5 Conversion Optimization Tricks for your E-commerce Store

Your e-commerce store may have thousands of unique visitors on a daily basis or an incredibly high number of page views – but at the same time, your sales may remain low.

Why is that?

Most probably, your store needs conversion optimization.

Conversion is any action a user completes on a site. In the case of e-commerce, it’s usually the process of adding a product to the cart, a sign-up for a newsletter, or the actual buying. So even if your store is flooded with visitors but they do absolutely nothing, it’s a warning sign.

While conversion optimization is quite a broad topic, you can start with a few well-established practices. And in case they don’t help, you can always turn to a knowledgeable development agency to investigate the problem.

1.     Speed up your store

While some store owners wonder how the store speed affects conversions, more experienced entrepreneurs know: the less the user has to wait, the higher the chances they will buy from you.

Every marketing specialist knows that users ware willing to wait no longer than 3 seconds for the site to load – otherwise, they leave. E-commerce stores, in turn, often have a problem of being too bulky due to the number of extensions, heavy images, or complex themes. This is especially true for Magento. Though being the number one platform in terms of customization and handling massive traffic load, Magento load time is one of the most important issues that many store owners face.

So what do you do if you feel like your store can do better in terms of performance? First, you can analyze the store with PageSpeed Insights by Google. The tool provides valuable insights into the site’s problem areas and gives useful suggestions for fixing them. Another thing you can do is conduct a performance audit and pinpoint all the existing problems.

The most common reasons for an e-commerce store being slow are:

• Lots of useless extensions and plugins
• Heavy images
• Poor code
• Lack of speedy extensions like LazyLoad
• No integrated CDN

But since every store is unique, you need to identify the problem first and only then take action.

2.     Fine-tune the CTA buttons

CTA buttons are the ones that encourage users to take action on the site: add an item to a wishlist or place the order. These buttons are easily spotted and are actually responsible for a fair number of conversions.

However, there are many intricacies about the CTA button design and placement. And if you overlook them, the shoppers can simply ignore the CTAs which will result in the conversions’ dropdown.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when planning your CTAs:

• Watch the placement: it is recommended to place the CTAs as high as possible and near the important page elements (like the price),
• Make sure they are visible: use bright colors and big fonts,
• Make the message appealing: it should be convincing and personalized.

One more important thing: test your CTAs to see which ones cause a better response from your target audience.

3.     Optimize the checkout

Checkout is probably the most important area of your store as this is where people actually pay. So a non-optimized checkout may be another big reason why your conversions are low.

Checkout optimization involves many things to consider but we will look at the most crucial ones.

Not enough payment options

Considering the number of available payment options these days, it would be strange if your store supports only one or two. But if that’s the case, this might be the reason shoppers leave the store without completing the purchase.

Add more payment options and see whether your sales rise. But make sure to add the payment options that are relevant for your target audience.

The checkout is too long

Online shoppers tend to be not very patient. So if your checkout involves too many steps or asks to fill in too many fields, fix it right away.

It is recommended to keep the checkout on one page only. As well, get rid of useless fields and see whether you really need them all.

Unexpected costs

When a shopper sees a product price, he agrees to pay it. But what if he then sees an extra $30 during the checkout?

Such unexpected costs are no surprise in many stores. They can be a shipping or similar fee and may not be mentioned until the checkout. So when the customer sees an unexpected extra fee, he will be naturally angry and leave.

State the full price from the start. For that, add a shipping calculator and always make sure all the fees and costs are visible and understandable.

4.     Optimize the user’s journey

Even if the user lands on your site with a clear goal in mind, confusing and lengthy user journey will discourage them from exploring the store and buying.

If the navigation of your store takes too much time or effort, this is the reason people don’t buy from you – simply because they have no idea how to find the desired product!

Outline the user’s journey map and see how logical it is. As well, conduct testing and ask people to share their thoughts on how easy it is to navigate your store. It may turn out that navigation is the pain point that causes a loss in conversions.

5.     Remind about the conversion

The users may not buy from the first time and that’s OK. But the biggest mistake that store owners can make here is ignoring that and letting it be.

People may abandon the shopping process due to a number of reasons: low Internet connection, sudden change of mind, a wish to check out other products. What you can do is set notifications that will remind the users about the action to take. Here are a few ideas:

• A pop-up that appears when the user moves the mouse over the “Close page” button
• A cart abandonment email to remind about the items in the cart
• An email with product recommendations

Do not hesitate to remind the users about the forgotten conversion but do it in a nice manner. In this way, you can recover up to 50% of abandoned carts and promote better interaction with the store.

Conclusion

Conversion optimization is not something that happens overnight. But if you invest a certain amount of time and effort into fine-tuning your store, it will pay off in the form of conversion growth and increased customer satisfaction.