8 Proven Strategies to Increase Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate

To increase Shopify sales and increase revenue generation, Conversion rate optimization is necessary. Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the process of making changes to your website or web pages to increase the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action from your website.

The desired action simplifies purchasing something from your store, signing up for newspaper, and other related actions regarding products and services. With countless online stores struggling for attention, only driving the traffic to your Shopify store is not sufficient. The real challenge lies in converting those visitors into paying customers. By implementing effective Shopify Conversion Rate strategies, you can significantly increase your Shopify sales and maximize your return on investment (ROI).

What is Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate, in simple terms mean, is the percentage of website visitors on the site to perform any action. In other words, or according to this e-commerce conversion rate is the percentage of site visitors who made purchase from the site.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the systematic process of improving elements of your website and marketing campaigns & strategies to encourage visitors to visit your site and take the desired action. The e-commerce Conversion rate optimization involves analyzing user behavior, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes to enhance the overall user experience and many other effective strategies.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the systematic process of improving elements of your website and marketing campaigns & strategies to encourage visitors to visit your site and take the desired action. The e-commerce Conversion rate optimization involves analyzing user behavior, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes to enhance the overall user experience and many other effective strategies.

For instance, if in a week, 100 people visited your website but only 7 people made purchase out of hundred, therefore the conversion rate of your site will be 7% for the week. Accurate data is essential for calculating exact conversion rate. To extract accurate data, one can keep track of the order or dispatch.

What is the Best and Average Conversion Rate for E-commerce?

Optimizing or calculating conversion rate is essential as it depicts the sale quantity (in percentage) and analyzes area for improvements to increase the sales. For an e-commerce website a conversion rate between 2.5% to 3% is considered as an average conversion rate. Whereas the average conversion rate of March 2024 was 1.95%. If your site’s conversion rate is above 3% then it is considered the best conversion rate. (Source: irpcommerce)

Why is E-commerce Conversion Rate Important to Boost Sales?

Conversion rate plays a significant role in figuring out about the website’s performance among visitors. Boosting the conversion rate is important; because: -

• Performance Indicator:

Conversion rate determines the performance of website. The higher conversion rate indicates that the website is well designed and sufficient to meet the visitor's needs. Whereas lower or below average conversion rate indicates toward the need for improvement on the website’s interface, UX, product displaying or description and many other factors that play significant role in boosting conversion rate.

• Cost Efficiency:

Boosting the conversion rate is an efficient method for cost reduction as it reduces the costing of market ads and promotion. The higher conversion rate shows the increased or total number of visitors taking the desired action, that means purchasing from the website; therefore, this helps in reducing the cost factors for boosting the Shopify sales.

• Insights of Market & Revenue Generation:

Analyzing conversion rates keenly can help in determining the latest market trends. It can also help in analyzing the methods of market promotion to boost sales and then determining the most effective market promotion method of all. The conversion rate directly impacts the revenue. The higher conversion rate will ensure a boost in revenue for the e-commerce businesses.

• Enhances User Experience & Competitive Approach:

When the conversion rate is high, it reflects high and enhanced user experience. Factors like simplified CTAs or call to actions for easy navigation, less loading time, and many other factors help in enhancing user experience and conversion rate of website. Having an enhanced conversion rate is helpful in increasing sales and generating revenue. This eventually results the website to outshine from other competitors.

What are the Key Areas of a Website for Implementing CRO Strategies that will Boost Sales?

The key areas of the website on which implementing Conversion Rate Optimization strategies will help in enhancing user experience, boosting sales, etc.

Product Images:

Product images or photography simplifies as the pictures of the product posted on the website for the visitors. During online or e-commerce shopping, product images work as a guide for the visitors to perform the desired actions. Posting clear and high-quality images demonstrating all the angles of the product is necessary to enhance the CVR.

Product Descriptions:

Presenting product description is a crucial task while displaying product images. The description presented should be clear and concise, containing all the relevant information with limited and necessary slang to allure the customers. Product Description should not lack the details like size, color, design, material, and other relevant parts of the product. So that visitors should get a complete overview of the product. Too long descriptions seem to be boring to read and visitors skip it causing it to impact on CVR.

Brand Voice:

Brand Voice simplifies as the method in which business communicates with their audience. In other words, the brand voice is the other perspective of business that focuses on creating brand value. It fosters trust among the customers toward the e-commerce business, by conveying messages through consumer testimonials, product reviews, authentic approval over product, offering return policy and many other methods.

Other Areas Requiring Improvement: -

→ Blog Posts

→ CTAs or Call to Actions

→ Landing Pages

→ Checkout Process

→ Website Forms

The 8 Proven Strategies to Increase E-commerce Conversion Rate: -

1. Get the Right Conversion Optimization Tool:

Choosing the right conversion optimization tool is essential for accurately counting the conversion rate. Analyzing conversion rate carefully and concisely is essential to identify the problems arising (if any) on the website to improve these problems. There are many CRO tools available for optimizing the conversion rate; but choosing the right tool according to your business is essential. Tools for CRO are:

→ Heat maps: This app focuses on determining what object or product attracts users’ attention.

→ Scroll Maps: It helps to determine the landing pages and placements for CTAs.

→ Confetti Maps: Confetti maps focus on highlighting users’ preference in filters i.e. size, color, etc.

2. Speed Optimization:

Optimizing website speed is a crucial point in order to boost the conversion rate. Nowadays, everyone has a busy schedule causing them to lack patience. If the website takes time to load visitors will eventually look for alternatives with better site speed to save time. Along with this it will cause users’ disinterest in the brand and its product. To avoid such a situation, one must ensure the speed optimization of the website. It should take a lot of time to load. All the themes in Shopify are already optimized but still one must ensure the optimization of all the pages of website to avoid unnecessary loading time.

3. Using High-Quality Product Images:

The images you use for displaying your product should be of high quality. Photos with low quality and grainy or blur images have negative impact on the brand’s value. Buyers prefer product images to be clear to get a proper look of the product. Images should be posted on your e-commerce store considering these few points: -

→ If the product is displayed in 360 degrees view that it will effectively attract people.

→ Posting pictures with various camera angles like top, front, side, etc.

→ Using high quality lenses.

→ Proper set up of lighting to prevent shadows on products

→ Maintaining ISO, Shutter speed and Aperture at adequate level considering the environment to avoid noisy and blurry pictures.

4. Improve Customer’s Post Purchase Experience:

Customer retention is a more crucial part of boosting the sales and conversion rates of the e-commerce store. Customers can be retained effectively after enhancing their post purchase experience. By providing smooth check-outs, easy navigation, and many other things you can improve the purchasing experience; but after this it is necessary to make the customer feel connected with the store.

By sending a thank you email or message after purchase you can express your gratitude along with this you can ask for the product feedback including the service feedback. You can attach a feedback form for the customers to review your brand and asking for areas requiring improvement to make services and experience more user-friendly.

5. Write Effective Product Description Copies:

The product description is the most important part of e-commerce shopping. The product description consists of all the necessary information regarding the product. The description should be presented clearly, concisely and carefully. Use the language according to your target audience; for example, if the product is for kids and toddlers then use the words phrases with joyous feeling to attract the customers to buy that particular product for their child.

Include your Unique selling point (USP) in the product description and provide all the necessary information like sizes, colors available, material details and many other relevant details. While writing product description, make sure it is not too excessive because excessive information seems boring, and customers eventually skip the description in that case impacting the site traffic and conversion rate.

6. Create Discounts Offers for Visitors:

Discounts, coupons and purchase offers are also an important method to increase the conversion rate of your online stores. By offering discounts, coupons and offers, it is easy to convert website visitors into active buyers. The offers can vary from time to time like offering discount to the first-time buyers, Free shipping, free delivery for first few orders, or by offering special discounts and offers on festival and occasions. This will not only help in increasing the conversion rate, but it will also help in enhancing the customer retention rate and attracting new customers and visitors to your e-commerce store.

7. Run A/B Tests:

The A/B test simplifies creating two different versions of a web page that means the A (the control one) and the B (the variant). You will display these two versions by dividing the traffic in half. In simpler words, you will display A version to 50% people and other 50% will get B version. In this test you will experiment with a few parts of the webpage like heading part, images, CTAs, colors, and other parts of required. After the text you can decide whether to use the page with higher conversion rate or keep continuing the test to experiment more for improvements.

Steps to run A/B test are: -

→ Choose an A/B testing tool

→ Make variations in A and B

→ Set up the pages with the selected tool

→ Conduct the test for adequate time

→ Reach statistical result

→ Implement the winning page

8. Sharing Social Proofs:

It is a powerful strategy for Conversion rate optimization. Sharing social proofs will help in enhancing traffic on your website. By sharing the positive reviews of real time customers, influencers and celebrities on your website to develop authenticity of your product or services.

Many e-commerce brands or stores collaborate with social media influencers and celebrities to review their product and its benefits for the customers. This will also increase brand visibility and trustworthiness of products among new and existing customers. It will impact on the conversion rate effectively in a positive manner.

Summing Up

The Conversion rate means converting website visitors into paying customers. By implementing these proven Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategies like high quality pictures, website speed optimization, simplifying CTAs, and choosing the right conversion optimization tool, etc., E-commerce business owners can significantly increase their Shopify conversion rates and boost their overall sales. By regularly analyzing their website traffic, tracking their conversion rates, and making data-driven decisions to continually improve the customer experience and boost conversion rates to drive more sales.