If your eCommerce site has 7000 visitors and 100 conversions for a month, your conversion rate will be 1.42%. There are better scenarios than this, and you must focus on conversion rate optimization(CRO).
But why is CRO so important?
It’s a basic survival instinct! If you don’t convert more customers, your business suffers. So, you must focus on CRO to boost sales conversions and ensure regular cash flow. Tracking and improving the CRO requires defining metrics and continuous monitoring.
A key factor here is personalization! You must define your metrics and reshape the eCommerce experience, focusing on personalization. This is because 90% of personalization efforts yield positive ROI.
However, your current question is obvious: “What is an eCommerce CRO, and how can you improve it?”
This article is your answer! It will help you with eight best practices to improve eCommerce CRO. But first, let’s deal with the fundamentals!
What is eCommerce CRO?
Conversion rate optimization(CRO) is an approach to maximize the total percentage of visitors who visit your website and take specific action. For example, an eCommerce website needs more conversions and low cart abandonment rates for better CRO.
Calculating the CRO helps find gaps in your website experience and curtail conversions. How will you calculate the conversion rate for an eCommerce website?
Here is the formula,
Conversion Rate = (Number of conversions / Total numbers of visitors) * 100
But before you brief your sales team – WAIT!
CRO focuses on the ratio of sales conversions and total visitors. So, even if you get your sales team to boost numbers, it needs to be in the correct ratio with the total visitors you have on the website.
Now that you have the fundamentals clear, it’s time to discuss best practices for eCommerce CRO.
eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices
Here are some of the eCommerce CRO best practices for your business to improve ROI,
1. Knowing The User Journey
Many eCommerce companies have mastered the user journey, while others struggle. Knowing your target audience does not mean you know what their journey with the brand will be. From the first interaction to the final engagement, you must analyze each step of the user journey.
Image source Forrester
Ideally, eCommerce brands think of the user journey as a ladder. Another follows each step. However, it’s more random than you think. Every eCommerce customer will source information from multiple sources, often reconsidering and then making a purchase.
So, you need to map out this journey. This means you need a cross-channel engagement strategy. Analyze your customer’s key touchpoints and deploy strategies accordingly. Make sure you cover all the touchpoints and nurture customers. An eCommerce business can improve the CRO through this multi-channel strategy.
2. Integrate Social Proof
Buying decisions are always tricky. Most customers rely on multiple references to make buying decisions. For example, many customers browse social media for proof of concept for specific products and seek social validation.
This is why you must have seen several eCommerce businesses leverage social media platforms. Take an example of a fitness eCommerce brand called Gymshark.The fitness eCommerce brand leverages content creation across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Using content across the channels, the fitness eCommerce brand has generated $600 million in sales.
Similarly, you can leverage content specific to each social media platform for better CRO. Using social proof, you can ensure customers feel a sense of association. This happens due to user-generated content where customers buy and experience the product. It allows your customers to create a social media community, improving CRO.
3. Have Clear Objectives
Imagine you aim to travel 50 miles on half a gallon of gas. Does that seem stupid? Then why would you plan to optimize CRO without a goal? Yes, define your goals.
So, what can be an ideal CRO?
2-3% is an ideal number!
But achieving this number needs continuous measurement of metrics and fine-tuning strategies!
Which metrics to measure?
- Bounce rates are the percentage of people leaving your eCommerce platform without taking any action.
- Exit rate is the percentage of people who leave your site after viewing one page.
- Click-through rate(CTR) is the number of people who click on a URL to reach your site through ads or email.
- Average Session Duration is the time people spend on your eCommerce site.
There is no end to the types of metrics you can track, but the above parameters are enough to understand factors that affect CRO for your eCommerce website.
4. Share The Vision
Sharing the vision does not mean adding a sentence or two to your “About Us” page. The messaging of how your eCommerce business idea solves user problems needs to be conveyed across channels.
So, how can you ensure your vision is conveyed to the target audience?
- Have your vision reflected across the eCommerce website
- Ensure strong branding campaigns across channels
- Make sure you create an engaging and easy-to-navigate site
- Showcase security measures for higher user trust
- Reclaim your authenticity through unique campaigns(communicate expertise)
5. Integrate Customer Feedback
This may seem a more cliche practice, but it is essential. Your customers are the source of business revenue, and integrating their feedback matters the most. You need an action plan that allows constant tracking, managing, and integration of customer feedback.
So, how will you do that?
It’s simple: you need a continuous approach to eCommerce app development. Leverage agile practices and break down the development process into smaller chunks or sprints. At the end of each sprint, test the version, get customer feedback, and integrate it.
Repeat this cycle until you have an eCommerce platform with minimal customer complaints. This will lead to a surge in CRO and sales. While all the best practices are necessary, you must also make some technical changes.
6. Ensure Faster Loading Website
You must have thought of this already! Yes, making the website faster is necessary in the current competitive market.
Why is it important?
Reasons are,
- Better search engine rankings
- The shorter attention span of customers
- Faster response to user requests
- Reduced bounce rates
Improving the website’s loading speed can achieve all of the above. It also helps you increase traffic and enhance the visibility of your eCommerce website. How can you reduce the site’s loading speed?
- Reduce the size of the images.
- Use a private hosting option if possible
- Have a lightweight web framework at the core
- Leverage minimalistic web design
- Reduce animations and use flat design if possible
- Use lazy loading to load important content first.
7. Have Effective Call to Action(CTAs).
CTAs are your ultimate tools for conversions. So, if you don’t get it right, your eCommerce CRO can have an impact. Have clear CTAs highlighted with bright colors and distinctive designs.
Take an example of Pura Vida’s bracelet catalogs. It has distinctive CTAs with an offer besides helping attract more customers. This helps convert faster because you have an offer paired with the CTA. You can use similar style CTAs to improve eCommerce CRO by pairing them with an exciting offer.
8. Optimize Your Mobile Game!
Mobile-first eCommerce sites have seen a boost in CRO. Leveraging mobile-friendly site design can ensure higher conversions for your business, improving CRO and accessibility.
The best part about making the eCommerce platform mobile-friendly is better search engine rankings.
It works in a cyclic form:
- Mobile-friendly website = Better search engine rankings
- Better search engine rankings = Improved visibility
- Improved visibility = Better sales conversions.
At the end of the cycle, your eCommerce business can boost its CRO!
9. Add Smart Recommendations
One thing Amazon did right was add intelligent recommendations and leverage AI algorithms. You can do the same by adding product recommendations based on customer preferences. According to a report, 37% of customers who clicked on recommendations returned to the eCommerce site, compared to 19% of customers who did not click.
So, there is no denying that adding personalized recommendations to your eCommerce website becomes crucial. With repeat customers, the conversion rate improves, increasing your business’s sales revenue.
10. Make Checkout Smooth as Butter!
Imagine you want to buy vegetables from a supermarket. But do you need to cross two halls and 100 shelves before reaching the vegetables? It looks time-consuming, and you may end up buying something else. While it can be an excellent strategy for supermarkets to sell items that you don’t need in the first place, it’s detrimental for an eCommerce site.
A smoother checkout process is vital to better conversions and low abandonment rates. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and you will understand the need for a better checkout process. In the current era of fast-paced life, most customers don’t have time.
This means you need a shorter checkout process that allows users to make purchases quickly. Ensure it requires at most three to four steps. Plus, you need to design the UI intuitively to make the entire process easier for customers, like Zara, which takes fewer steps to make the final purchase.
11. Test Your Site First
You can’t allow the site to go live without testing. It’s like launching a spacecraft without testing for the wear and tear it can enter the earth’s atmosphere. Testing your eCommerce website for functionality, usability, and security is necessary.
Regression testing is also essential when considering backward compatibility needs across browsers. You need to test the security of transactions, data access limits, and other security mechanisms. Testing the site before making it live will help reduce errors and improve user experience.
One way to test your site is by introducing a beta version known as a minimum viable product(MVP). This will help you gather feedback on essential features, usability, and how users perceive the entire experience. You can then use this feedback to make changes in the next iteration.
Using this eCommerce CRO strategy, you can not only improve the conversions but also gain more customers. Testing improves website security, a key indicator for search engines increasing visibility.
12. Make Customer Support Simple
Customer support is critical to eCommerce success. But, like all relationships, your customers need space, too! In other words, don’t hand over your customers. Create self-service portals for them to get support for their issues.
These self-service portals have all the resources that customers need. They reduce the customer support burden on your teams and allow users to solve their problems. Extensive customer support resources mean that you will have higher conversions. A better support system leads to improved customer satisfaction and higher conversions.
13. Design Better Product Pages
As people cannot touch the products, images on each product page should capture them in the best way possible. Start with clear photo images of products depicting the item from different perspectives and zoom levels. However, ensure any resolution is high enough to zoom into the texture and essential details.
Provide a 360-degree view of your product for the audience. When selling clothing or accessories, use models of different sizes to give customers perspective. It provides an idea of how the clothes or accessories would fit them.
Besides images, you can use demos or explainer videos to illustrate how a given product works. Don’t continue generating all the material on your own. Use user-generated content and let customers share photos and videos on social networks.
You can also add elaborate product descriptions for specific product attributes. Remember to provide the size, color, and material composition to give customers more options.
14. Ensure Enriched Navigation
Complicated and convoluted navigation significantly affects lost sales and churn rate. So, your CRO will suffer if you don’t focus on improving the navigation! How customers navigate through your website to access data determines the design aspect.
You can use heat maps to create an easy and efficient way of navigation. Further, the eCommerce website testing will be performed, and the hot spots for the users will be. Based on the hotspots make navigation smoother through visual indicators.
Further, use the following tips,
- Include clear labels for the product categories with a brief description
- Organize menus according to how customers move around the site.
- Do not place the menu too deep into the website design
- Exercise constant experimentation based on the layouts.
Proper eCommerce site navigation increases user satisfaction. It helps the customer find a product or service faster, which means more conversions and improved CRO.
15. Have Your Micro-Conversions Work!
While designing the product pages and making checkout smoother might seem like a D2C strategy, it’s not! By blending micro-conversions, you can make it more B2B.
Every B2B eCommerce strategy that you implement can leverage micro-conversions.
So, what are micro-conversions?
Micro-conversions are like small milestones that you achieve along the journey from first interaction to sales. Every user follows a set path during this journey. You need to identify critical markers and optimize interactions for micro-conversions.
In other words, your small wins ultimately lead to a macro conversion. How can you do that effectively? Well, here are some tips,
- Have a share button on your website wherever possible
- Add discount offers on notification bars and make them clickable
- Ensure you have social share buttons on the first page
- Provide email signups and subscriptions to your materials through pop-ups.
16. FOMO Nudges
Fear of missing out(FOMO) drives conversions for any business today. For a B2B eCommerce business, FOMO can be a handy strategy if done correctly.
But rather than going overboard with urgency and creating FOMO, use small nudges. These FOMO nudges will instill a sense of urgency, prompting customers to act quickly.
You will have micro-conversions because these are nudges scattered like breadcrumbs along the markers. This way, you can nurture, engage, and nurture leads throughout the user journey.
Here are some tips to leverage FOMO nudges,
- Use bright colors to represent specific content, such as “Few hours left for X discount.”
- Leverage flash deals, which provide discounts on specific product categories within a limited time.
- Send push notifications for the limited stock of specific products.
- Alert your customers on special offers and clearance sales.
17. Ensure Your Customers Trust You
Trust is a complex issue for any B2B business. You need many validation badges and a sense of security among customers to gain trust. Most B2B eCommerce businesses strive to achieve trustworthiness.
However, there are two key pillars here,
- Trust in a reliable product
- Payment Security
Most B2B businesses want reliable products because they will use the product to create something of their own. Some companies also use products and services from other firms to cater to customers directly.
So, you need to ensure serviceability and availability. Another critical aspect of maintaining availability and serviceability is enhanced inventory management. Making sure your product is available for customers ensures improved trust and authenticity. Payment security. You also need secure payment gateway integrations for an eCommerce business, whether B2B or Dust.
However, customers need to trust your efforts, and here is how you can show them,
- Feature your security badges and digital certificates on the main page
- Guide your customers through the secure payment process with small nudges in the checkout process
- Mention the use of any third-party services to improve trustworthiness
Signing Off
Improving CRO does not need rocket science. Identifying your site weaknesses, user journey, and sales goals and aligning all of them will boost CRO. You also need to get the technical aspects of your eCommerce platform on point to improve conversions.
Most importantly, you must communicate your vision, gain customers’ trust, and make products more accessible. These practices can boost CRO and sales. So don’t waste time pondering eCommerce best practices; use the above actionable approaches now.
