You've just started out with an eCommerce store and you want to make sure you do everything right. Since conversions are crucial for eCommerce businesses, you should focus on building a strategy to drive plenty of sales.
In this post, we'll look at three key areas of focus in developing an eCommerce conversion strategy that works.
1. Have a Plan to Attract Your Audience
To drive conversions, you first need people to convert. This means you'll need to begin with a plan to attract a relevant audience.
Here are some of the best ways to connect with the right users:
Social Media Ads
Promote your products and brand through ads on social media. You can target users who share the same characteristics and interests as your best customers.
To enhance the effectiveness of your social media ads, you can even include reviews and star ratings using tools like Yotpo.
Social Media Influencers
You can also promote your brand by working with relevant influencers. Look for influential social media users who would have the ability to influence your target customers. Partner with them to promote items from your store through authentic and engaging content.
Since influencers can sway people's purchase decisions, they'll be able to help you drive more conversions - in fact, some websites have experienced an 84% increase in sales for products promoted through influencers.
SEO
And of course, there's the crucial step of optimizing your website for search engines. You need to make sure your website ranks among the top results in relevant searches, where possible. Work towards optimizing your product pages using relevant keywords in the content.
2. Prioritize on Enhancing Customer Experience
Even when you've attracted your audience, you still need to make an effort in order to convert them. This means you'll need to make sure they have a good experience browsing your website and interacting with your brand. You need to make sure they can smoothly transaction from "just browsing" to paying customers.
Use these tips to enhance customer experience on your site:
Optimize Speed
It's frustrating to wait for a web page to load, and if your web page loads too slowly, you could lose out on potential sales.
According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people would leave a website if it took longer than three seconds to load, while even just a second of delay in page load time could reduce conversions by 7%.
You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your current website speed on both desktop and mobile devices. It'll suggest fixes you can implement to boost page speed, such as cutting down the number of redirects and reducing server response time.
Optimize Design
Website design plays a major role in customer experience - a website that's difficult to navigate will easily ruin the process while a website with seamless navigation will enhance it. As such, you need to simplify your website design to make sure shoppers can easily find what they need and complete their actions.
Some of the changes you might need to make are in categorizing your products. Can people easily view the various product categories? Will they be able to filter the results of their search using different categories?
Also, make sure you include a visible and easy-to-use search bar.
Optimize Checkout Process
Your checkout process should be simple and quick - there should be no distractions and as few as possible steps involved. In other words, people should be able to complete their purchases before they have the time to change their minds.
According to Barilliance, 22% of cart abandoners did so because they hate having to create a new account, while 9% abandoned their carts because of a long and confusing checkout process. Work to reduce the steps required for checkout, introduce a guest checkout option, and provide an option to sign up, and/or sign in, using social media if possible.
Provide Personalized Recommendations
Another excellent method of enhancing customer experience is by providing them with personalized purchase recommendations. Since these recommendations are targeted based on their interests, shopping history, or browsing behavior, they're more relevant, and resonant. This means there's a better chance of converting these shoppers.
In fact, Accenture found that 65% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers if they receive relevant and personalized promotions from them, and 58% also said that they're more likely to make a purchase when they get recommendations tailored according to their preferences or past purchases.
3. Consider These Other Factors
In addition to these basics, there are several other important steps you need to include in your eCommerce conversion strategy.
Here are the top essentials:
Include User-Generated Content to Gain Trust
Whether they're reviews, ratings, or just comments, user-submitted content is crucial for winning the trust of potential customers.
Where possible, you should look to include user-generated content in your product pages. Research has shown that exposing shoppers to UGC can result in a conversion rate increase of up to 166%.
Make Your CTA Buttons Stand Out
Your CTA button is one of the most important elements on your product page - it's the gateway that will lead shoppers to the checkout page where they can complete their purchases. Make sure the button isn't hidden away in a corner, but is prominently displayed where shoppers can easily see it. And don't forget to use a color that stands out, yet still complements the website's primary colors.
Conclusion
These are some of the most important and effective tips to help you develop a successful eCommerce conversion strategy. As you can see, it all begins from attracting the right audience and then ensuring they have a pleasant experience when interacting with your brand. You need to make sure they can seamlessly complete the processes of finding, and then purchasing, your products.
You can further win their trust by displaying content from other customers, which could eventually result in more sales.