Tips to Increase Your eCommerce Conversion Rate

The eCommerce industry is far from a blue ocean. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the space has become increasingly crowded and therefore more competitive. Businesses struggle to sustain and increase in their eCommerce sales conversions.

It can take a bit of juggling to keep your loyal customers happy while also trying to acquire new ones. Especially because of the vast amount of choice they have.

Businesses often think that utilising outside the box activities to make them stand out in the crowd is the way to go. That might work in the short term, but you could still be providing a poor experience. Customers will see this and your conversions in the long run will decline.

Winning customers and retaining them is done by doing the simple things right and having a well run site.

Repeat customers are cheaper to attract and spend on average 69% more than new customers. Therefore, increasing your retention rate by as little as 5% could net your business a significant uplift in revenue and profit.

What is Impacting Your eCommerce Conversion Rate?

Taking time to analyse different aspects of your site will uncover some of the issues impacting your eCommerce conversion rate. When it comes to your conversions, there are several things that can hinder your performance.

Some can be blatantly obvious, but some are a little more subtle, but no less harmful.

Examine Your Web Pages

If customers are clicking away from a page as quickly as they clicked into it then that is an issue. It’s likely that the page isn’t as well optimised as it should be.

It could be a case that the loading speed is incredibly long, which is a frustrating thing to have to deal with. Your pages should be fully loaded for the user in two seconds at the very most. Any longer and people will click away.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an invaluable (and free) tool to help you identify any loading issues and what to do about it. 

Your page may even need a total revamp. You need to nurture customers through the buying process. If your page isn’t doing that then they will leave without completing any actions. Take a look at your images, videos, content, and CTA’s. Here may lie the issues.

Your Checkout Process

Your check out process is one of the most important aspects of your site.  Despite this, it’s an area that is often under developed or neglected by eCommerce businesses.

Checkout processes that are too long or have too many stages drive customers away, abandoning their basket.  Be under no illusion, customers will pay slightly more if they get a better user experience. So if your competitor is more expensive but boasts a slicker site, you’ll lose.

Giving customers the option to pay without making an account and making the process short and sweet will increase eCommerce sales conversions.

Web Page Optimisation

It’s essential that your website is as slick and engaging as possible. Customers won’t make purchases if they’re not engaged with your brand while navigating through your site.

However no website is without its flaws. Pages can break, errors can begin to pop up, and as time progresses the site may become outdated. Constantly testing pages and staying up to date with trends is best practice. Making incremental improvements and investing in new features will help you to increase your eCommerce conversion rate.

Digital Marketing Efforts

Your digital marketing efforts drive people to your app or site. If it’s not working, there’ll be less traffic and, in turn, fewer conversions.

You should analyse how your marketing channels are performing and test campaigns consistently. That means email, push notifications, SMS, or whatever channel you communicate through should be closely monitored.

If you’re seeing declining results in open and click-through rates, then your messaging or product offering may need work. Potentially even both.

The Right Products

At the end of the day, customers come to your site to buy a specific product or service. If you’re not providing them with that, they will leave. Simple as that.

Take a look at the reviews you’re getting as a business. If the majority of them are poor, then you might want to think about the quality of the product you are providing.

Furthermore, keep an eye on the performance of your competitors. If you’re consistently getting beaten by them, then you should be taking that as a hint as well. Taking steps towards changing your product offering can help to increase eCommerce sales conversions.

What to do about it?

You may have identified what might be holding your conversion rate back. But nothing comes from nothing. Now it’s time to put in the work to increase those conversion rates.

Below are a few things to get you started.

Understand Customers With Data

Any campaign you run should always begin with analysing your data and using it to understand your customers. If you haven’t already, consider investing in a customer data platform, rather than dealing with your data in silos.

Unifying your data makes it much easier to understand your customers and build campaigns that make an impact.

Using behavioural and transactional data allows you to create campaigns with a view to increasing conversions specifically. 

Understanding customers using heat maps on your website means you can understand their behaviour and interactions on a much deeper level. Our partners see this employed by a multitude of eCommerce businesses across the globe. 

“Never underestimate the power of heat maps on a website. You will be able to see what customers are clicking on, and what you need to update. For example, one of Rainfactory’s clients was running a sale, and customers kept trying to click on an image as if it were a button. Once we removed that image, the Add to Cart rate improved by 5%!”

Kaitlyn Witman, Co-Founder, COO, and CRO Expert at Rainfactory

Don’t let Customers Leave you too Easily

The harsh reality is that not every customer is going to go ahead and complete a purchase. But that doesn’t mean you just let them go.

They have engaged with your marketing efforts, they have interacted with your website, and sometimes they even add products to their cart. Reasons can just pop up for them to not follow through on the purchase.

But you should have the information as to where they dropped off from the purchase process. Use that to your advantage to win them back and complete the purchase.

People will often abandon their cart at some stage during the checkout process. Send them messages to bring them back to where they left off. And don’t be afraid to send more than one message either:

“Most brands don’t realise that you can send three abandoned basket communications to customers: The first one should be a reminder within a few hours; the second should be an urgency push that may include a coupon code; and the third should be a customer support-focused email, trying to answer a question that the customer might have.” 

Lucie Simikova, Email Marketing Manager at Rainfactory

Nurture Loyal Customers

The best way to increase eCommerce conversions is to focus on nurturing your loyal customers.

Rewarding your loyal customer base takes many forms. There are plenty of programmes to choose from.

The most important thing is that you make them feel as valued and rewarded as possible. And it doesn’t always have to be financial. Giving them exclusive access to something can work just as well. Coupons and discounts always work, but they are not a necessity.

Loyal customers outspend your returning customers and they’ll spend more often. So investing in them is certainly worth your while when it comes to boosting eCommerce conversions.

Keep them engaged and happy and they’ll continue to spend with you. They may even become brand advocates and bring other shoppers on board.

Make The Buying Process Easy

The whole point of you setting up an eCommerce site is so that you can sell your products to your customers. So make it as easy as possible for them to purchase them.

This doesn’t just come down to having a seamless checkout process (which is very important!), but also throughout your site.

Good quality product images and well placed, clear CTAs are the way forward. These should make it easy for the customer to navigate their way through your site and make a purchase.

The holistic shopping experience should be enjoyable and simple.

“Customers online are willing to exchange a cheaper price if they perceive that you are offering a more ‘convenient’ price. People are often aware that Amazon is not the cheapest price and yet, they still habitually will buy from Amazon simply because it’s so darn easy. In order to compete with the ease of Amazon, ecommerce retailers need to invest in ecommerce platforms and shopping experiences that deliver value AND convenience.”

Jason Ciment, CEO at Get Visible.

Test As You Go

The work is never fully complete. There are always things to test and observe when it comes to both your website and your communication efforts.

Where possible, split test your marketing communications and product offerings. You can find some actionable insights from the way your customers interact with the variations you put in front of them.

Don’t be afraid to make changes to your website as well. You don’t want to go too overboard and confuse customers as to which page is which. But experimenting with different layouts and CTAs can begin to bring in results as well.

To learn more about how to increase eCommerce conversions through customer engagement and personalisation, book a demo with us today.