Have you ever wondered why many visitors leave your store without buying anything? Conversion rate optimization is quickly becoming one of the essential elements of an ecommerce marketing strategy in 2021.
With the right CRO tactics, you can have more sales without investing extra in paid ads and other expensive marketing solutions.
Statistics reveal that the average conversion rate is not more than 2.35% across all industries. Businesses that are not implementing the right practices to optimize the ecommerce conversion funnel are missing out on an opportunity to boost conversions and sales.
If you haven't heard about ecommerce conversion funnels earlier, we're going to talk about it in this article, along with 15-effective ways to generate leads and drive conversions.
What Is A Sales Funnel?
Simply put, a sales funnel acts as a tool for visualizing where your visitors are in the process of buying a product or a service. An ecommerce conversion funnel is wide at the top as it allows every prospect to enter regardless of their interest and engagement levels.
Understanding your conversion funnel can help you identify the voids in the funnel. In other words, you can limit your bounce rate when you get to know more about your sales funnel.
Sales Funnel - Stages
AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action) is the most popular approach representing your prospect's mindset. Each stage requires you to implement dedicated strategies to avoid sending the wrong message at the wrong time.
We're going to have a quick look at all of these stages separately.
Awareness
A moment at which you capture your prospect's attention is critical. It might be a social share, an ad, or a search result. It is your chance to introduce your products and offers to your target audience in the best possible way.
Interest
The next step is where your prospects start showing interest in your products. At this point, they might get in touch with your support team to know more about your offers, delivery, returns, and refund policy.
Decision
So you have convinced your prospect to invest in your products. At this stage, they're ready to buy a product. This is the time to make your best offer so that the entire transitioning process of converting from a prospect to a buyer becomes easy.
Action
The last step of your conversion funnel is where your prospect takes action and becomes your customer. Do not take this step easy. Do whatever in your capacity to convince your one-time buyer to make a repeat purchase and turn into a regular client.
Now that you're familiar with the basics of an ecommerce conversion funnel, it's time to see how you can measure your progress in the long run.
Conversion rate is a metric you need to track regularly to observe how well you're doing in terms of sales and conversions.
What Is A Conversion Rate?
You can calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions you receive in a given time by the total number of visitors you get on your website or a landing page and multiplying it by 100.
Conversion rate is a key metric that allows you to analyze the progress of your website. It also helps you see how well your site is optimized for the best user experience.
If your conversion rate is higher than the average, it means:
- You’re able to capture your audience’s attention and trigger interest
- Your content, customer support, and branding resonate with your target audience
- You have implemented the right strategies to provide your customers with the best possible user experience
Now you must be wondering how you can improve the ecommerce conversion rate for your website. Below we have shared 15 effective CRO strategies that can boost ecommerce conversions for your store in no time.
15 Effective Ways To Boost Conversions And Drive Sales
1. Assist Your Customers With Live Chat
Live chat is an integral element of your customer support strategy. By providing your buyers with quick answers to their queries, businesses can boost ecommerce conversions by up to 30%.
Why Customers Prefer Live Chat Over Automated Solutions
- It’s fast and offers a human touch
- Live chat is more personalized
- Live chat support is affordable
- It provides a direct means of communication
Live Chat Support - Best Practices
- Train your live support agents
- Make it conversational
- Be transparent about your offers
- Be friendly and positive
- Leverage social mimicking
Read our guide on "18 Great Live Chat Apps For Your Ecommerce Business" to know about great live chat apps for the e-commerce business to help boost your customer satisfaction levels and increase sales.
2. Use Content That Resonates With Your Audience
Conversion-driven content moves customers and encourages them to take action. A foolproof content strategy assists with lead generation and also leads to conversions and brand advocacy.
Make sure the comprehension level of your content resonates with your target audience. It's also critical to keep your tone consistent with your brand voice and values.
Conversion-Oriented Writing Tips
- Use power words
- Create a compelling hook
- Include videos and images
- Avoid vagueness
- Keep it short, simple, and concise
- Hyperlink references
- Create interesting headlines
- Ask questions
- Avoid jargon
- Add CTAs
3. Design A User-Friendly Website
Research reveals that more than 25% of visitors leave a store because they find the web design too complicated for their use.
Remember, no matter how interesting and innovative your product range, users will lose interest if they fail to find what they're looking for quickly and without disruptive advertising and checkout tantrums.
Here are a few things you can do to make your website easy to use and more user-friendly:
- Use a simple yet modern website design
- Keep your navigation structure uncomplicated
- Use Simple typography
- Keep your branding colors and brand voice in mind while designing your website
- Limit the number of ads and pop-ups on your website
- Choose a mobile-responsive web design with a fast loading time
4. Create Optimized Landing Pages
Unlike blog posts and other generic pages, a landing page is something that addresses one specific concern. Landing pages, if optimized correctly, can significantly improve the ecommerce conversion rate.
Essentials Of A Killer Landing Page
- Set clear expectations for your buyers by defining your unique selling proposition (USP)
- Add relevant images to help your visitors know the real benefits of your products
- Create a dedicated features section
- Include customer testimonials
- Add action-driven CTAs
5. Add Reviews
Customer reviews and testimonials act as social proof that persuades other visitors (especially first-timers) to invest in your products and services.
You can send a follow-up email to your customers after each successful transaction, asking them to leave genuine feedback on your website. You can also offer an incentive for those customers who are leaving feedback with images and videos.
6. Include Images And Videos
The biggest challenge for online sellers is to explain the real benefits of their products as customers can't have a tactile buying experience like real-time shopping. That is where HD images and videos come in.
Even if your content is premium, make sure to spruce it more by adding relevant images and videos.
If hiring a full-time designer for your explainer and marketing videos is not currently an option, you can use free-to-use tools like Canva to design visual elements for your website.
7. Introduce Value-Added Deals And Discounts
Just like you have your goals, your customers also take action for their benefit. For conversion optimization, the best strategy is to offer your buyers valuable discounts and incentives. They act as a motivational factor and encourage buyers to take timely action before they miss a deal.
Whether it's a time-sensitive offer, a BOGO deal, coupon code, or a cashback offer, offer your customers a valuable incentive, and they will surely come back for more.
8. Make Your Website Mobile-Responsive
According to research, mobile users accounted for more than 56% of the total web traffic.
With more and more customers using their smart devices to shop online, it is becoming more essential than ever to optimize your sites for mobiles.
Whether it's your web design, CTAs, or other visual elements, such as images or videos, make sure you optimize everything on your website to give mobile users the same experience as web users.
9. Improve Your Site Speed
If your site speed is low, your conversion rates are likely to be the same. Website speed matters. Why? Because today's customers are busy. Also, they have so many options available that compromising at any stage might not be an option.
Many studies also validate this point and emphasize that ecommerce businesses should work hard to improve their site speed.
The first step is to check your current site speed. There are many tools available online, including PageSpeed Insights by Google, GTmetrix, etc.
After knowing your site speed, there are certain things you can do to improve your site speed.
- Optimize videos and images
- Enable compression
- Minify CSS
- Combine files
- Get rid of apps and plug-ins you don’t need anymore
10. Simplify Your Checkout Process
There is nothing worse than forcing your customers to create an account on your website. Instead, you can offer a guest account option that they can use to check out without the hassle.
Keep your checkout process as simple as possible. Reduce the number of forms you have included.
“Ask for less, and they'll buy more.”
11. Add Trust Seals And Case Studies
Lack of credibility and trust is another reason why people show resistance to buying stuff from a website. Before they share their confidential information with a brand, they need assurance that the other party is reliable.
Show all the trust badges you have, including quality certifications, SSL, etc. You must also create a detailed contact page highlighting your phone numbers, location (if any), social profile links, and email.
You can also have a dedicated case studies section on your website highlighting the previous projects you had with other reliable names in the market.
12. Spread The Word With Social Buttons
Integrating social sharing buttons on your product pages is a foolproof way to build credibility.
Here, the key is to include buttons appropriate for the type of content you're presenting in front of your prospects. For example, you can use Facebook for text-based posts, Instagram and Pinterest for visual content, and Twitter for snippets and quotes.
13. Offer Multiple Delivery And Payment Options
Present-day customers prefer options (read: lots of options). Do not limit yourself to conventional delivery and payment options only. Try to facilitate your customers as much as possible so that they reach out to your brand not only for their needs but also to recommend it within their social circles.
14. Add CTAs
CTAs act as conversion magnets that attract your visitor's attention and convince them to take action. There are different types of CTAs that you can add to your homepage and landing pages, including 'buy now, 'subscribe', and more.
Make sure you split-test different factors while creating call-to-action (CTAs) for your website to check which option works the best. The placement of buttons, colors, and copies all contribute to the conversion process.
Tips For A Winner CTA
- Use a powerful command verb
- Use words that elicit a strong response from visitors
- Leverage FOMO
- Customize your CTAs based on the device being used by your customers
- Be creative
- Include numbers
15. Personalize
Studies reveal that customers prefer to engage with brands that invest their resources in knowing them and offer personalized solutions based on their needs.
Gone are the days when a single conversion strategy was enough to work wonders for the masses. Today, each customer is different. Businesses that fail to offer personalized solutions struggle to capture the buyer's attention.
Create buyer personas and make strategies to target each group separately. This strategy can go a long way.
