As an eCommerce business owner we know you’re feeling the squeeze; consumer spending is tightening, competition is fierce, and budgets are under the microscope. It’s a tough market, and every penny counts. The question is: How do we maximise our return on investment (ROI) when every pound needs to work overtime?
Tell us, how are you attempting to improve your conversion rate? Are you improving your paid ads? Are you testing your offers? Are you sending cart abandonment emails? Instead of looking for tiny incremental changes in these areas, you can make large scale improvements with some small changes to your website to help improve conversion rate.
Often, the easiest and most effective changes are within your control and can yield significant results. And if you’re having to be an expert of multiple disciplines in your business, this advice is super simple and requires very little technical know-how.
Here are some of our tried-and-tested best practices and methods you can implement on your website today.
Your home page is the first touchpoint for potential customers, so it needs to make a powerful impression. Imagine it exactly like your shop window – you want to be putting your bestsellers front and centre to draw them in and guide new visitors toward products with a track record of satisfaction. It also builds credibility by demonstrating what existing customers love about your brand.
Your homepage should clearly show your unique value propositions – the key features which differentiate your products from your competitors such as free shipping, eco-friendly materials, exclusive designs, or award-winning customer service. Highlight these UVPs with compelling visuals and copy. If you’ve got hundreds of five-star reviews, shout it loud – use it to signal your trustworthiness.
Product pages are the battleground for purchasing decisions, so that means clarity and transparency are absolutely crucial.
You may think all your product descriptions are clear and up to date, but if they are not explicitly highlighting the product’s key features, customers will skip over them thinking the product is not what they need. If it’s waterproof, say it’s waterproof; if it’s scented, describe the scent; what’s its dimensions? Spell it out!
It’s important your customers know when and how their orders will arrive, so prominently display your delivery policies. Ambiguous terms are a deal-breaker when it comes to conversions.
And finally on product pages; social proof holds immense sway, so show off your customer reviews, ratings, and user-generated content.
Make it effortless for customers to seek what they desire! Intuitive filtering, sorting, and search capabilities will elevate their shopping experience. Allow them to slice through your sizing structure, colour, price, and category.
Make manual searching seamless by ensuring the search bar is prominent and can handle misspellings and varied search terms. The best thing to do is test it yourself – if the products you expect aren’t showing up, something needs to change. A responsive and intelligent search experience reduces the risk of frustration-fuelled abandonments.
Customers will appreciate navigating back to the exact spot on the collection page after viewing the product – so page anchoring needs to be on point. On mobile, a ‘navigate to the top’ button will negate users having to do endless upward scrolling.
A mini cart on a side-panel will improve conversion rates, as users can see exactly what’s in their basket without navigating away from their shopping experience. Having subtotals and delivery costs displayed early in the buyer’s journey will encourage customers to complete their transactions. Unexpected fees are one of the main reasons customers abandon their purchases.
Giving positive security signals and recognisable payment methods are what customers eagerly look for when they come to checkout. This includes returns, warranties, trust badges, and customer reviews (such as Trustpilot ratings).
If you’ve got recognisable payment methods like Klarna, Clearpay, Apple or Google Pay or PayPal then these will reduce the number of drop offs at checkout.
Slow loading times put a huge dampener on conversion rates so keeping page speeds fast for an enhanced user experience (and good practice for SEO). There are numerous affordable or free tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom which are invaluable for analysing your site’s performance and providing actionable recommendations to reduce load times.
On site you can accelerate page speed by compressing image sizes, minimising the use of JavaScript, and leveraging browser caching.
You might already be familiar with some of this advice, but if you haven’t implemented all of it, consider this your sign to start. These tried-and-tested recommendations will establish a solid foundation for your website’s conversion rate and put you in an excellent position to test more experimental strategies as you grow.
Need help with your conversion rate, Lifetime Value, Average Order Value or anything else eCommerce flavoured? Drop us a message!