Within the ecommerce industry, there isn’t a topic more talked about at the moment than conversion rate optimization. As bringing traffic to a website becoming less of a challenge, engaging an audience, lead generation and conversion rate become a priority. Your website must be appealing to both humans and search engine bots, and CRO is a mean to achieve that goal.
Learn more about the importance of Conversion Rate Optimization. Discover tips and strategies that applied to your target market will transform website visitors into loyal customers.
What is Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors and users of your website who completed a desired task. Such a task can be any operation or undertaking that visitors perform on your site, however, the most popular desired task is adding to cart or simply buying your product/service. The results you get from each webpage are put together and counted as conversion rates.
How to measure conversion rate? It’s quite simple, you just follow this rule:
Number of conversions/number of visitors (or sessions) x 100.
If you are interested in quantifying your CR, the following key performance indicators might help you get a better understanding:
- Product/Service sales,
- Monthly website traffic,
- Webinar registration,
- Number of qualified leads,
- The conversion rate for call-to-action content,
- Email newsletter sign-ups.
To make the non-converting pages start transforming visitors to leads, you have to implement the right CRO strategy.
Conversion Optimization – How Does It Work?
A "good" conversion rate depends on your industry, goals, traffic channel, niche and audience demographics, among other factors. If the conversion rate for your website is lower than you'd like, below average in your industry, then it's high time to optimize.
CRO is a process of reviewing your website’s sales funnel to determine the optimal strategies you can apply to increase the number of leads, regardless of your current traffic. It involves applying analytical procedures in your conversion strategies to ultimately boost your website’s conversion rates. It is vital to your business because it enables you to improve sales and lead generation using the same amount of or existing traffic, so that you don’t need to pay extra money for advertising.
Conversion rate optimization should be part of your digital marketing strategy, as it enables you to convert leads to customers and use the full potential of your current web traffic.
CRO Tips for Your Website
Easy tips what can you do to improve conversion rate in your online store right now.
- Improving Navigation
A lot of ecommerce website owners ignore the importance of navigation. It is, however, crucial in a visitor’s journey through your website and whether it will result in a paid transaction. In order to convert a visitor into a customer, simplify and improve the site navigation. Make it run more intuitively, design the menu to expose new releases, sales, themed collections – help your visitors get what they want. By enabling the buying process to run smoothly, you will likely observe a lot less abandoned carts in the future.
- Don’t Forget About the Search Bar
If your website doesn’t have a search bar in place, you should add this feature immediately. For ecommerce, having a properly working search bar has become a standard, something your website visitors expect. What does it mean, “properly working search bar”? It means that a potential client can search for a specific product, but also for additional information, like returns, delivery. People often already know what want to buy, when they visit your site, so making it easier to find specific items will surely improve your conversion rate.
- The Right Position and Wording of CTAs on Product Page
The call to action (CTA) buttons prompt your visitors to perform a specific action.
CTA buttons should be present on all your product pages, but including them is not enough. You need to make sure that the placement, colour, and shape are correct, meaning benefit-oriented. The main CTA needs to be the most visible element on the product page and should contain the "cart" icon. If free shipping is offered, it is beneficial to highlight it near the main CTA. Remember to show all shipping information near as well (delivery to shopper's location, cost, time).
- Make Sure To Have a “Buying Without Registration” Option on Your Site
You have to think of your customer first, always. This is why, a necessary feature on your ecommerce site is allowing the user to make a purchase as a guest. Many of your future clients won’t like to commit time to register to your service if they are making a first-time purchase. An invitation to register can be always added on the thank you page and convince the customer to sign up there, emphasizing the ability to follow an order after, etc. This checkout technique is far more effective than demanding registration before completing a purchase.
- Enable Multiple Payment Options
Having a few payment options is a crucial factor that enhances overall users’ experience. You should be able to cater to all your customers’ needs. Here are the payment options, you should have available on your website for higher conversion:
- Credit/Debit card,
- Prepaid card,
- Mobile payment,
- Virtual currency.
- Recommending Products Efficiently
It is crucial to promote products or services on your ecommerce website in the right way. How? By showing alternative products nearby, or other accessories/complementary products that might benefit the buyer. It is also a good idea to showcase popular items, that other visitors found attractive, on the product page. Show a variety of products and present yourself as a single solution to a multitude of needs.
3 Types of CRO Tools
There are three main categories of useful tools that have the potential to benefit the conversion rate optimization of your ecommerce website.
- Web analytics tools
Understanding what’s happening on your website is a vital part of conversion rate optimization, as without data about your visitors and their actions, you won’t be able to make improvements. Web analytics give insight about:
- Sessions and their duration,
- Bounce rate,
- Drop-off/exit pages.
Using this knowledge, you will be able to determine what path are visitors taking on your site, where are they exiting from the funnel, whether they are sticking around or bouncing from your landing pages.
Examples of web analytics tools:
- Google Analytics
- Adobe Analytics
- Heap
- Behaviour analytics tools
After answering the “what” question, it is time to answer “why”. Why do your web visitors behave in a certain way? It is another important aspect of CRO, because without knowing what users want, you won’t be able to give them what they need. Behaviour analytics tools gather essential qualitative data about how and why visitor use your website. These tools are able to tell you why potential customers are abandoning shopping carts, and whether they can find what they are looking for.
Examples of behaviour analytics tools:
- Hotjar
- Clarity
- CRO testing tools
Another crucial aspect of CRO is testing and measuring changes you make to improve your ecommerce website. Conversion rate optimization testing tools help you compare and measure planned changes to see which version of your site converts better.
Examples of CRO testing tools:
- Google Optimize
- VWO Testing
Final Thoughts
If you are wondering whether CRO is something that you should consider for your website, it definitely is! Improving the likelihood of visitors taking a desired action on your webpage, will lead to more sales. There are many practices out there when it comes to CRO, you just need to find out what your customers respond to, what drives results for your business, and implement it across your website.
