In such a saturated world of ecommerce, you need to be making the most of the traffic that’s coming through to your website. So, if you’re struggling with the conversion rate of your ecommerce website and you’re ready to make a change, you’re in the right place!
Look At The Quality Of Traffic Coming In
The first thing you can do when you’re having issues with your website’s ecommerce conversion rate is to look at the quality of the traffic that is coming in. Think about it, if you’re not driving qualified users to your website through your marketing, then it’s not going to result in those people finding what they’re looking for. So, the first stage should be looking at what you’re doing to drive qualified traffic. This would involve revising your marketing strategies, here are a couple of the main things to address.
Paid Social
Firstly, if a lot of your traffic comes from paid social media and they’re not converting, then it would suggest that you’re not targeting the right audiences. In the last few years, all of the Meta Marketing Pros are recommending that you use the Advantage+ campaigns, which is where you don’t choose who you target but instead, you put your trust into the algorithms and allow them to use a data driven approach in order to target users that are similar to other users who have already purchased with you, rather than you thinking someone with a particular interest would want to purchase.
The Facebook and Instagram algorithms are now so advanced and so many people have noticed significant improvements in performance as a result, so put your trust in Meta if you’re currently doing all your own targeting and it can really help.
SEO
If you’re not currently investing in SEO, then you absolutely should be. In terms of the most cost effective marketing channel, SEO is top, as you’re just paying for the expertise of an agency, rather than paying to actually display your website as you would with PPC or paid social. When you have a good SEO strategy in place (it’s worth investing in a well recommended, good agency, as this makes all the difference), the right keywords will be selected to ensure that your website appears when people are searching for something relevant to your business, and then they’ll land on your website and find what they’re looking for. For example, if you sell luxury Christmas ornaments, then just targeting “Christmas ornaments” may drive traffic if you can rank for it, but people may bounce when they see the price point. Whereas if you targeted the luxury keyword, then people land with an expectation of the price and this can increase conversion rate.
You’re investing in people who are looking for exactly what you offer at the time when they’re interested, again which is an advantage over other channels like paid social where you’re hoping that when you display an ad, someone will be interested.
Focus On Website Speed
The next thing you need to do is focus on website speed. In such a saturated online space with thousands of ecommerce websites, if a user lands on your website and it’s really slow, then they’ll simply leave and go to another website. You have to provide a great user experience to compete in the world of ecommerce, and one of the main things that lets websites down is the speed.
So, you should be working with your website developers in order to speed up the website if it’s an issue, as it could transform the conversion rate of your website. Just make sure that you trust your web developers and you’re doing regular speed tests to ensure that the improvements they’re saying have been made are actually reducing the site speed.
Provide Helpful Content
Whilst ecommerce websites are very visual in their nature, it’s still really key to provide them with the information they need. So, along with things like a clear returns policy, an informative about us page and an intro to the brand on the homepage, your product pages are key in terms of providing helpful content. Each product page should have as much valuable product information as possible, from sizing and care guides for clothing products through and cleaning tips for homeware.
Having a small FAQ section on each product will help to answer questions that they might have, as if a user feels in the dark about anything, it could stop them from purchasing.
Include Elements Of Trust
With so many people distrusting the internet, it’s vital that you portray elements of trust across your website. The best way to do this is to focus on building good customer reviews (you could offer a 10% discount on the next purchase for people who leave a review) and then pull them into your website using a widget. We’d recommend choosing something like TrustPilot which is very well known, as that’s an immediate reflection to the user that the reviews are legitimate, as opposed to if you were to just take reviews off a platform and paste them onto your website with no reference to where they’re from.
Incorporating your branding clearly across your website design is important too, so working with a web development agency will help with this! This is a simple change that can really transform your conversion rate, so we’d recommend having a banner at the top of each page to display this clearly.
Review Your Checkout
Something else that is key when it comes to improving your ecommerce website’s conversion rate is to review your checkout process. It’s key that you review this properly, as there are tiny details that can result in a user clicking away. You should allow both guest and customer checkout, display security badges, offer the widest variety of payment options as possible, optimise it for mobile, reduce clicks to purchase as much as possible, reduce the form fields and overall just make the process as quick and easy as possible. Ensuring that users can pay without needing a physical card, such as through Apple Pay and PayPal, is key, as if users are on the go and don’t have their card, often they won’t purchase and will forget about it!
If you use Shopify as your CMS, they have a checkout system that has been researched intensely and millions has been spent on it, so utilising this is important and will help you shortcut to an effective system! It may need customising in order to perfect it for your audience and customers specifically, however it’s a fantastic place to start that will help to maximise your conversions. You may not think that something small at checkout will deter someone from purchasing, but you’d be so surprised. Even if it’s not a conscious decision, if anything takes a bit too long, then a busy life easily distracts someone and they just don’t come back to purchase.
