This guide will show online store owners the importance of e-commerce conversion rate optimisation if they are looking to increase their website sales.
Sales are the lifeblood of every business and without good cash flow, businesses simply fail.
With more and more businesses trading online, it’s important to maximise your sales process to the fullest. In a brick and mortar business, you follow certain processes in-store to provide good customer experience and increase the likelihood of sales.
Examples of this could range from hiring helpful staff, in-store promotions, at the counter up-sells, marketing material, discounted products and much more. But, what about when businesses go online?
How can they get the most out of their websites and ensure that their online store is profitable? The answer is conversion rate optimisation. You may be thinking ‘conversion rate – what?’. If you are new to digital marketing lingo, don’t worry, we’ll explain everything in an easy to understand manner.
After reading this blog, you’ll understand what conversion rate optimisation is and how to utilise its principles to increase your e-commerce stores sales.
Website Funnel
The checkout process or funnel on your e-commerce store is the one thing so many e-commerce store owners seem to get wrong. When you buy something in a brick and mortar shop, there is a sequence of events that follow each other. You see the store from the outside, you walk in the door, you browse the shop, you find a product you want, you go to the checkout and pay for it and then you walk out.
The online equivalent of this is your website’s funnel. This includes the homepage, the product pages, the cart, the checkout page and the payment page. Each of these steps needs to be functional, persuasive and more importantly, be seamless. The funnel should flow smoothly and provide the customer with good user experience.
By analysing your funnel, you can see where people are dropping off and then look to see what you can do to stop this. E.g. people may be dropping off your product page because there is no shipping or returns policy on there. By making small changes to each step of your funnel, you can reduce your websites bounce rate and increase your conversion rate.
Product descriptions
Good copywriting is essential on an e-commerce store. The art (or science) of copywriting is a great way to further engage with your customers and really sell them on the product.
Not only do you need to explain the features of your products but you also need to show how the customer is going to benefit by buying the product.
Understanding how people make purchasing decisions is always helpful here. People are emotional creatures who don’t always make rational buying decisions. You need to craft your copy in a way that resonates with your intended audience and influences them to take action on your store.
Look at your product descriptions on your product pages and compare them with your competitors. To go one step further, ask 10 people to review your descriptions and get feedback on how to improve them.
Via Weber
Images
Just like good copy, quality images of products are often missing from e-commerce stores too. While words can be powerful, images are arguably more important when you are selling someone a product that they can’t touch or see in real life.
You need to have high-quality images of all your products and try to aim for at least 3 images per product. If you take the pictures yourself, invest in a professional camera, set up some good lighting and try to capture something that is visually appealing. Quality copywriting combined with quality images is a true force to be reckoned with!
If you have ever shopped online, you may have been turned off when you see a product that has blurry, outdated images. It’s so important to present your products appealingly online. And why stop at images? If you can, add videos too and take it one step further.
The more you can catch someone’s eye and show them that the product they are buying is credible, the more chance you have of increasing your conversion rate.
Customer Reviews
Anyone who has any knowledge of marketing will know the importance of social proof. When people make a decision to buy something online, they want to feel like they have gotten a good deal. Most people will be influenced by the reception of the product online from other people.
The more people that rave about a certain product, the more perceived value that product has. On the other hand, if someone is browsing for a new bike, that is relatively expensive, and they see it has no reviews, what’s going to happen?
Well, maybe the customer will take a risk and buy the bike regardless. Most the time though, customers will be sceptical of any products that don’t have reviews from other customers online. It’s human nature to look to other people to help us make decisions. Especially, when the purchase is a big commitment.
Online shopping is exactly the same. There’s a reason Amazon has spent so much time and money on their own reviews system. Positive review’s or testimonial are proven to increase the likelihood of sales, so make sure that you have product reviews or customer testimonials on your product pages!
Shipping info
With services like Amazon Prime becoming more and more popular, customers expectations are getting higher and higher. Living in a world of instant gratification means many people want things now.
This means the quicker you can ship your products out to your customers, the better. Again, this does depend on the size of the product as some people will understand having to wait longer for a bigger purchase.
However, the one thing here that is universal across all products is clear communication. If your product is going to take more than 5 working days to arrive at a customers house, you need to clearly state that on your product page and further down in your funnel too.
From lots of experience with heat mapping tools, we’ve analysed many customers dropping off product pages because there is no shipping information. So, analyse your shopping funnel and see how clearly you showcase your shipping times.
Summary
So, out of the tips above, which ones do you need to pay attention to the most? No e-commerce store is perfect so there will always be some room for improvement.
The above points are some of the easiest and quickest wins you can do on your website that will help you improve your conversion rate.
At Rozee Digital, we work with countless e-commerce businesses to increase conversion rate optimisation and ultimately, boost online sales.
If you are looking to generate more sales with your e-com store, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us and let us work our magic!