16 strategies for improving eCommerce conversion rates

Let's face it. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and most other digital marketing strategies are hard work. And it doesn't help that the goalpost keeps shifting. Just as soon as you think you understand the game, you find the rules have changed. 

However, one thing remains certain in this ever-changing landscape, the better you are able to give your customers what they want, the better your conversions and sales will be. 

When it comes to your eCommerce site, that means being able to offer an experience that visitors to your website find easy and intuitive to navigate and that delivers value. 

Your website design needs to be enticing and driven by delivering tangible value so that more people choose to buy your products. 

Why is it important to optimise your eCommerce conversions?

There are two types of marketing activities. There are those that focus on bringing more people to your website. And then there are others that focus on getting more people to buy your product or service.

Search engine optimisation, paid ads and social media tend to fall in the first basket. Conversion rate optimisation sits squarely in the second. 

It is the lifeblood of any business or eCommerce website and it often means the difference between making a profit or not. It can also vastly improve your ROI. 

In a nutshell, you can earn more profits from the same amount of website visitors by simply boosting your conversion rate. 

How to improve your eCommerce conversion rate

Want to start improving your conversion rates right away? Here are 16 expert tips on how you can boost your conversions and start making more sales without having to drive more traffic to your website. 

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1. Set realistic goals

It's important to set realistic goals for your conversion rate optimisation efforts. If your goal is too high, you'll likely be disappointed and discouraged. Likewise, if your goal is too low, you won't be pushing yourself enough. 

The best way to set goals is to look at your current conversion rate and try to improve upon it by a small margin at a time. It also helps to know what the average conversion rate is for your industry. 

[feature_link]Find out more in our eCommerce CRO Guide.[/feature_link]

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2. Prioritise your efforts

There are a lot of different things you can do to improve your conversion rate. It's important to prioritise your efforts so that you're working on the most impactful tasks first. A good way to do this is to create a list of all the potential changes you could make and then rank them in order of impact.

A low conversion rate could be indicative of a number of issues, such as:

• Poorly written product descriptions
• A confusing checkout process
• Lack of customer trust
• A poor user experience

It will take a bit of investigative work to assess which of these elements might be affecting your conversions the most. Once you know which ones are having the biggest impact, that’s where you should start.

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3. Test, test, test!

Testing is essential for effective conversion rate optimisation. It’s how you can discover what design and content features your audience responds best to. 

You should always test different versions of your website to see what type of layouts, content and call to actions work best. There are a number of different ways to do this, but one of the most popular methods is A/B testing by using tools like Google Optimize.

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4. Be patient

Conversion rate optimisation is a long-term game. There are many steps involved in understanding what levers will have the biggest impact on conversions. But, over time, and with a great deal of testing, you’ll be able to compound the impact and improve your conversions one small step at a time.

It can take weeks or even months to see results from your efforts which is why it's important to be patient and not give up too soon. In saying this, the pay off is well worth it though!

5. Analyse your eCommerce business data

Data is your friend when it comes to conversion rate optimisation. Make sure you're analysing your data regularly so that you can identify trends and make informed decisions about your conversion rate optimisation efforts.

In fact, at EngineRoom, this tip alone is how we’re able to help our eCommerce clients blow their conversions and ROI right out of the water! We harness business and sales data so our clients can easily see what factors have the biggest impact to improve their sales and conversions.

We share some of our methods for using data to improve conversions later in this post so make sure you read to the end.

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6. Improve eCommerce descriptions on product pages

Make sure your product descriptions are clear, concise and to the point. They should also be keyword rich to ensure they are visible in search engines.

A mistake we often see eCommerce brands making with their product descriptions is to only focus on the facts and features about the product. Your readers tend to care more about the benefit your product will offer them instead. There’s an emotional process that’s involved in buying a product, especially where impulse buying is concerned. 

The quicker your product descriptions resonate on that emotional level, the more likely a reader is going to buy from you.

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7. Create a user-friendly checkout page

Your eCommerce store’s checkout process should be quick and easy to use — the fewer steps involved, the better. 

A complicated checkout process often leads to abandoned shopping carts which is a serious problem plaguing all eCommerce stores.

Fast and easy checkout options help to ensure your potential customers complete their purchases and increase their chances of becoming repeat customers. 

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8. Increase customer trust

Ensure your eCommerce website is secure and your contact details are visible. It also helps if you have a dedicated customer service team that is available and well-trained to help. 

You can also include FAQs, customer reviews and testimonials to boost confidence within your audience and website visitors. Many shoppers check online reviews, so providing these on your home page, product pages and landing pages is highly recommended for building trust.

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9. Improve the user experience

Running regular usability tests will help you identify areas for improvement. In these tests, you can get feedback from real customers or people who have tested your website. 

Here are some of the factors we’ve identified that have helped our clients from the usability tests we have run.

• Use high-quality images that delight, inform, educate and engage your online shoppers. 
• Ensure that your eCommerce website is optimised for mobile devices.
• Consider live chat support to help boost conversions if potential customers are likely to seek further information before purchasing.
• Make it easy for people to navigate your website.
• Have a seamless checkout process.

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10. Use social proof

If you want to take things one step further, you can include statistics from your social media platforms on your product pages. You can dynamically share things like the number of likes you have or how many people are watching the product, not to mention customer reviews.

Customers like to feel heard. Social media has been a game changer for customer feedback and relationship building for many eCommerce brands. It offers prospective and current customers the opportunity to interact with your brand, ask questions, provide feedback and seek customer support. 

It’s also made this aspect of customer relationship management very transparent! So, if you aren’t doing right by your customers, it won’t be long before someone shares their experience online.

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11. Offer free shipping, discounts and genuine value

One of the best elements for increasing conversions is to provide real, tangible value that your customers can’t get through your competitor’s websites.

You can achieve this in a number of different ways such as:

• Offering incentives like free shipping 
• Adding discounts, flash sales and referral bonuses
• Offering flexible payment options like buy now, pay later
• Giving away free samples with every order

There's a lot that can also be said about the unboxing experience. Depending on what kind of products you sell, your audience may receive value from receiving a beautifully packaged product they can’t wait to unbox.

In any case, it’s your audience that determines what is of value to them so it’s always best if you spend time understanding their needs, wants, desires and frustrations. Only then can you deliver an experience they find to be genuinely valuable.

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12. Use exit-intent popups

Another common issue that affects eCommerce store conversions is people leaving the website before they’ve made a purchase. A simple remedy to this problem is to add an exit intent popup.

It is a specific type of popup that only appears when the user is moving their mouse toward the “x” button to close the tab. With an exit-intent popup, you can capture more last-minute sales before these visitors leave your online store.

It’s also a great time and place to offer discounts and more value adds to help entice the visitor to re-think leaving your website. We’ve found great success by offering deals that are simply too good to refuse. The key is to only make these deals available once, so the website visitors that are leaving re-evaluate their decision and make a purchase at that moment. Otherwise, they will lose the deal forever.

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13. Simplify your navigation

A common problem we help resolve for eCommerce stores is when the website’s navigation is confusing or unhelpful for visitors.

The longer it takes someone to find what they’re looking for, the more likely they are to leave your site and purchase from a competitor that delivers a better user experience on their website.

That’s why it’s important to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for with clear and simple navigation.

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14. Create a sense of urgency

Using scarcity and urgency techniques, such as countdown timers, is a powerful conversion tactic that can work exceptionally well for some types of eCommerce websites. 

Such tactics encourage your visitors to buy now and also work especially well during sales and promotional periods. However, you can also use them effectively in combination with an upsell offer. 

For instance, if a visitor on your website has added products to their cart and they are about to checkout, you can offer them a bundle deal where they can save money by purchasing another related product to what’s in their cart. You can use urgency to indicate that this deal is only available at this moment, and if they proceed with checking out, they will miss out on the discount.

You would be surprised how effective such upsell offers are for increasing your conversions and average order value!

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15. Understand your customer's needs and pain points

You need to fully appreciate why your target audience would be looking to buy your products or services. Otherwise, you’ll never really be able to craft marketing efforts that provide them with the very best solution to their problem. 

Social media, surveys and market research are great ways of finding out what really makes your customers buy the types of products you sell. 

The more you understand their mindset and emotional drivers during the buying journey, the better you will be able to capture their interest through your product descriptions and design.

The biggest secret to boosting your eCommerce conversion rate is to help your target audience resonate with your message so they feel good about buying from you because you ‘get’ them.

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16. Get help from experts

If you're struggling to improve your conversion rate, it might be time to get some help from experts. At EngineRoom, we specialise in delivering real, tangible results that improve your bottom line. But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s proof of our expertise in action.

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The above client is  a national eCommerce client that had a conversion rate of only just under 3% when we first started working with them.

With an individually tailored digital marketing strategy, our strategy team were able to improve their conversion rate by 27%. Better yet, it wasn’t at the expense of traffic or sales yield as we increased both of these metrics aswell! We were able to bring in more website visitors and simultaneously get more of those visitors to buy. 

With the right digital marketing partners in your corner, the sky really is the limit. 

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Increase conversions with a free strategy session*

We specialise in conversion rate optimisation and can help you improve the overall ROI of your website. Book your free 90-minute strategy session with one of our digital advisors to get a clear plan for growth.

• Get a better understanding of your business
• We generate a detailed report from your strategy session
• Understand your priorities and next steps

Speak to a senior digital advisor today

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Best practices for improving eCommerce CRO

To bring it altogether, here are the best practices we abide by for every eCommerce conversion project we undertake. We hope these tips help you achieve the same success we’ve seen for our clients!

1. Pay attention to your visitors journey and identify leaks in the buying process.
2. Optimise your checkout to avoid abandoned carts.
3. Add an exit-intent popup to keep more visitors on your site.
4. Have well-defined goals that are achievable.
5. Test and measure every aspect of your design and content to identify what your customers respond best to.
6. Don’t make changes to any live experiments you’re running.
7. Be patient! We can’t stress this enough.
8. Get feedback from customers and other people to better improve your site’s usability.

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Frequently asked questions about conversion rate optimisation

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What is conversion rate optimisation?

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of improving the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action – such as making a purchase, booking an appointment, or downloading a white paper.

By increasing your website's conversion rate, you can increase the overall ROI of your digital marketing efforts.

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What are the benefits of conversion rate optimisation for eCommerce?

There are many benefits to optimising your website for conversions, including:

• Increased revenue from your existing traffic — if you can convert even a small percentage of your visitors into paying customers, this can have a big impact on your bottom line.

• More leads and sales — the more conversions you make, the more leads and sales you'll generate.

• Better ROI from your marketing campaigns — by improving your conversion rate, you'll get more bang for your buck from your digital marketing efforts.

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What are some common conversion rate optimisation techniques?

Many techniques can be used to improve your website's conversion rate. Some common methods include:

• A/B testing - This involves showing different versions of your website to different visitors and seeing which version performs better in terms of conversion rate.

• User experience (UX) optimisation - This involves ensuring that your website is easy to use and navigate and provides a good user experience.

• Landing page optimisation - This involves optimising your website's landing pages for conversion. This can be done by testing different designs, copy, and call-to-actions.

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What are some common eCommerce conversion rate optimisation mistakes?

Some common mistakes that people make when trying to optimise their website for conversions include:

Not testing — This is one of the most common mistakes. It's important to test different versions of your website and see which one converts best.

Not focusing on the right things — When optimising your website for conversion, it's important to focus on the right things. For example, don't focus on your website's design if it's the copy that's not converting.

Not tracking results — It's important to track the results of your optimisation efforts so you can see what's working and what's not. Otherwise, you won't be able to improve your conversion rate over time.

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What's the difference between conversion rate optimisation and search engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your website for search engines. The goal of SEO is to get more traffic from search engines.

Conversion rate optimisation, on the other hand, is the process of optimising your website for conversion. The goal of CRO is to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website.

Both SEO and CRO are important for any website. However, they have different goals and should be treated as separate strategies. 

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EngineRoom: A proven track record of eCommerce conversion rate improvement 

At EngineRoom, we understand the importance of conversion rate optimisation, and we have a proven track record of helping our clients increase their conversion rates, sales and ROI.

Our approach is unique and unparalleled in the Australian market. We rely on data to help us improve your existing performance. What we offer that no other agency can, is the ability to bridge your CRM, sales and website data so you can see which marketing activities have the biggest impact on conversions and sales.

We take a data-driven approach to all our digital marketing efforts, and we utilise a number of tools, such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, and UserTesting.com. This allows us to get a deep understanding of your visitors, their needs and how they interact with your site. 

Understanding your lead-to-sale conversion rate also helps us identify gaps and maximise opportunities in your sales funnel while tracking and optimising your marketing efforts to drive traffic to your best-performing channels.

You need a customised plan that will help you increase your eCommerce conversion rate. Don't let poor conversion rates be the reason your business isn't growing. Sell more without needing to increase traffic by following the tips above and partnering with Engine Room.