For all us Ecommerce Experts! How do you Improve your Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce businesses differ only in the size of their stores, the priority remains the same: to convert new visitors into buyers. This might seem easy at first but is easier said than done. Even the best known ecommerce brands have a conversion rate of little above 4% and a shopping cart abandonment rate average of 67.4%, we are looking at how lesser known brands and SMBs can increase consumer trust and ensure better conversions.

Why do People Abandon Shopping Carts?

More than 50% of the respondents of a survey (Getelastic) said they were saving items for later when asked why they were window shopping. 55% said the shipping costs were too high and 40% said the shipping and handling costs were revealed too late. The well known axiom of consumer psychology is “higher the AOV (average order value), lower the product page effectiveness “. For those of you thinking what product page effectiveness may mean, it is the number of add to cart visitors to product pages.

The Most Common Reasons of losing Customers are:

1. Unclear navigation

2. Too many products on a page

3. Ads, pop us and other elements that distract the customer

Here are Some Effective Conversion Strategies:

1. Checkout Experience - The first thing to do is to ensure that your checkout experience is completely linear since 92.6% of the people say that visuals are the top influential factor affecting their purchase decision. This is because products are assessed within 2 minutes and a judgement is made whether to make a purchase or not.

2. Avoid Distractions - The next step would be to make sure that during the checkout, objects have not been made clickable, making the visitors to get distracted and leave. Other confusing things that confuse customers and therefore must be avoided are, ambiguous words such as ‘proceed’ , ‘continue’, ‘apply’ buttons that aren’t optional etc.

3. Clear Descriptions - To streamline the process for the customer, you could have descriptions for form field labels with clearly worded messages on the landing page to facilitate well defined choices for the user. Also, make sure that fields for expiry date, credit/debit card details etc have visually reinforcing design techniques.

4. Ensure Product Videos - 57% of the respondents said they were more confident when they watched a product video in advance and 52% said they were willing to stay on a website longer because the retailer made product videos available to them.

5. Product Reviews- 85% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase and an almost equal number trust the reviews to make a purchase according to them. So, make sure your product gets good reviews online.