it and is limited in stock. The Scarcity Effect makes people perceive scarce products as valuable while products that are in abundance are perceived to have low value.

Here is what you should do to maximize ecommerce conversion rate: Always list items left in stock when the stock is about to finish.

11. Add Trust Badges

Adding trust symbols on the payment page and in the footer of your store has now become a norm for a reason. People trust these symbols and look for them. Trust badge by VeriSign helped a company increase its conversion rate by 137%.

You need to ensure visitors that they’re in safe hands and that their personal and financial information is safe with your store. If you can make them feel safe and secure, they’ll convert. Else, they’ll switch.

Research shows that the top three trust badges include:

1. PayPal
2. Norton
3. VeriSign

Use one of these three trust badges because they’re trusted by consumers.

Another great solution is to embed a Google reviews badge, but you need to have around 100 recent reviews to be able to add it to your website.

Try a free Google review widget instead.

12. Reviews and Testimonials

Trust badges aren’t the only indicators of trust; customer testimonials and reviews add a lot of trust too.

As much as 95% of people say that reviews influence their purchase decision, and 2 out of 3 people say that they’re more likely to buy a product after watching a video testimonial of how the product will help them.

Our customer was able to improve its purchase path by 38,5% by adding reviews to it.

Adding customer testimonials, reviews, and ratings on product pages is a great way to increase conversion rate and help potential buyers in making a purchase decision.

An easy way to persuade customers to leave a review and rate your product is by offering them a discount on their next purchase if they publish an honest review. If you’re in a need for a tool to collect reviews, I recommend you to try Trustmary.

13. Free Shipping

Shipping cost ruins conversion rate. Unexpected shipping cost is one of the major reasons why people abandon carts. A study found that 74% of customers will leave a shopping cart due to high shipping cost.

What you should do?

Offer free shipping as it is considered the most important incentive to buy a product by as much as 90% of consumers. Free shipping drive conversions and sales.

You can link free shipping to a certain minimum order value to absorb shipping cost.

14. Offer Discount

Free shipping is just one type of discount that your ideal customers are looking for, discount coupons and flat sales work best.

A coupon code that offers an instant discount is a perfect way to increase the conversion rate. Research shows that 92% of consumers in the US used at least one discount code and 30% of millennials said that they always used coupons.

Here are a few techniques to use discounts to boost ecommerce conversion rate:

• Use event-based discounts e.g. cart abandonment
• Use percentage discounts as they work best for low-priced products
• Create and run coupon campaigns regularly to keep your customers engaged.

15. Offer Returns and Refunds

The return and refund policy play a crucial role in the ecommerce conversion rate. As much as 62% of consumers read an ecommerce store’s return policy before buying a product.

You need to have a no-questions-asked refund policy as it encourages consumers to convert and buy from your store. Here is what type of refund and return policy consumers prefer:

• No cost
• Immediate refunds
• Drop product to a local store
• Accepting returns without a purchase receipt

You need to make sure that your return and refund policy is clearly stated and is accessible easily.

16. Add Multiple Payment Options

Having a single payment method reduces your conversion rate. Not having enough payment methods is one of the top 10 reasons why consumers leave a cart.

Adding multiple payment methods and letting customers pay via their preferred payment method is a sure way to lift the ecommerce conversion rate.

Add PayPal, credit cards, and local payment methods to make sure no customer leaves your store due to the unavailability of his favorite payment method.

17. Get Feedback Regularly

Nothing works better than collecting feedback from website visitors and customers for improving conversion rate and user experience. Ask them what stops them from buying from your store.

Feedback gives you insights into what website visitors don’t like. You can use data to improve the user experience that will help you increase the conversion rate.

– Our website gets a ton of traffic daily, so it’s an excellent opportunity to reach our target audience. By using popups, we can validate which products or services website visitors are interested in, says Head of Ecommerce at Eurokangas. 

Here are a few actionable ways to collect and use feedback for improving conversion rate:

• Use exit-intent survey popups
• Use the live chat to interact with website visitors instantly
• Use a survey tool for feedback collection
• Use data for conversion rate optimization and A/B testing.

Focus on Customer Experience

There are tons of other things that you can do to improve the conversion rate of your ecommerce store. Every element on the landing page and product page plays a unique role in converting visitors into customers.

However, if you don’t have a good customer experience, your conversion will suck no matter what you do.

Map your customer journey and create a customer experience design your customers love.

What you need to do is implement these techniques one-by-one and not simultaneously. Change one element at a time, see its impact on conversion rate, and then move on to the next one.

If you do it right, these 17 ecommerce conversion rate tips and techniques will prove to be more than enough.