6 Quick Wins for Increasing Conversion Rates in eCommerce

Written by  AJ Leale, Sr. Director eCommerce 
Recently, a retail brand managed to add $300M in online revenue, a net increase of 45%! All it took was just one simple tweak to their website – they let users buy as a guest, without having to register. Many companies create similar barriers that prevent, or deter customers from buying on their online store. 
Stop wasting millions in sales by implementing some of these six quick wins that can increase the conversion rate of your company’s ecommerce store.

1. Have Clear and Well-Placed CTA Buttons

CTA buttons won’t make or break a site or page, but they can certainly help it. If you don’t think that’s a major problem, these statistics show otherwise as only 47 percent of websites feature properly placed call to action buttons. 
Having clear and well-placed CTA buttons can help increase your conversion rates. All CTA buttons should be placed above the fold, this will work wonders for their clicks. Such placements immediately draw your visitors’ attention to the desired outcome, which is usually planned by the business and good for conversions. They should also be consistent across different devices, desktop, tablet and mobile devices. 
Great copy on the CTA and its color are also important. If a business doesn’t have a color that stands out, it can detract from the user experience. Pick the right color for eCommerce CTAs and sales will start flowing in. When it comes to copy, use powerful words that convey urgency. Here’s a list of 20 great ones.
The primary call to action should be the most prominent element on the page so that it influences the user to take action. There should also be a secondary call to action that helps advance the primary CTA.

2. Allow Guest Checkout, and make it easy to Checkout

Once a customer has chosen what to buy, they want to finish shopping as quickly as possible. Forcing users to register or sign in before the checkout is a surefire way to reduce conversion rates. One retailer managed to add $300m in its annual revenues, simply by removing the registration button. 
The average checkout flow has 14.88 form fields. That’s twice than needed. 
Don’t give shoppers an excuse to not finalize a sale. Shoppers can always be reminded to register after the transaction has been completed. The customer will still be able to create an account if the buying barrier is removed. 
In addition, having to fill in extra data, on multiple forms will only make the checkout process more complicated for them. Narrow down the information required from customers and only focus on the basics, such as shipping information, payment information, and email address.   Make sure that the fields are set to autofill, e.g. autocomplete=”address-line1″ as Google suggests. 

3. Show your customers they are getting a good deal! Reduce or Offer Free Shipping, Show Product Price Discounts

Shoppers are extremely sensitive to price and shipping costs. That’s why businesses need to be very focused on both of these because your customers will shop around on the internet to get a better price, or if they feel the shipping is too high on your site.
The customer should see the discounted product prices with crossed out original price, and a percentage or amount savings for your product throughout your site; especially in the shopping cart where they have to see all the discounts.
Expose shipping costs early, and offer free shipping over a price threshold.  If a customer goes all the way to the last step and then sees a large shipping cost they will likely look around and may decide not to buy. This will crush conversion rates. 
Shipping and handling costs are the number one reason why customers abandon shopping carts. Spare your customers from unpleasant surprises by including these costs in the original price and offer free shipping.

4. Recommend Other Products 

Recommending other products to customers is among the best quick wins for increasing conversion rates in ecommerce.  Manual product recommendations are an immediate way to target this need. Since gathering and analyzing data is a process that takes time to do manually, brands should focus on the top 30% products that generate the most sales first, this is a quick win that can help them achieve faster ROI.
There are several types of recommended products. Accessories, like batteries for a game, cross-sells, similar products to the one currently being viewed, and upsells, which are more expensive, better products similar to the product being viewed.  Determining upsells is another important factor in increasing your revenue. To make the most out of this tactic make sure to promote your most sold products and make add-on features for specific products. Upsells shouldn’t be more than 25 percent costlier than the original product. 
A longer term option is to use a recommendation tool like Salesforce Einstein AI software which offers a number of ways to recommend products.  Tools like this analyze your customer’s habits, sales, browsing patterns and searches to determine how products sell well together.  Then, based on a specific shopper’s browse path, or past orders, this tool provide recommendations that are specifically tailored for that shopper.  

5. Detailed Product Images & Descriptions 

In addition to photos, products should be thoroughly described in the text. Accurate and detailed product descriptions can increase conversion rates for online stores. 
Descriptions can be structured by product highlights. Headlines can be beneficial when highlighting one or more key product features. 
To make them easier to read, use bullet points so users can quickly glance through the most important features. Avoid long paragraphs because shoppers tend to ignore them. They’re only looking for specific characteristics. 
Amazon is a great example of a site that implemented descriptions using straightforward language. 
Before writing product descriptions, ask yourself these questions: 

• Who is this product for? 
• What are the product’s basic details? 
• Where would someone use this product? 
• When should someone use this product? 
• Why is this product useful or better than its competitors? 
• How does the product work? 

Follow this process when writing accurate descriptions and higher conversion rates will be guaranteed. 

6. Include User Reviews 

Before deciding to buy, customers are interested in what others have to say about a specific product. Reviews add credibility to a business and help convert more shoppers. 
Retail brands need to encourage users to leave reviews and display these reviews prominently on the website. 
Although encouraging users to leave reviews and building your online credibility is a long term process, there’s a way to speed it up. Focus on your most popular products first and expand from there. 

Conclusion 

These six wins are just the starting point for increasing conversion rates and improving your customer’s experience. 
Successful conversion optimization can only happen with a careful and continual analysis of each part of the site and the checkout form. 
That’s why you should leave this in the hands of experts. 
Contact Visionet and let us help you boost revenue with eCommerce customer experience optimization.