KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Do the research and then craft your site and content accordingly to match the right look and feel for your target audience. Reporting tools like Google Analytics can help you see which products are most popular.
- Use engaging visuals that capture your visitors' attention. Your products should reflect your brand image and quality, giving your e-commerce visitors an experience that is almost better than the real thing.
- Make it easy for users to check out. Checkout itself should be streamlined, simple, and easy-to-follow.
- Give visitors an easy route for shipping and returns and then share that information throughout your site.
- Good customer service will encourage brand loyalty and help drive more conversions. Showcase customer reviews alongside the reviewed product.
- Using first time offers, subscriptions, rewards programs, and referrals can help drive conversion rates.
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, it is one challenge getting them to your site. If you want to know more about how to ramp up your onsite SEO, you can check out this article.
But let’s say that you’re already past that and you have invested in SEO, social, email marketing, campaigns to drive traffic, paid and organic ads. Once those targeted visitors arrive, how do you get them to stay and most importantly, convert?
There are a few critical steps to follow when considering how to increase your conversion rate. By engaging your audience with the right look and feel of your brand, you will increase the time spent on your website and the likelihood that visitors will make a sale.
1. Identify and craft the right feel for your audience.
When you have successfully capitalized on your website traffic, drawing in visitors to your e-commerce site, your next focus should be on increasing your conversion rate.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to do this is by understanding and delivering the right look and feel of the story that your target audience seeks. First, do the research it takes to understand who exactly you are trying to target. Do you have your target audience mapped out?
Create and address each specific target persona in your marketing strategy to better drive your landing page content and website copy. Doing this will increase the chances that once people arrive at your site, they will stay and convert.
Audience relevance is number one when it comes to content effectiveness at 58%, but compelling storytelling takes a strong second place at 57%.
Your goal should be to get visitors to stay for more than a few seconds. How? The story, content, and design will keep them there. If you have a website and you are running effective campaigns and social media, collecting leads or sales, it is critical that when those people are linked to you, your website has the right feel and validation for your unique target audience.
Your site should feel trustworthy and reliable, which can mean different things to different audiences but across the board, it is vital that your site loads fast and connects to your viewers.
Use engaging visuals.
When you visit a site, think about what keeps you on any particular webpage: the images, graphics, visuals that bring the story to life. These visuals will do most of the work in selling your product or offering, but they also contribute to creating your brand’s identity too.
93% of customers view visual appearance as a key deciding factor in their shopping decisions.
Identify and craft the feel for your unique brand identity. Then determine the right use of style in blogs, videos, and imagery, as this will make your products and content look appealing so that people stay on your website longer.
Don’t be afraid to add too many visuals to your blog pages, as blog posts that feature an image every 75-100 words get 2X more shares. And adding video can increase your SEO, along with engaging your visitors too.
By adding visuals that capture your visitors' attention, you will increase the time on your site and improve your conversion rate.
Additionally, if you are using other effective channels like social media, showcasing your strong visuals across your channels can increase share-ability. Users are more likely to share interesting visuals, so when they share your stuff, your social media channels will look great, which will help your efforts everywhere else. This expands your brand identity across multiple channels, increasing your validation with it.
2. Showcase your products in the best light.
When it comes to your products, imagery packs a powerful punch. And your products should reflect your brand image and quality. Don’t forget to use all of your angles, sizes, sides, quality images, and 3D to your products' advantage. Give your e-commerce visitors an experience that is almost better than the real thing.
49% of consumers prefer retail stores to online shopping because they can “see, touch, feel, and try out items.”
People want to understand and experience the look and feel of online items, so you must make sure that your e-commerce gives them the next best thing. Whether real photographs or rendered 3D product images, make sure to include high quality, beautiful, multi-angled images of your products.
Often, for items such as clothing, this might include photographs of the items in context, on people, or lifestyle photos.
93% of consumers consider images essential when making purchase decisions.
In addition to providing effective product images, make sure your visitors can quickly find and access all of the information they are seeking.
As modern shoppers tend to do more research before spending money, they are more likely to thoroughly vet products, which is why it is important that you write appealing and persuasive product descriptions that excite and engage buyers.
US online shoppers expect product images (78%), customer reviews (69%), and side-by-side product comparisons (46%).
Don’t forget to include clear pricing, ingredient information, and any other relevant information needed for buyers to make decisions. The more thorough your product presentation is, the more positively it reflects on your brand identity and validation.
3. Improve your conversion rate by reducing impediments to check out.
It seems simple, but to improve your conversions, make it as easy as possible for your visitors to complete transactions.
The average cart abandonment rate across all industries is about 70%.
Rely on the same principles emphasized in the first pillar, but instead of capitalizing on your web traffic, focus on making it easy for your visitors to order.
Make your checkout process smooth and easy.
Checkout itself needs to be easy and without issue. It should be streamlined, simple, and easy-to-follow. Adding items to checkout should be clear on both desktop and mobile versions.
Create a compelling, obvious call-to-action button for adding products to the cart. These should use eye-catching colors that draw users' eyes to properly direct them to make the conversion. Many websites recommend adding several links to check out on the screen, including one at eye level.
Adding CTA buttons can create a 45% boost in clicks.
Once users are ready to purchase, make sure it is easy for them and catches their eye, so you do not lose interested buyers. And do not require too many items for them to check out either.
People abandon their carts because of website asking users to create an account before checkout (35%), the checkout process being too complicated (27%), and the site not having a security badge (35%).
Allow for anonymous, guest checkout. If you are targeting anonymous users and new customers, make it easy for them to checkout as a user.
If you require account creation during the checkout process, 23% of people will abandon carts immediately.
Don’t force them to create an account to check out. Give easy options to create an account for them after the purchase. Don’t make them go through the entire process of creating an account. It is tedious and will increase your abandoned cart rate.
4. Offer easy return and shipping options and let people see them everywhere.
One of the easiest ways to improve your conversion rate is by giving visitors an easy route for shipping and returns and then share that information throughout your site. Fast shipping speeds and an easy return process are the top drivers for 30% of purchases online.
The top incentives for online consumers to shop are free shipping (88%), one-day shipping (69%), and free returns/exchanges (68%).
With a huge chunk of e-commerce stores now offering exciting shipping policies, you need to think of how your business can keep up. With Amazon’s famous 2-day and even 1-day shipping options available, it is ever more important to ensure your shipping policy is competitive.
Offering competitive or preferably 2-day shipping is more important now than ever due to the Amazon effect. Their hassle-free returns policy, free shipping, and lower or price-matched products make Amazon fierce competition. Use effective shipping techniques to increase your conversion rate.
Some effective shipping techniques to consider for your business:
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2-day shipping
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Same-day shipping
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Overnight shipping
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Expedited shipping
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International shipping
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Calculating shipping costs
Depending on your business, different shipping techniques might be more ideal for you than for others. Calculating your average product size and weight and estimated shipping destinations will help you determine a good route. Work on structuring your shipping and returns programs to provide the best service possible, as what you spend you will make up for in increased sales.
By setting up a good return policy, you will increase your sales and your brand validation.
For 73% of shoppers, the overall returns experience impacts whether they revisit a retailer, and 68% say the experience impacts their overall perceptions of the brand.
Customers won’t easily trust an online retailer without an easy way to return purchases that don’t fit, arrive damaged, or don’t match expectation. You will be competing with about 49% of retailers who offer free return shipping. Debating whether to offer free returns? Consider the following statistic:
Customers who received free shipping on returns increased their purchases over the next two years by 58 to 357%.
Ensuring that your business has both a great shipping and returns policy will help drive sales, but don’t forget to highlight this across your website. Additionally, ensure users receive up-to-date information about their orders and returns.
59% of American online shoppers want to receive notifications regarding their refund status.
Make sure it is mentioned everywhere: give it a primary focus on your home page, banners, checkout, and even in your cart. Reminding potential buyers about your flexible return policy inside your checkout and cart will help to decrease your abandoned cart rate. So will enhancing your customer service program.
5. Good responsive customer service is critical.
Having good customer service will encourage brand loyalty and help drive more conversions.
78% of consumers report abandoning a transaction due to a poor customer service experience. This is the area of your business where you can most show you care about your e-commerce visitors, by taking care of their questions, concerns, issues, and challenges. There are many wonderful tools and software available to help streamline your customer service program.
Answering customer issues quickly, live chats are critical, in that they responsively answer people’s questions in a convenient, easy-to-follow manner. Americans tell an average of 15 people about poor customer service, and 11 people about a good one. So, good customer service is incredibly important.
Live chat tools are an easy way to help drive conversions.
Live Chat Tools
Live chat tools are an effective way to address customer concerns quickly.
48% of consumers would rather connect with a company via live chat than any other mean of contact.
Live chat support tools allow users to locate answers quickly, providing a much more positive experience, ensuring that every issue is handled efficiently with quick, convenient support.
79% of businesses believed that adding live chat to their website had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and loyalty.
It also decreases your customer service costs significantly, while increasing sales and generating conversions. In fact, 11 out of 50 high-growth B2B companies offer live chat on their website. LiveChat, HubSpot, and Intercom are the most common chat tools used by marketers today.
Some Popular Live Chat Tools:
Drift
Conversational marketing platform to help your team generate more qualified leads through chatbots and conversation.
Intercom
Customer communication platform of products including a live chat system for support, sales, and marketing teams.
ZenDesk Chat
Live chat and communication widget with customer assistance via chat, phone call, email, social media, and more.
HubSpot Live Chat
Connect with customers with live chat, team email, Facebook Messenger integration, and an easy-to-use chatbot for free.
Chatbots
Chatbots are AI computer programs that simulate human conversation through voice commands, text chats, or a combination of both. These can be integrated through any major messaging applications.
35% of consumers want to see more companies using chatbots.
Choose a program for your chatbot or have your staff add a strong library of content and information from which to pull when conducting chats with your customers. Since your audience will be looking for fast answers, or quick navigation to more in-depth content, your chatbot tool needs to be able to easily locate requested content.
Chatbots like this one can be a useful tool in helping customers locate information quickly, thus improving your conversion rate.
Interactive Voice Response Systems
Interactive voice response (IVR) systems can be effective tools in making instant customer connections, reducing costs, and increasing engagement. In fact, 6 out of 10 American shoppers use self-service tools for their concerns including websites (24%), mobile apps (14%), voice response systems and VoIP (13%) or online live chat (12%).
With convenient self-help AI-driven technology, customers can make inquiries and get immediate, relevant responses.
Over 50% of customers think it’s important to solve product issues themselves rather than rely on customer service.
Using IVR systems allows them to get the help they need any time, facilitating sales, and collecting customer feedback. It also helps reduce staff time in answering simple questions.
IVR systems offer the ability to skip cumbersome steps, saving time for everyone. When customers call in to an IVR system, it efficiently captures customer information, shortening the input process and ensuring that the time is spent on the customer and not on basic data entry tasks.
With proper programming, you can even set parameters for IVRs to route customers to the right staff members capable of helping with unique issues filtered by keyword – for example, sending credit card issues or product issues to the appropriate person. This speeds up the process.
For inbound leads, very similar to questions on webforms, IVR technology listens to a customer’s response and if the lead scores well enough, the IVR can then direct the call to a sales rep. It also allows you to broadcast promotions, providing a physical number where customers can call to enter contests, redeem special offers, or take surveys.
6. Validation means great reviews.
Reviews are very important to the well-researched buyer, and you need to showcase them alongside the reviewed product. Collecting these reviews is critical, because providing good reviews will improve your conversion rate. Most consumers are well-researched and read multiple reviews before they purchase a product, but 90% of users need less than 10 reviews to form an opinion about a business.
55% of shoppers claim that product reviews have an influence on their buying decisions.
But beyond just showing the product reviews, it is very important that you have a system in place to collect them. Besides helping you improve customer perception of your products and business by reading reviews, poring through customer feedback can help you discover any pain points that are losing you customers. By fixing these challenges, your sales will increase.
If you are really serious about your reviews, make sure to invest in Review Management Software, which helps businesses collect testimonials and reviews, respond to negative feedback, and improve customer perception of the product, service, or offering.
Review Management Software
Verified Reviews
This software is designed to organize website and product reviews to improve product ratings and sales, while also maximizing company visibility and promoting customer loyalty and trust. Verified Reviews uses rich snippets to improve a company’s SEO efforts.
Trustpilot
Trustpilot hosts reviews of businesses from users providing content in an online community that's open and accessible to everyone. People are encouraged to share their experiences in order to improve transparency, help build relationships, and enhance trust between businesses and consumers.
Trustpilot is one option for locating and organizing your business reviews.
Other Helpful Tools:
Yext
Manage the public facts about your brand across the most popular channels. Yext is location data management software that automatically syncs your information across 50+ major local directories and search engines, allowing you to store, manage, edit, customize, and sync information about your locations across all Yext products.
Yotpo
This user-generated content marketing platform allows marketers to gather, curate, manage, and respond to user content from one place, by leveraging content throughout the buyer's journey. You can build loyalty programs and get more reviews with an easy-to-integrate solution.
7. Promotions and programs that drive conversions.
Doing research can help you understand which products and offerings to spotlight and which to skip. Using tools like Google analytics can help you see which products people are buying.
67% of consumers make an unanticipated purchase after presented with a discount offer.
You can base promotions around these products to drive more conversions. Then, you put those products (and banners) in better locations, front and center, where the eye is naturally drawn. Some of the promotions, programs and strategies that best generate sales are:
First Time Offer
Using First Time Offers can help incentivize new customers to make the conversion. 80% of first-time customers report being swayed by a targeted discount. Providing an offer for new users could be just the nudge a first-time visitor needs to be converted to a paying customer.
Many brands give all new visitors a % discount (and sometimes free shipping) on their first purchase, like this one from CBDMall. The discount is the first thing shoppers see when they arrive at the site. The colors are very bold and obvious, and their company shipping threshold and return policy are also referenced clearly in the banner across the top and the entire site.
Flash Sales
Flash sales – or discounts or promotions offered only for a short period of time – are powerful in that limited quantities means the discounts are higher than regular promotions. The time limit and limited availability encourage consumers to buy impulsively.
This is especially important, as e-commerce vendors that actively provide discount codes to customers are 8x more likely to make a sale than those that don’t.
Abandoned Cart Offers
With close to 70% of all people abandoning their carts, abandoned cart email offers can be a powerful tactic to drive conversions. Many CMS platforms, like Shopify, already features abandoned checkout recovery functions. If you want more customization and analytics, you may want to consider Klaviyo.
Ways to Increase Repeat Buy Sales
Some of the ways to increase repeat buy sales include giving discounts to your full time buyers, introducing loyalty programs, and improving customer support.
80% of your future profits will come from 20 percent of your existing customers.
When customers feel loyalty to a brand, they are 397% more likely to spend money with you than newcomers. Customer retention strategies are far less expensive than trying to gain new customers.
Diamond CBD's Reward Program offers points, benefits, and specials for returning customers, increasing their retention and making loyal visitors feel special and strategic about increasing their purchases.
Rewards Program
Loyalty and rewards programs have become an expected part of e-commerce. Just offering a rewards program may not be enough; it needs to offer compelling benefits.
68% of millennials report that they will not be loyal to a brand if that brand does not have a good loyalty program.
Creating an effective loyalty program will increase revenue, save you money, make repeat customers feel appreciated, and generate valuable buyer data.
69% of consumers say choice of retailer is influenced by where they can earn customer loyalty/rewards program points whereas 57% of consumers join loyalty programs to save money, 37% to receive rewards.
By encouraging your customers to fill out information or profiles as as part of your loyalty program, you can access the data to help personalize the customer experience and to create targeted marketing campaigns. The more data, the more you adapt to ensure your strategies are effective. It can even be a great incentive for first time shoppers.
You can also factor customer milestones into your rewards program, such as a birthday or anniversary, the anniversary of the customer’s first purchase, the date they joined your customer loyalty program, when spending a certain amount of money, and more.
Another effective method for driving conversions is adding product subscriptions.
Subscriptions
By adding a subscription program to your e-commerce, you can build loyalty, save time, money, and other resources in several ways. When you have subscribers, you can focus on retaining these high-quality customers, instead of aiming for one-off consumers.
15% of online shoppers have signed up for one or more subscriptions to receive products on a recurring basis, frequently through monthly boxes.
Subscriptions allow for more reliable forecasting, which leads to better management of inventory needs. Also, repeated, scheduled purchases allow for smoother transactions. Amazon knows this well, as their subscribe and save feature is very popular.
Flexible Payment Options
This allows visitors to make larger purchases and pay it off over time. By doing so, you are increasing your customer's purchasing power. More of the leads drawn in by your marketing efforts are able to afford your goods and services, converting them to customers. These buyers can now afford to make larger, more frequent business purchases, increasing your conversions and AOV at the same time.
Referral Programs
People are 4x more likely to make a purchase if they are referred by a friend or family member. Build your offers to encourage referrals. You can choose to give a deal to the person referring, the person being referred, or both.
Many of these programs and strategies can be used to also increase your average order value.
Summary
In order to drive conversions, you need to make your website feel the right way to the viewers landing on your site. First, identify your audience and then do the research to understand how your webpages should look and feel.
Using engaging visuals that capture your visitors' attention will increase their time on your site and improve your conversion rate. Your products should reflect your brand image and quality. Don’t forget to use all of the best angles, sizes, sides, quality images, and 3D to your products' advantage.
It may seem obvious, but making it easy for users to check out will improve your conversion rate. Checkout itself needs to be easy and without issue. It should be streamlined, simple, and easy-to-follow. Adding items to checkout should be clear on both desktop and mobile versions. Additionally, it is important to give visitors an easy route for shipping and returns and then share that information throughout your site on banners, footers, etc.
Having good customer service programs will encourage brand loyalty and help drive more conversions, and there are tools which can help with that. Don't forget to showcase your validation and reviews. Reviews are very important to the well-researched buyer, and you need to showcase them alongside the reviewed product. Collecting these reviews is critical, because providing good reviews will improve your conversion rate.
Doing research can also help you understand which discounts, products, and offerings to offer and spotlight and which to skip. Using tools like Google analytics can help you see which products people are buying. Using first time offers, subscriptions, rewards programs, and referrals can help drive conversion rates. Ultimately, crafting the right look and feel with effective offers and programs will keep visitors on your site and help you to generate leads and sales.
