Seven eCommerce conversion rate hacks I learned the hard way, first hand (so you don't have to).
Are you a clothing brand or ecommerce store owner that cannot seem to crack the code on your conversion rate? Instead of patching the holes on your leaky bucket you keep turning up the spigot by wasting more and more money on traffic.
Here are seven ecommerce conversion rate hacks I learned first hand to help you increase your sites conversion rate. Take notes, apply them to your store, and share this post with people like you.
1. Speed
Amazon did a study where they found every 100ms delay cost them 1% in sales a year. Last year, Amazon generated over $500 billion in sales. That means, for every one-tenth of a second, they lose more than $5 billion per year.
Amazon knows this. That's why they spend billions of dollars doing continuous multi-variate split testing to maximize their site's conversion rate according to each customer. They know where you have been, what you are shopping for, and where you are most likely to go next.
Google found that every 0.5 second increase in loading time lead to a drop in traffic by 20%. Imagine how much money they would lose by adding all the fancy bells and whistles apps and extra code to their website.
Customer in today's world expect sites to load immediately – any delay and they're gone. Use tools like Pingdom to test your site speed, and remove excess code that costs you time and money. Consider simplifying apps on your Shopify store, at most ten, otherwise the impact can be more harm than good.
2. Eliminate Distractions
The more a customer is exposed to, the more variants they must select, the more obstacles they face.
Imagine you have a bridge, and on one side of the bridge, you have people that want to buy, and on the other side of the bridge, you have customers that have successfully bought your product. It's your job as an e-commerce store owner to get prospects from one side of the bridge to the other and become customers. The more obstacles you add to the bridge, the less likely they're able to cross them and will instead fall into a pit and die.
By eliminating distractions, all customers have to do is click "Add to Cart" and order. No fancy upsells, downsells, or other offers that block their way to checkout.
You can also remove a common barrier at checkout by offering free shipping. Be sure to test this for your store, but by baking in the cost of shipping into the product itself, it removes a barrier to entry and makes the process more convenient for the customer to buy.
Take advantage of Shopify's new one-page checkout to save customers time purchasing. The fewer times a customer has to click to continue to shipping and continue to payment, the more likely they are to buy. Clear always beats clever, don't be fancy, and before you add an extra step for customers, ask yourself: Can customers live without it?
3. Social Proof
People want to buy from people, not faceless acronyms. Customers want to buy from someone they know, like, and trust. The best way to establish this trust is by showcasing other people who also know, like, and trust your brand.
It goes without saying, the more reviews you have, the more faces you're able to display of happy customers and testimonial videos, the more likely someone is to buy. Put testimonials on your homepage, product page, and even at checkout to enable the power of social proof.
4. Call to Actions
In today's day and age, the overwhelming majority, over 90% of customers, buy on mobile. Whenever possible, place a disproportionate amount of focus on your mobile site rather than desktop. Be sure that when a page loads from the customer that you paid to go to your site, the call to action is above the fold.
If a customer is sent to a product page, that add to cart button must be visible without scrolling. If the call to action is not clear or visible, you may lose more than half your traffic. And if customers are sent to the homepage, make sure call to action like "view product" or in the cart, "proceed to checkout" is visible in order to guide customers to the next step.
You can also have call to actions like abandoned cart emails and re-targeting ads that are not directly on your site to achieve a greater effect.
5. Value props
Value propositions refer to the unique advantages that your company offers to its customers. How is your company unique from others? What makes your product a monopoly of one?
This does not refer to offering free shipping or 30-day guarantee. No, this refers to the one thing that makes your product stand out. Does your product have a proprietary technology saving someone time or money? Does it have network effects like access to a community? Is it part of a well-known brand? These are questions to ask yourself to determine your value proposition.
Once you do, display your value proposition under the add to cart button and across your site.
6. Copywriting
Customers want the necessary information at the right time and place. Be sure to test when, where, and how to display the information to achieve the best results.
Practice copywriting and speak in your customers' language. This could include words or phrases in your niche that an outsider may not know, almost like an inside joke.
The person who understands their customers best and speaks their language is most likely to get the sale.
7. Decrease Your Conversion Rate
Hold on, didn't you say these would increase your conversion rate?
Yes, but there's a caveat.
To maximize revenue and profits. The goal may not always be to have the highest conversion rate.
Let's say we have 10,000 customers inside a $10 a month subscription club, and we double the price. We made an extra $100,000 a month.
But if you doubled the price, wouldn't some customers leave?
Let's say 50% of those customers walked away. Not only are we still making $100,000 a month, our cost to serve those customers cut in half. Which means we are more equipped to serve those customers.
And with more scarcity, our brand value goes up. This is how the most valuable luxury brands in the world are able to charge a premium. It's not that they increase the price of the merchandise. It's that they increase the initiation fee to the club.
The best way to maximize revenue rather than conversion rate is to increase your prices.
There you have it, seven eCommerce conversion rate tips I learned so you don't have to. Go test and apply them to your site to increase revenue and maximize your conversion rate.
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