You’ve set up your e-commerce website, but conversions don’t just happen. It is important to optimise your website to gain improved conversion. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that complete a set goal, be that a completed sale, email sign up or enquiry. 

The average percentage conversion for e-commerce websites is around 1-2%. Anything above 2% is an impressive rate. If your conversion rate is significantly lower, the following tips will come in helpful. The most effective ways to increase conversion through your website is by building trust with the customer and having good user experience (UX). In this blog post, we will look at ways that you can achieve these goals. 

Before making any changes, you can record your current conversion rate in order to make comparisons. There are many different tools you can use to do this, we suggest using the following:

Hotjar

In Hotjar, you can use session recordings to analyse customer behaviour in real-time and see where customers are getting stuck. You can also set up filters based on different factors such as visit length, country, demographic, device etc. 

Google Analytics 

On Google Analytics, you can set up specific goals and record their success rate. This means that you can find out what your current conversion rate looks like. You can also find out how visitors find your website, how long they typically spend on it and much more. By using these tools, you can get a good picture of your current customer base and where on your website they typically enter and leave.

 

1. Improve your imagery (and think about video!)

If you are selling products, imagery is certainly one of the most prominent influences on conversion rate. Great imagery can increase your conversion rate by improving the reputation and reliability of your business. To improve conversion rate, it is important to make your products look as good as possible, and make sure that people trust your brand. Dodgy imagery or blurred photos could put the customer off buying the product. It is best to showcase your products using large, high-quality images with lots of white space to emphasise the product being shown. You should also try and get images of the product from difficult angles as well as including interactivity such as zooming and rotating. 

If you are looking to display your product in an even clearer way, to improve conversions, a step up from including imagery would be to include video. Professional videos look extremely impressive to customers, however, you do not need to shoot professional videos for your website as this can be costly. You could try asking customers for video reviews (you could offer an incentive to do this), or you could record simple videos using a smartphone yourself! Being creative and providing the customer with as much visual detail as possible will hugely increase your chances of conversion. 

Related: 4 Reasons to Re-Design your E-commerce Website

2. Improve your product descriptions

As well as visual detail, customers also want written, informative detail, which is why your product descriptions really do matter. By improving your descriptions, you are installing trust with the customer, meaning that they are more likely to go through with a purchase which in turns increases your conversion rate. The text that you provide alongside your product should be informative, personal and add value to the customer. Don’t use too much flowery language but instead focus simply answering the following questions:

  • Who is the product for?
  • What does the product do/ how can it benefit the customer?
  • Why is it good?

Whilst trying to keep descriptions simple, you should not be afraid of too much information. Especially for more expensive, niche products, many customers may value a long product description to give them reassurance so that they know they are making a good, informed purchase. 

For customers who are just browsing, you could provide a quick summary, before the longer description, to catch their attention. 

Be creative with your descriptions. You could answer some FAQs, or even do a video description. You should make sure that the text is appropriate for your target audience, and depending on the product that you’re selling on your e-commerce website, you should make sure that the descriptions are original, engaging, and have personal touches that will relate to your customers. 

 

3. Reduce shipping costs 

Everyone loves free delivery. It has been shown that 93% of people are more likely to purchase a product if free delivery is offered. Therefore, reducing the price of shipping is one way to increase your conversion rate. High delivery costs can be very off-putting to customers.

However, you should weigh up how reducing or removing the delivery fee could affect your business and whether it is worth the increase in conversion. To try and reduce the loss from shipping, you could slightly increase the price of your products to cover for the loss. If this is not an option, the next best thing is to be transparent about the price of delivery and to not reveal it halfway through the checkout process. Also, more than 50% of customers read the return policy before buying and so a good return policy is also very important. 

 

4. Include product reviews

Many people turn to reviews when deciding whether to purchase from an e-commerce store. You should try and make sure that customers are able to leave reviews on your website. Depending on your platform, users should be able to leave reviews directly, but if not, you could contact past customers and ask for testimonials to put on your website. 

When it comes to negative comments, a few negative comments can be healthy for your website, as long as there aren’t too many and you can address them. If you’re just not getting any reviews on your website, you could offer your customers an incentive, such as a discount code, in return for a review. 

 

5. Improve your call-to-action buttons

The quality of your call to action (CTA) button can be important when it comes to conversions. If your customer cannot find the most vital buttons (the ‘add to cart’ button and ‘proceed to checkout’ button) then this could hugely hinder your sales performance. 

User experience (UX) is very important for any e-commerce website and users shouldn’t be getting lost. If they are, this could be what is reducing your conversion rate. 

To improve the quality of your CTA buttons, you should make sure that they are big enough, clear, and stand out from the rest of the page. Simple CTA buttons are most effective. 

 

6. Clearly display your contact information

Making your brand appear trustworthy is essential when it comes to improving your conversion rate, and a way to do this is to clearly display your contact information on your website so that you can help your customers when they have queries. 

Another way to make your business easily contactable is to have a live chat feature on your website.

 

 7. Improve your checkout process

Make sure that your website’s checkout process is designed with the user in mind. The checkout process should be as simple and quick as possible. A difficult and complicated checkout process could greatly reduce conversions. 

You could also use what is known as cart abandonment software. If users have added an item to cart and filled in their email address, but decided to cancel, you can then use automatic email software to remind them of their items and maybe add an incentive such as a discount code, or free shipping. 

Related: 5 Ways You Can Improve Your Checkout UX for Your E-commerce Website

 

Conclusion

These tips should help you improve your e-commerce conversion rates, as they will help to build trust with customers and improve user experience on your website. Remember to be constantly monitoring your conversion rates to see the effect of the changes that you make.