Getting tons of traffic to your website is always a good thing, and something we all crave for our businesses. But if the traffic doesn’t convert to a sale, then there really is no point.
What is a “Conversion Rate”?
Ecommerce conversion rate is a metric that is calculated by dividing the total number of site visitors by the number of conversions. Because it’s a key metric for your store’s success, it pays to invest as much time and resources as possible into its optimization.
Here’s a simple formula for determining your website’s conversion rate: Conversion Rate = (# Of Conversions ÷ Total # Of Visitors) x 100. For example, the number of conversions is 10 and the total number of visitors is 100, this will be the equation: Conversion rate = (10 ÷ 100) x 100 then Conversion rate = 10
The average conversion rate across sectors within eCommerce in 2021 was 2.96%. So let’s take a look at how each industry performs in the eCommerce space: Fashion: 3.3% | Health & Beauty: 3.9% | Home Goods & Furnishings: 2.8% | Luxury: 1.1%
A good conversion rate generally hovers around 2% to 5%
How to optimize your eCommerce conversion rate
There are many ways to boost eCommerce conversions and what you do will depend on various factors. But you should always keep a few basic things in mind in order to improve your performance.
1. Optimize your mobile customer journey
Mobile devices continue to rule the online world, with majoruty of traffic coming from smartphones. Still, the conversion rate from mobile devices is lower than on desktop. So brands should take a close look at their mobile customer journeys and eliminate any friction.
Your mobile site or app should have intuitive navigation, and a smooth checkout process to ensure users convert on mobile devices. You should avoid pop-ups, carousels and other large visual elements, or adapt them for a smaller mobile screen.
2. Provide a good UX
If you want to win over your website visitors, you need to provide a good overall user experience on your site. Make sure your navigation is simple and well structured. Call-to-actions are your most important tool to convert users. They should be placed visibly and clearly to indicate where they lead to.
Also, think about optimizing your site speed. A delay of only one second in mobile loading time can affect the conversion rate by up to 20%.
3. Ensure a smooth check-out process
To improve eCommerce conversion rates, brands need to make the digital checkout process as simple as possible. Provide users with all the information they need, such as payment and delivery options, at the right time, and offer transparency and easy navigation through each step.
During the checkout process, you should also let customers know that you are there for them and ready to help. For example, if the customer tries to enter an expired promo code, a pop-up window could appear offering a new code with the same or better discount.
4. Put your customers first
If you want your website visitors to convert, you need to look at things from their point of view. Customer-centricity is one of the biggest success factors in eCommerce. Not only should you tailor your offerings and products to your customers’ needs, but also your website and digital experiences. By analysing your customer journey and tracking your site metrics, Voice of the Customer, and A/B testing, you can find out what excites your users most and what they don’t like at all in order to align optimizations with their wants and needs.
5. Use Effective Headlines
Headlines are typically the first thing a visitor sees when landing on your website. A headline is a means of wrapping your entire sales pitch into one bold sentence. It is meant to pique the curiosity of visitors, answer a question, solve a problem or be instructional. It is important to note that without a properly constructed headline, you risk the chance of losing many potential leads. The style and placement of them are also very important.
6. Customer Support
Customer support can make or break your business. If your customer support works like a well-oiled machine, you’ll see your website’s conversion rates skyrocket. But if you won’t bother making customers feel like they can rely on you, the rate will go down. Customers will appreciate it if they’re treated with a personal touch and you need to help them resolve their problems even if it’s not fully straightforward. But if you make them wait, they’d often spend the waiting time searching for alternatives.
7. Allow shopping via social media platforms
Your brand almost certainly has at least some type of presence on the various social media platforms out there, right? Simply advertising and/or creating an organic presence on channels such as Facebook and Instagram aren’t exactly anything new. But more and more eCommerce companies are turning to these channels to actually sell their products directly to their followers.
This is an especially lucrative venture if the products you offer fall in line with the type of content that’s typically shared on Instagram. Therefore, if you’re in the clothing, fashion, or culinary industries — or really any industry that relies heavily on visual presentation — you should be looking to make your Instagram profile shoppable.
eCommerce conversion rate optimization: Consistency is key!
These tips are a good start to increasing your eCommerce conversion rate. However, conversion rate optimization is not a sprint but a marathon — to reach your conversion goals, you need to stay tuned and continuously analyze and optimize your site with regular testing.
