Though most eCommerce businesses we know are pretty tech-savvy, the real challenge for these owners is increasing eCommerce conversion rates. When looking into conversion rate optimization (CRO), the biggest thing you have to be aware of is understanding that your website and online store should constantly evolve.
Best practices for search engines and the like change from one year to the next. What worked for you last year might not be working for you this year. Successful business owners do their best to stay ahead of the curve and embrace new technology to avoid falling behind their competition.
Whatever your goal, whether you want visitors to sign up for a newsletter, buy one of your products, enroll in a subscription service, or more — it’s crucial to understand how to improve conversion rates. Conversion rate optimization is the science behind creating HAVOC in the market with your brand.
Read on as we discuss the ins and outs of CRO and give you a list of actionable steps on increasing conversion rates and making your customer experience better.
Your Conversion Rate Optimization Guide For Your eCommerce Business
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the method of increasing the number of users who perform a specific action on your website. Depending on the type of business you run, the actions might be link clicks, product purchases, or even form fills and video views.
CRO means focusing on understanding the customer experience — what persuades them to convert, what hinders them, and ultimately, how to make your conversion process more user-focused. There are other things which CRO covers but we’ll focus on these for now. When you understand these factors, it’s MUCH easier to build a more user-friendly experience that will encourage users to convert.
What Are The Benefits of Doing Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) On Your Website?
Since we love to focus on Google Ads over here at Yoru Marketing, we’ll cover the specific benefits conversion rate optimization has with your Google Ads campaigns. And trust me – there are many benefits because some of the elements work together. Let’s dive into them:
Customer Insights
CRO focuses on understanding what your target audience will respond well to and optimizing your website and processes to enhance their overall user experience. Google Search bots reward this hyper-focus on the end-to-end experience because it increases average session duration.
Think of it like this – the more time a potential customer spends on your website, the higher the chance that they are liking what they see (otherwise, why would they waste so much time on your website). This causes Google Ads to push your listings more and get more impressions over time.
Better User Experience
As we said above, Google rewards websites that work consistently to provide a better experience to their users. CRO identifies what hinders or encourages conversions and leads companies to make the changes they need to improve the experience.
Simply put, when you’re focusing on CRO, the other aspects of your business are impacted positively automatically.
Scalability
Conversion rate optimization allows you to get more out of your current internal resources and your existing audience. No one has an infinite audience, making it that much more important to get those sales and increase the amount over time.
Not only will CRO help you build a loyal customer base over time (if you get the other things dealing with customer experience right), but it’ll also help you exponentially grow the business while lowering costs overall.
Improves Business Trust
Often times, increasing your conversion rates involves fixing up some part of the funnel. Whether that means increasing the website speed or removing unwanted popups and banners, rates are directly impacted over time along with the website.
Most eCommerce store owners fail to realize that by doing these changes, you also enhance the trust your customers have in you because they experience firsthand that your organization is safe. As a result, they start to feel more comfortable sharing their credit card not only once, but multiple times.
Increases ROI
When you work on your conversion rates, you’ll likely reduce the number of resources you need to allocate to new customer acquisition. You’ll get to make the most out of your current marketing efforts and get more money — which is kind of the whole point, right?
The Main Elements of CRO
Conversion rate optimization consists of conversion research, user experience, personalization, and website effectiveness. When you start focusing on all of these elements, you’ll end up increasing your sales and conversion rates over time.
Conversion research comes from analytics, heat maps, and surveys. This is an extremely important element because it provides real insights into how your users interact with your website.
Seeing your entire process from your customers’ perspective allows your consumers to browse and find information more easily. As a result, you can increase sales by improving your navigation, making forms easier to fill out, and providing better information to your customers.
When you use techniques that emphasize personalization, you’ll see a huge increase in converting your end users on your site. Going the extra mile and making your customer seem special can go a long way to improving the experience and giving you more sales.
One of the most important elements of CRO is the effectiveness of your website. Implement persuasive copywriting to encourage users that they can’t live without your product. You can do this with social proof, urgency, scarcity, and a well-rounded site — all things successful sites use to encourage users to convert.
How To Get Started With Conversion Rate Optimization
You can implement several things to get started with when you’re ready for the CRO process.
The first is Google Analytics because it is one of the most effective CRO tools for setting up conversion goals and funnels. It provides trackable insights to help you find areas for optimization and allows you to make changes and test those changes. Here are a few things Google Analytics can show you:
- Conversions by Browser — this will tell you whether there is a disconnect in user experience based on your browser. For example, if one browser shows fewer conversions than the rest, you likely have an issue hindering conversion and identifying what needs to change.
- Mobile Conversions — mobile traffic will be the primary percentage of your web traffic, so it pays to check if there are issues with how your site is displayed on mobile devices. Display issues or glitches will lead to a poor number of conversions.
- Site Speed — if your site is slow or takes too long to load, you’re not providing a good user experience, and your conversion rates will likely suffer because of it. On the other hand, users will stay longer when your site is fast. Aim for a max of 3 second load time.
Use Conversion Goals & Funnels To Inform Your Decisions
Does your website have a lot of educational content with the intent to help users convert? Make sure you understand which content is helping and which might hinder your end-users. When you analyze your behavior funnel, you might find content converting at a much higher rate than others.
This is important because you need to know what content your consumers are looking at prior to the conversion BEFORE you even create a funnel. A funnel analysis will show you when your users might leave a page and help you identify the spot on your website where you’re losing your audience.
How To Set Conversion Rate Goals
Before you begin setting conversion rate goals, make sure you understand those micro-conversions that need to take place before the macro conversion. The macro conversion is the primary action you want your audience to take. This conversion guides your website copy, layout, design, and call-to-action buttons.
The micro conversions are the small steps that must be taken to influence the macro conversion. They educate, build trust, and facilitate that final goal. Depending on your goals, these could be:
- Purchase
- Reviews
- Community interaction
- Form fills
- Social media sharing
- User guide downloads
- Subscriptions
See How My Agency Can 10x Your Brand's Sales With Google Ads
Google Ads – effective targeting and scaling methods for ROI.
Bing Ads – dominating the market of a fairly untouched platform.
Facebook Ads (Retargeting) – helping stop the leaks from all sides of the bucket, especially with retargeting.
Ways You Can Improve User Experience & Increase Your Conversion Rates
Here are a few ways to help you improve overall user experience and ultimately increase your conversion rates:
Understand Your Target Audience
The foundation of a good CRO strategy starts with understanding your customers and their behavior. Without that, you’re just wasting your time and your resources trying to optimize things that might not need it.
There are plenty of analytic tools to help you break down customer behaviors. Things like purchase history, comments, and reviews can help you better understand their preferences.
Make It Easy To Learn About Your Products
Just like a brick-and-mortar store, when your customers have a hard time finding the answers to your questions, they will get frustrated and go somewhere else. This might even be more true for eCommerce stores because the internet age means that we have access to instant convenience.
Make sure you have a FAQ section that is thorough and easy to navigate. Try to implement a live chat option and have a system for answering customer questions and concerns. We recommend that you display a customer service phone number on your website and actually answer the calls. Easy access to product information can help you make the sale or at least help them with an informed decision.
Write Better Copy
If you’re incapable of writing a copy, pay someone to do it. The sales copy of your site can be the difference between a good impression and a bad one. Spelling mistakes, bad grammar, or odd phrasing are big red flags for consumers looking to avoid low-quality products or services.
(Here are two videos our founder, Shri Kanase, made on this topic: Video #1 and Video #2).
Your copy should explain to your clients and customers who you are, what you’re selling, and why they should buy from you apart from anyone else. Good copy will help you organize your information and motivate people to buy or subscribe.
Optimize Your Site Layout
To optimize your user’s experience, you want to make your navigation as easy as possible. Customers who get lost or frustrated because they can’t find what they are looking for won’t buy your products. As simple as that.
Due to this, it becomes even more important to organize your layout and site architecture to increase your overall CRO as well as the SEO. Avoid unnecessary copy, make finding products easier, and make it easy to check out.
Showcase Your Products
Don’t just snap photos from your phone of your products. You need to up to your game if you’re running an eCommerce business. Get a professional photographer and find a way to take pictures using a lightbox. Model your items in action and get shots from multiple angles.
A great product page will have several different images so that your customers can get a better sense of the time and decide about buying it sooner. If you’re selling services, take the time to get high-quality action shots or utilize professional stock photography.
Offer Ongoing Support And Customer Service
Transparency and accessibility are two factors that will create a more trusting relationship between you and your customers. For example, when your clients see that they can have 24/7 support, this might help remove their concerns about sealing the deal. In addition, when you can quickly resolve customer issues, you can build a better reputation around your brand, build rapport, and hopefully facilitate future sales with the same client.
Create A Fantastic Homepage
If you’re putting in the hard work with conversion rate optimization, SEO, social media marketing, paid ads, and more, then you better also go above and beyond on where your customers land. Your store’s homepage is the place to make a great first impression. Put well-placed and prominently Calls-to-Action throughout, and make sure your goal for them is clear.
Optimize The Checkout Experience
Optimizing the checkout experience is a better way of saying, “upsell.” Most stores have small items at the cash register to entice customers as they buy. These impulse purchases are a way to earn just a little bit more. You can use this same strategy with your online store, and it’s easier than ever to do that with automated product suggestions or upgrades right in the checkout.
Target And Retarget
Once you’ve compiled a solid list of leads, it’s time to develop a targeted marketing strategy. Many businesses send consistent emails with content that includes advice, gift ideas, recipes, and more to maintain contact with their customers. With the range of email marketing platforms we have available today, there’s no reason you can’t personalize emails for client milestones.
Retargeting is a long-term strategy that you need to get on board with. On average, it takes 7 points of contact before your customer decides to make a move. Set up a system to automatically reach out to clients who haven’t completed the funnel.
Make Sure Everything Is Legit
This might seem obvious but in an age where fraud is not uncommon, you need to go above and beyond to make your website legitimate and safe. You want your site to be stylish and professional.
Add an “About Us” section to explain how your business started and post photos of real people in your company. It’s also a good idea to include language on the site about customer guarantees, return and refund policies, and including badges sharing your authenticity. Reassurance is key to getting those conversions.
Conclusion
Everything we included above is geared toward improving your website’s conversion rates using best practices. You don’t want to rely on just one or two; try to leverage the whole range of ideas to help you increase the percentage of customers who reach the goals you have for them.
Once you have checked on some of these aspects for your eCommerce site, it’s time to start checking whether your CRO efforts are working. Make sure you split test different elements of your home page, product pages, category pages, or checkout process to reduce conversion issues and get more customers through the sales funnel.
Cleaning up your website and making it more user-friendly overall will improve conversion rates and help grow your revenue faster than ever.Need help with conversion rate optimization? Schedule a consultation with us today and let’s see how we can improve your efforts and get you the results you’re looking for.
