A number of e-commerce businesses out there tend to experience some crucial marketing wins while getting stuck in the long run. The first reaction to this issue -what is missing? Is there a new channel that should be explored? Or should you consider hiring someone? However, it is far from the reality.
As a matter of fact, it is not concerned with expanding your channel or paying for ads. On the other hand, it is more about optimizing the existing channels in the first place. This can start with your own site. Before you start unveiling other channels, it is recommended to analyze your e-commerce website’s conversion rate. This is known as Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) for eCommerce Websites?
CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization, has been doing rounds since the early 2000s. Essentially, it serves to be a great way to improve almost every aspect of your eCommerce business. CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization is regarded as the process of optimizing eCommerce websites to improve overall sales. This is achieved by a series of strategies, including optimizing the checkout process, adding more CTAs or popups throughout the site, and enhancing the product pages.
Why Should You Look Into Conversion Rate Optimization?
Essentially, research related to conversion rate optimization for your e-commerce business is concerned with determining what actually needs improving and why the same is needed from the customers. Here are some core elements involving conversion research to ensure that you obtain the best outcomes:
- Visitor Recordings: Use this parameter to observe what visitors do on your website. They are great for common visitor issues, like form fields and page elements they might find difficult to use. It is recommended to gain insights from useful visitor recordings for pages that you wish to improve.
- Heat Maps: It serves as a great compliment for visitor recordings. You should not just presume you are aware of what visitors tend to click on or how in-depth they scroll. Check the same for your core pages. Heap maps are great tools for revealing CTAs, content, and images that should receive more clicks.
- User Testing: Gain ample feedback from the target audience when they interact on your website and ask them relevant questions. It serves to be a great way when it comes to discovering what your target audience might think of your website, their potential issues, and what you need to improve upon.
Tips for eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization
1. Analyze Your Data
All your CRO attempts should be based on data. If you are not aware of what your users are doing on your e-commerce site and the current conversion rate, how can you improve it? Moreover, once you start making changes, how will you know the results?
Every step of conversion rate optimization should be based on data to ensure a positive effect on the bottom line. Big brands tend to make decisions this way.
2. Prioritize the Top of the Funnel
In case you are not receiving ample traffic on your website, then conversions will not work significantly for you. Therefore, the first thing that you need to ensure is setting up the top of the funnel. In turn, you should ensure that you are receiving traffic and that your visitors are reaching both product and category pages.
Some important tips for improving your category pages are:
- Displaying user reviews on every category page
- Including influencer shots and videos
- Simplifying the navigation menu and other navigation options within each category
Avoiding sidebar navigation
Some important tips for improving the product pages of your e-commerce site are:
- Using engaging product images
- Displaying user-generated photos and videos from customers and influencers
- Displaying a product video as the primary product image
- Displaying product reviews for every product
- Describing product descriptions with detailed information
3. Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment
Once you have optimized the top of the funnel, it is time to analyze your e-commerce shopping cart abandonment rate. The number of products potential customers add to their shopping carts and then leave before making any purchase determines your abandonment rate.
According to popular studies, it has been observed that the average cart abandonment rate is 68.81 percent. It might vary from one industry to another. It is imperative for you to look at your checkout process and the respective cart page. Then, you can work your way towards going through the checkout process and observing what you can simplify. It is recommended to make use of heat maps to observe aggregate data on where users are clicking and what is catching their attention the most.
Some important tips on minimizing cart abandonment rate are:
- Displaying limited-time offers
- Using dynamic notifications
- Displaying trust banners and credit card logos
- Decreasing the load time of all pages
- Displaying shipping costs before the cart page
4. Focus on Page Speed
Page speed is an important metric that reveals how long it takes for a website to load fully. As far as page speed is concerned, it is important to consider every second. Some useful ways to optimize the page speed for your e-commerce website are:
- Reviewing the Hosting: As far as hosting is concerned, you will get what you have paid for. You should ask how much cheaper the hosting service is with respect to lost sales due to slow page speed. In case your page speed is lagging, you can choose the option of premium hosting.
- Compressing Images: Before you upload an image to your e-commerce site, you should compress it using a reliable tool. This will improve the overall page speed and efficiency.
Conclusion
Ecommerce conversion rate optimization is executed to help you make the most out of incoming traffic than what you are receiving. For more assistance, you can reach out to digital marketing experts at O+ and gain valuable insights into conversion rate optimization for your e-commerce website.
