Often, beginning, and even experienced, entrepreneurs face the problem of their e-stores simply not generating a sufficient number of sales. They have enough traffic, their website position on search engines is high, and budgets for contextual advertising are impressive. Yet, still there lacks a copious amount of orders. If you are experiencing the same problem, or if you have just created your own online store and want to avoid such obstacles in the future, then this article is sure to be useful to you.
To increase your conversion rate (CR), you need to have proper website usability, visual attractiveness, simplicity in making orders, and availability of various payment and delivery methods. Let’s find out what a good conversion rate is for an e-commerce store features and whether it is important to adhere to this standard.
The Average Conversion Rates In the E-commerce
Conversion rates vary by industry, geography, type of device and other factors. As for e-commerce websites, rates around 1% to 2% are considered optimum. Take a look at the pic below to see whether your e-store matches your industry’s average CR.
Even though conversion rates between 1% and 2% are normal, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your shop is succeeding. To estimate the performance of your online business, consider other indicators in your analysis such as KPI, bounce rate, and average order value (AOV). Truly, the only thing that is important is to achieve a conversion rate that allows you to make a profit. This becomes possible if you consistently work on improving e-commerce conversion rates.
How Do E-commerce Stores Increase Their Conversions?
There are virtually hundreds of ways for how to improve the e-commerce conversion rate. Whether it’s good news or bad, nobody knows what exactly will work for your e-store. Simply changing the color of the CTA button probably won’t help you much. However, a more complex approach is likely to improve things. To help you, we have prepared interesting cases for increasing conversion rates that have worked for other businesses.
1) Improve Website Navigation to Make It Clear
For every business owner, their website looks intuitively understandable. However, from the customer’s point of view, similar product categories or an unclear allocation of the checkout button can be confusing. To improve the purchase process, you can use analytics (e.g. Google Analytics, Mixpanel, KissMetrics) to see how visitors move through the site, how many categories they sifted through before finding the right one, and whether they found what they searched for or instead just closed the page.
PrintGlobe proves that improving website navigation can give you an 18.5% increase in conversion rates. After various tests, they identified that showing products in a grid view combined with a navigation pane and carousel option at the top of the page allows buyers to shop the most effectively.
2) Create High-Quality Descriptions of Your Products, and Don’t Forget About Storytelling!
If you think people don’t read text on websites, you’re probably wrong. People just need a reason to read your text. An investigation conducted by BizReport shows that product pages containing detailed information are more important than reviews and prices.
Extend the description section on your website to tell more about your product. The main points to consider when writing the text for the product description section are:
1. Make the text easy to read
2. Write short sentences – 15-25 words
3. Predict potential questions and try to answer them in the description
4. Tell your website’s visitors about the benefits of your product
5. Use simple, everyday language
6. Include keywords in the text, but don’t overstuff them
Don’t be boring. Create a story around your product! Storytelling is a very powerful tool since it can attract the reader’s attention to your products and your brand.
A stellar example of storytelling comes from the guys at SignificantObjects.com. They purchased products from thrift stores for a very low cost and composed stories about them to create an imitation of history. Then, these products were placed on eBay. In the end, these guys sold $128 in goods for $3,612. Storytelling helped SignificantObject to increase the value of their products by 2800%.
3) Use Large, High-Quality Product Images
You can increase sales on your online store just by changing the quality of your website’s images. Even though the product description is important, providing large, high-quality images might be even better. More than 67% of customers say that high-quality photos are essential for the purchasing process. Let us introduce a striking example – Ties.com. At Ties.com, products are displayed from different angles and the images are zoomable.
Another way to engage customers and make them craving for your product is to add videos. This practice helps not only showcase the product visually and in a comprehensive manner. It also allows you to empower your marketing opportunities via sending sales & special offers or personalized videos to bring back abandoned cart users.
Moreover, viewing a video, potential customers get the feeling of real interaction with your product or service. Thus, they want it.
Remember, you can implement different types of videos: sales and offers, e-commerce listing and abandoned cart videos, and so on. All of them are a part of the e-commerce video marketing strategy which you should develop to increase sales.
4) Offer Easily Accessible Online Customer Service
Software Advice did research to find out communication preferences for online shopping. The result is that almost half of the website visitors prefer to use live chat instead of phone. This means that 50% of website visitors may be displeased with the customer experience on your site if you don’t provide an online means of communication.
Even if you have included all the characteristics of a product, there will always be customers who need to clarify details. This is usually because they doubt whether your product will suit their specific needs. Thus, it is a good option to provide online chat to the website. Further, the response time should be as short as possible and you should be prepared to answer the following likely questions:
– Is the product in stock?
– Does it have complex technical characteristics?
– Can you help me understand how to use it?
In these and other cases, online chat will help maintain a shopper on the site and lead them to make a purchase.
Let’s take a look at how it works. Virgin Atlantic had a 23%-increase in its conversion rate after implementing live chat. Also, users who initiated chat spent 15% more per order.
Another case shows us that Total Gym, a company selling gyms, has seen a 39% increase in sales after implementing their chat service.
5) Offer Freebies: Low Prices, Specials, and Promotions
Your customers like discounts. E-tailing Group states that 47% of online shoppers only like to buy products with a discount. 62% of them claimed they always look for the section with sales and special prices.
Sometimes, people buy goods because they are at a discount, not because they really need them. To entice these shoppers, you can launch an ad with discounts, add a banner to the homepage, and display promotional products in a recommended products section. Also, be sure to set a deadline, after which the discount burns. The closer it gets, the more willingly visitors will buy goods.
Be sure to think carefully about the amount of the discount. You won’t impress anyone with a 5% discount on already-cheap goods. However, a 30%-off offer on every product on your website will increase your conversion dramatically. For example, Macys.com has various discounts, and some of them even reach 50-70%. This is a solid option to drive sales. Just be confident about your price strategy.
Originally Published at www.whidegroup.com
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