If you run an ecommerce business, improving your conversion rate should be a top priority. You don’t want visitors to come to your site, browse around, and leave. You want visitors to come, stay, and take an action, whether making a purchase, downloading a form, or signing up for a newsletter. In simple terms, your conversion rate is the number of visitors who come to your website and convert by taking the desired action.
So, how do you improve your conversion rate to bring in more customers, expand your business, and get more value from your visitors? Take a look at our top three conversion rate tips and how they can benefit your site below.
1. Create a sales funnel
The sales funnel is the journey a potential customer takes from the first contact they have with your brand to purchasing a good or service. Visitors don’t want to land on a page and be force-fed pop-ups and CTAs begging them to make a purchase. Additionally, some visitors might not even have the intention of making a purchase and are instead simply browsing. However, this doesn’t mean they’re a lost cause. With a well-established sales funnel, you can convert a larger portion of your website’s visitors into returning customers.
The sales funnel can be broken into three different parts, with the top of the sales funnel being the widest and the bottom being the smallest.
- Top: The top of the sales funnel is the widest because this is the beginning of the journey for consumers. It’s here where visitors identify that they have a problem but don’t have an answer. This is where companies need to establish their brand and get potential customers into their sales funnel through tactics such as social media marketing, referrals, SEO, affiliate marketing, and advertising.
- Middle: The middle of the sales funnel begins to narrow and is where you begin to gather leads. These leads know what their problem is and are researching potential solutions, such as mattresses that help with back pain or shoes for runners who pronate. It’s in the middle of the sales funnel where it’s your job to turn leads into customers by building a relationship and showing that your product or service has value.
Take ShareAble for Hires, for example. On their landing page, they offer information on how they can help you and provide a free screening for businesses to conduct an employee background check before having to make a purchase. This builds trust and gives leads a chance to test out the product before committing to making a purchase.
- Bottom: The bottom of the sales funnel is the smallest, and this is because it’s where leads make the decision to convert and make a purchase. This is the hardest part of the sales funnel to get to, but can be achieved with compelling calls to action (CTA) that encourage leads to make a purchase. It’s at this stage where they decide your product outranks your competitors, therefore worthy of their money.
Once you’ve created a sales funnel that navigates visitors through their purchasing journey, you’ll be able to improve return on investment capital and boost your conversion rates.
2. Provide testimonials and reviews
No matter what you’re selling, you need to provide proof that your products or services are legit and trustworthy. Otherwise, visitors will quickly click on the back button and visit another site. Some of the best ways you can provide evidence that what you’re selling is worth the money is through testimonials and reviews.
- Testimonials: Testimonials are often cherry-picked reviews from customers. Testimonials typically show the positives of your business, products, and services, and give visitors a glimpse on how one customer’s life was improved with what you’re selling. This is a great way to show the great experiences customers have with your products.
- Reviews: Reviews are similar to testimonials, but differ in the fact that they contain both the positives and negatives. No one can claim to be perfect. If you only post 5-star reviews on your site, it will look fishy to visitors. With reviews, both positive and negative, visitors will be able to weigh the pros and cons of the products and services you offer to make an informed decision.
Along with testimonials and reviews, you can also post third-party reviews from magazines or blogs, research results, and case studies.
3. Make buying easy
No customer wants to spend ten minutes filling out forms and inputting information to make a purchase. If you make it difficult for a customer to buy something, you make it easier for them to make up their mind and shop somewhere else. This means providing as few clicks as possible, which leads them to the “Place Order” button faster.
To make buying easier, only provide a few fields to fill in, such as their name, address, and purchase information. You also want to guide your users on every page toward making a purchase by telling them what to do.
Lastly, consider offering free shipping. This is a popular incentive for many buyers, as no one likes to spend 5 extra dollars when they don’t have to. In fact, a study by the National Retail Federation found that 75 percent of online shoppers expect free delivery on orders of $50 or more. The study also found that 88 percent of Baby Boomers, 77 percent of Gen Xers, 61 percent of Millennials, and 76 percent of Gen Zers expect free shipping.
Key Takeaways on Conversion Rate Tips
Increasing your conversion rate should be a top priority if you run an ecommerce business. However, achieving a high conversion rate is easier said than done. How can you convince visitors to your website to convert into customers, enter their credit card information, and make a purchase? Creating a sales funnel, earning trust through testimonials and reviews, and making the buying process easy are all great ways to improve your conversion rate and your site. With these three tips, you’ll be on your way to attracting leads and turning them into lifelong customers.