Improving eCommerce Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is an important metric that you cannot ignore as an eCommerce business. Today, we will help you know the aspects to elevate your eCommerce success! Learn pivotal strategies to boost conversion rates and transform your online business. Dive into expert tips and insights for optimal performance.

Retail businesses cannot survive without an online presence today. The reason is that 91% of shoppers prefer online shopping (Stackla). So, is your eCommerce digital marketing strategy helping you get enough conversions? If not, let’s find out how you can boost your eCommerce conversion rate. 

Table of Contents

• Meaning of eCommerce conversion rate 
• What is a good eCommerce conversion rate?
• Why is a good eCommerce conversion rate so important?
• Reasons for low conversion rate
• How to improve your eCommerce conversion rate?
  • Speed up slow loading time
  • Leverage social proof
  • Make the guest checkout process simple
  • Offer more than one payment option
  • Offer multiple discounts

Meaning of eCommerce Conversion Rate

Conversio rate is the ratio of visitors to your eCommerce website who complete a purchase within a specific time period. 

To calculate it, you use this formula

Number of sales/Number of visitors x 100 =Conversion rate (%)

What is a Good eCommerce Conversion Rate?

Conversion rates differ from one industry to the next. But a good conversion rate across all industries lies between 2% to 4%. According to WordStream data, the average eCommerce conversion rate is 1.84%. The highest is 6.25%. 

Why is a Good eCommerce Conversion Rate so Important?

A small change in the conversion rate directly impacts the return on investment. 

Suppose, you have a marketing spend of Rs. 4,00,000. 

With a solid content marketing strategy, you could gain 20000 visitors and 500 of them made a purchase. The conversion rate is 2.5%. 

So, in the next month, you don’t change the marketing spend. And if you are able to grow the number to 1000 online shoppers, the conversion rate will double, i.e., 5%. 

In the same vein, if your conversion rate decreases your ROI will decrease. Let’s go over to the next section to see the main reasons for conversion rates to go down.

Reasons for Low Conversion Rate

Some of the main factors could be the following. 

• Your eCommerce site does not provide a good user experience
• The website is not mobile-friendly and it takes a long time to load
• The guest checkout process is complicated
• You are unsure what your customers want and your CTAs are unclear to them
• The eCommerce site does not follow SEO guidelines to rank on Google or other search results pages
• Your mobile ads are too intrusive that gives your eCommerce business a bad impression

Knowing these reasons will help you take actionable steps to increase your conversion rate. 

How to Improve Your eCommerce Conversion Rate?

The following steps apply to all eCommerce businesses.  

Speed up Slow Loading Time

One of the most effective ways to retain your potential customers on your website is to fix your page loading speed. 

According to Akamai, a two-second delay increases the bounce rate by 100% and more. 

You may know that eCommerce sales depend on returning visitors.  For such businesses metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is important. CLV estimates how much a single customer is going to spend on your business. That customer makes up for 48% of transactions (Business Insider). 

Another study by HubSpot showed that 80% of existing customers do not visit a site again that has a longer loading time.

So, the first thing to fix will be prioritising your site’s backend. Then you have to test the speed. There are plenty of free tools to do so. 

Using Core Web Vitals

Check out PageSpeed Insights from Google. Simply enter your website URL and hit the ‘Analyse’ button. Google will automatically assess the Core Web Vitals and give you results based on how your site’s visual elements are stable along with responsivity. This is part of technical SEO as well, so you may want to read about it!

The red score above indicates the Core Web Vitals are near-poor. That is the load time is higher. Google suggests website owners should prioritise the fixes based on performance.

Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform

Another important factor for increasing website speed is to use the right platform. There are Shopify, Wix, and Magento among others. Shopify has created a great infrastructure for eCommerce websites to run smoothly and faster worldwide. 

With its Storefront Renderer, cache memories won’t slow your page down. And with its Fastly-powered Content Delivery Network, your site can be accessed easily from all the main strategic locations that you choose.  

Leverage Social Proof

Social proof acts as mass psychology that convinces others to perform an action. In your case, consider that online shoppers read reviews online before making any purchase. 

So, you need to reach out to potential customers on the right social media platforms. There are broadly two ways to do so. 

Ask for feedback on Facebook, Twitter and other relevant platforms. See how your followers react. 

Another way to leverage social proof is to grow your follower count on your social media handles. The more followers you have, the more customer trust you gain. You can even collaborate with influencers who can bring your follower count up. 

Social proof is not just limited to social media channels though. 

For every product description on your eCommerce site, you can place product reviews next to them. 

Make the Guest Checkout Process Simple

To increase conversions, reduce the cart abandonment rate. 

Think about it this way. 

You have designed the site in such a way that the potential customer has to register for an account before buying the product. 

Now, the buyer may not be interested in your products and probably is buying for someone else. For that individual, creating an account and receiving your mails provide more reasons to abandon the shopping cart. 

Instead, you can offer the chance to register after they checkout. This shows they have more control in deciding whether they will return and buy another time. 

Offer More than One Payment Option 

Credit cards are no longer the only means of payment nowadays. There are many other ways such as ranging from debit cards to UPI wallets. Leverage this aspect to provide more options for the customer to complete the purchase as easy as possible. 

Experts suggest that you can look into the types of payment options your target audience prefers. 

Offer Multiple Discounts

One of the quickest ways eCommerce stores improve the conversion rate is to provide discounts to their online shoppers. You can use such a tactic even more effectively by some of the following methods

1. Discounts that stay for a limited time
2. Dynamic discounts across multiple products other than the main product with a heavy discount.
3. Discount coupons for other products after checkout

But do improve the product pages for your potential customers’ user experience with attractive images and good product descriptions.

Parting Thoughts

These are some of the best ways to increase your eCommerce conversions. Apart from them, do give importance to personalised communication to engage your customers. Make your CTAs simple. And, work on a content marketing strategy that increases the retention time on your product pages.