With increasingly competitive per-click costs, ensuring your e-commerce platform is optimised for every visitor is more crucial than ever.
So before you invest more in traffic generation, solidifying your e-commerce point of sale is key – why drive traffic if it doesn’t convert?
In our eyes, conversion rate optimisation is a game-changer—a factor with immense leverage yet often overlooked. Boosting your conversion rate from 1% to 2% can redefine your revenue, doubling what you earn without doubling your traffic. But where do you start, and what areas deserve your attention?
Here are our top three tweaks to transform your conversion rates, drawing directly from proven strategies and current e-commerce trends:
Hidden fees are the largest driver of abandoned carts, with almost 50% of shoppers admitting to cancelling an order when encountering unexpected taxes or shipping costs. Early transparency about these costs, or introducing free delivery can substantially mitigate cart abandonment. For growing e-commerce brands, offering free shipping can be challenging due to tight margins and rising delivery expenses. One way to alleviate this is to structure free delivery promotions, based on item count or cart value to help balance costs and maintain profitability.
Split testing different promotional strategies helps you identify what resonates best with your audience. This tactic is particularly beneficial on marketplaces hosting various brands, where margins are inconsistent—experiment with how you communicate these options across your e-commerce platforms to find the most effective messaging.
For global sales, clarity about any additional fees or taxes is crucial from the start. Being upfront prevents surprises at checkout and fosters trust, encouraging customers to complete their purchases.
The second largest contributor to a low conversion rate is issues in the checkout process.
24% of users dislike being forced to create an account. Not offering a guest checkout option could result in losing these customers. While customer accounts are key for effective follow-up and analytics, many shoppers prefer to engage without committing their data right away.
For the customers who are comfortable with signing in, streamlining the login process is crucial. Ensure your site can handle users moving across devices and platforms. Customers switching from an in-Facebook link to Google Chrome to purchase want to avoid the friction of re-entering their info.
Focus on making the checkout process as smooth as possible, allowing customers to choose their preferred path without feeling forced. Streamlining the transaction process down to as few clicks as possible aids buyer satisfaction. Introducing a variety of payment options, such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, Klarna, and Clear Pay, caters to different preferences.
Lastly, it’s important to remember that people’s shopping habits are changing. If your customers enter the purchasing funnel on their work desktop towards the end of the day, they want to be able to complete their purchase on their mobile during the commute home. Your site should support that seamless transition. It’s something platforms like Shopify and Amazon excel at. Even if you’re on a different tech stack, it’s worth creating a flexible user journey.
Maximising the impact of landing page optimisation is often overlooked. The common strategy directs traffic straight to category or product pages, but the scope for engagement extends far beyond this. Using content that guides users on an informative journey can be particularly effective for those not yet ready to make a purchase.
Consider a beauty company as an example. An article titled “Removing waterproof mascara in 3 easy ways” can engage users while subtly integrating product recommendations. This strategy isn’t limited to articles; it can include detailed guides or informational pages that exist apart from your main product catalogue.
Reflect on the diverse types of content you can create to enrich your user’s journey, enhance their knowledge, and offer your products as part of the solution.
Determining the effectiveness of your optimisation efforts boils down to understanding what a ‘good’ conversion rate looks like. Given that this metric varies widely across different brands, industries, and competitive landscapes, the most reliable benchmark is an improvement on your past performance. Strive for continuous enhancement, aiming to elevate your conversion rate progressively.
To gain deeper insights, analyse your conversion rates by individual page. Tools like Google Analytics can identify your best-performing pages, offering clues about successful elements you can replicate or expand. Direct more traffic to high-converting pages or focus your campaigns on them to maximise conversions.
Leverage analytics and user behaviour monitoring tools like HotJar and MouseFlow to refine your site’s performance and user experience meticulously. Regularly engage in A/B split testing, an essential yet often underused tool, to evaluate the impact of your changes.
Be mindful that increasing your marketing budget could initially dilute your conversion rate, as broader reach often includes less qualified leads. Monitor conversion rates segmented by traffic source—be it Google Ads, organic search, or social media platforms—and identify which channels yield the most fruitful engagement. This is also general best practice, as it allows you to identify revenue growth opportunities by source.
And finally, always be prepared to iterate and optimise. While pursuing improvement, recognise when you’re approaching the point of diminishing returns and consider reallocating focus to other areas with untapped potential, ensuring a sustainable growth strategy.
3 tweaks to instantly transform your conversion rate is the next instalment in our ongoing Long-Term Thinking For Sustainable Growth Series. Applying these tweaks is vital to helping you drive traffic and achieve campaign success. In our next article, we’ll guide you through improving your average order value (AOV). In the meantime, our team is here to assist you at any stage of your journey. If you’d like help to improve your conversion rate, contact our team today.