With Shopify, anyone can start an online business without any difficulty. The platform offers plenty of features for new sellers, making it easier for them to set up a store with limited finances.
But is setting up a feature-rich store enough to get the desired sales?
No!
Why? Because even if you have the best store in the digital space, it is still hard to convert your visitors into paying customers if you don't have foolproof conversion rate optimization strategies in place.
According to research, only about 22% of Shopify stores are happy with their conversion rates.
So what makes Shopify CRO particularly challenging for the sellers?
- The competition in an online selling space is huge
- Customers have countless options
- Sellers fail to create actionable CTAs and content that converts
- Generic or unclear selling proposition
The result?
- You'll burn your resources and marketing budgets
- You'll get depressed
- You'll waste your time
- You'll experience low-profit margins
If you've been experiencing this and a lot more, you have come to the right place. In this detailed Shopify CRO guide, we'll highlight some of our favorite conversion rate optimization strategies, along with the 13 best free Shopify apps to improve your conversion rate.
What Is eCommerce CRO?
CRO, also known as conversion rate optimization, refers to any desired action you want your visitors to take. For online sellers, it is mostly about sales. But it may also include subscriptions, ebook downloads, and more.
The two types of conversions include:
-Macro conversion: Macro conversion means the primary action you want your buyers to take.
-Micro conversion: Micro conversion refers to smaller goals that lead to the primary goal.
How Do You Calculate Your eCommerce Conversion Rate?
You can use this formula to calculate your conversion rate:
“Conversion rate = Number of conversions/number of visitors ✕ 100”
You may need to tweak this formula a bit according to your needs. For instance, if a visitor can convert every time they enter your website, you can replace 'number of visitors' with 'number of sessions'.
What Is The Average eCommerce Conversion Ratio?
A survey conducted back in 2019 revealed that the average Shopify conversion rate is 1.5%. Research indicates that your Shopify store is among the top 20% of Shopify stores if your conversion rate is higher than 3.1%.
But if your Shopify conversion rate hovers between 1%-3%, you should work on your conversion rate optimization strategies to improve your conversion ratio.
Why Should You Care About eCommerce CRO?
There are many reasons why you should optimize your conversion funnel for more sales. Some of them include:
Gets You More Buyers
Conversion rate optimization can help you get more customers without investing more in your customer acquisition strategies.
When you optimize your conversion funnel, you tend to know more about your customers, which eventually leads to a better customer experience.
That goes without saying that the better the customer experience for buyers, the more customers you'd be able to get from the same amount of traffic you're receiving.
Helps You Know More About Your Customers
You cannot optimize your conversion strategies if you're not familiar with your target audience. Much of the research that goes into Shopify CRO relates to who your target audience is.
Knowing more about your target audience helps you identify who you're marketing to.
Increases Your Profits
A slight improvement in your Shopify conversion optimization strategies may lead to a noticeable rise in your revenues. Unlike other expensive marketing tactics, CRO provides quick and tangible returns that go into your pocket as you don't have to share them with your advertisers.
Reduced Customer Acquisition Costs
You can benefit from CRO optimization if you're already on a tight budget and want to free up some finances for your social media and PPC campaigns. CRO also helps businesses reduce their customer acquisition costs since you're more focused on converting your existing visitors into paying customers.
Allows You To Outperform Your Competitors
Not every online business is leveraging CRO optimization to increase conversions. That means you're going to have the edge over your competitors if you're implementing the right CRO strategies to boost your sales.
Improves Brand Affinity
Businesses that implement CRO strategies tend to offer consistent services to their customers. That promotes brand loyalty and trust. Customers are more likely to trust brands that understand their needs and offer personalized solutions to their problems.
Here are some of our tried-and-tested Shopify CRO strategies that can help you increase your Shopify conversion rate in no time.
How To Boost Your Conversion Rate?
Create A Simple And User-Friendly Website
The most obvious one, right? Customers prefer easy-to-use websites over cluttered and complex web designs. Seek help from a professional web designer and create a website that offers a smooth and stress-free journey to your customers.
Simplify Your Checkout Process
Many customers abandon their carts just because they find the checkout process way too complicated. Do not force your customers to create an account on your website. Allow them to checkout using a guest account option. Also, keep the total number of forms minimal. Read our Ultimate Cart Abandonment Guide to learn more about this.
Add Reviews
Reviews act as social proof that encourages your buyers to trust your brand and make a purchase. Dedicate a section on your homepage where you can showcase customer testimonials. If your web design permits, you can also display them on product pages to build credibility. For more about reviews and social proof, read this.
Display Trust Seals
Another foolproof conversion optimization strategy is to display trust badges and quality assurance certificates on your checkout pages. This builds trust and helps your visitors complete the checkout process without doubting your services.
Offer Live Chat Support
Present-day customers are busy and they need answers to their questions right away. So having live chat support on your website is definitely a good idea.
Offer Free Shipping
Who doesn't like free shipping? Of course, we all do. If offering free shipping isn't an option currently, you may consider setting a minimum shopping threshold that your customers must achieve to get a free delivery incentive.
Use One Of The Best Shopify Apps
Fortunately, Shopify offers plenty of free conversion apps that you can use to increase your sales. We have listed down a few of them in this post for your convenience.
13 Best Apps To Boost Your Shopify Conversion Rate
1. Oberlo
Oberlo is a free-to-use dropshipping app designed exclusively for Shopify. Oberlo enables you to start an online store without worrying about packaging and delivery.
Also, you can easily add inventory to your store without needing to hire anyone from outside to do this job for you.
Features
- Inventory management and price auto-updates
- Integrated order tracking
- Fast and stress-free product import from AliExpress
- Third-party integration
- Analytics
- Fulfill order automatically
2. Instafeed
Instafeed is an official Instagram app that displays shoppable Instagram feeds on your store.
When you integrate your Instagram images into your Shopify store, it improves brand awareness and increases followers. The good thing about this conversion app is that it doesn't require a seller to have any prior coding experience.
You can also use this app to build social proof and attract and convert more visitors.
Features
- Drive fresh content to your store
- Build social proof
- Get new followers and likes
- Personalized assistance
- Minimal and elegant feed
3. Offset
Offset is a popular Shopify app used by online businesses that want to neutralize their shopping emissions. Many customers prefer buying from brands that take the initiative to reduce their carbon footprint.&
This app calculates the total emissions generated by your orders. There is a feature-rich dashboard where you can track and observe environmental changes and share those statistics with your customers.
Features
- Calculate shipping emissions
- Track your monthly emissions
- Reduce your carbon footprint
4. Debutify Reviews
Debutify Reviews is another feature-rich Shopify app that enables you to integrate product reviews into your product pages.
According to an eMarketer report, more than 98% of customers read reviews before purchasing anything from a website.
Debutify Reviews is an important tool that allows you to collect and display customer reviews on your store. It offers photo and video reviews to enhance the visual appeal of product reviews.
With Debutify Reviews, businesses can leverage the power of visuals to create a compelling and immersive user experience and be trustworthy for potential customers.
Download Debutify Reviews here.
5. ReConvert Upsell And Cross-Sell
Upselling and cross-selling are effective Shopify CRO tactics that can significantly improve your average order value and conversion rate.
ReConvert is a Shopify conversion app that helps you create a personalized landing page.
There's a drag-and-drop builder that you can use to add different widgets and design elements to your order completion page.
Features
- Product recommendations
- Data collection
- Order tracking
- Add reviews
- Add videos/images
- CTAs
- Discount pop-ups
6. Super Reports
Super Reports is one of our favorite Shopify apps that enables you to track your store's sales and measure performance and growth over time.
This app seamlessly integrates with your Shopify store and generates reports that you can also share with your stakeholders.
With Super Reports, you can pinpoint products that are not contributing much to your store's conversions.
Features
- Built to support stores with a huge inventory
- Robust navigation
- Quickly filter products on collection pages
- Includes speed-boosting features
- Attractive promotions
- Dynamic banners
7. Smart SEO
Ecommerce SEO is challenging. It takes a great deal of time and effort to get your Shopify store's SEO right. Smart SEO is a perfect solution for Shopify sellers who want to increase their site's visibility in front of the search engines.
With Smart SEO, you can generate meta tags and alt tags. Also, you can organize your site map and fix broken links to keep your site in line with the current Google policies.
Features
- SEO tools and automation
- Structured data
- Multi-language support
- Generate alt tags and meta tags
- Sitemap management
8. Yotpo
Content marketing is an essential part of your conversion rate optimization strategies. Yotpo is a famous content marketing platform that helps online sellers to collect reviews, images, and Q/A from customers to build trust and boost conversions.
Features
- Collect photos, Q/A, and reviews from buyers
- Increase conversions by leveraging UGC
- Social sharing automation
- Creates brand awareness
- Collect feedback from buyers and grow your business
9. Google Channel
Google Channel is one of the best free Shopify apps that syncs the data about your store and products with Google Merchant Center.
Thanks to this app, you can easily create ads for your products and reach buyers all over the web.
Features
- Optimized bidding
- Ad placement
- Free credit for marketing campaigns
- Real-time performance tracking
- Only pay when someone clicks on your ad
10. AfterShip Order Tracking
A foolproof order tracking app is a must for Shopify sellers. AfterShip is currently used by more than 30K users. With this app, sellers can track their orders after delivery.
This app also enables sellers to monitor shipping performance by leveraging analytics.
Features
- Branded notifications
- Auto import shipments
- Set up a custom domain
- Multiple shipping solutions
11. Mochi
Businesses that integrate live chat support to their sites witness improved conversions. Mochi allows online sellers to maintain real-time communication with the buyers.
This app also enables you to keep an eye on what products your buyers are looking at, what products they have added to their carts, and more.
You can also automate responses if you're not available.
Features
- Real-time communication
- Live feed of the visitors browsing your store
- Texting and web chat support
12. Stamped.io
Stamped.io is another social proof app that enables you to display reviews, check out reviews, and community Q/A on your site. While this app is free, their feature-rich paid plans are also quite reasonable.
Features
- Product reviews/video reviews/photo reviews
- Checkout reviews
- NPS survey
- Questions/Answers
- Instagram Shoppable gallery
13. PixPix
PixPix is an image editor that comes with a wide range of editing and optimization features. This tool enables sellers to resize images, remove logos, and improve SEO image performance by adding alt text.
Features
- Image crop and resize
- Image SEO
- Change image color/brightness/size
- Compress image
- Edit blogs/collections/page
