Conversion Rate Optimization: Boost Your Online Sales

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In this article, learn the key concepts of conversion rate optimization (CRO), including how to calculate your site’s conversion rate, and strategies to boost online sales.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

Imagine you own and run a candy shop. Lots of people walk by, but not everyone buys your candy, and you want to figure out the strategies and marketing tools you can implement to make a higher percentage of your shop visitors actually buy a bag— that’s Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO.

When it comes to ecommerce, conversion rate optimization is the practice of getting more of your site visitors to convert, which is the ultimate goal of your business, whether conversion means hitting the buy button or signing up for your newsletter.

Many online businesses spend a lot of time, effort, and even money to drive traffic to their online store, only to see their conversion rates have stayed the same despite their increased traffic. This signals that your site isn’t optimized for transforming those visitors into customers.

In this guide to conversion rate optimization by Ecommerce Pro, we are exploring CRO 101, including how to calculate your website’s conversion rates and how to boost sales.

Ready to boost your conversion rates with an effective CRO strategy? Contact our experts at Ecommerce Pro and discover how we can help optimize your store for maximum conversions!

What’s the Difference Between SEO & CRO?

As mentioned above, CRO is when a website or a business takes actions to increase the number of site visitors who convert or complete a desired action, like making a purchase.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, is a separate practice concerned with making your website more visible on search engines like Google. SEO essentially helps your website increase its organic (unpaid) traffic, while CRO helps your website traffic convert.

While SEO and CRO are different, both practices go hand in hand and are complementary to your business’s goals.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

Calculating for conversion rate is simple; you simply have to take your website’s traffic (visitors) and the percentage of those visitors who complete the desired action, like making a purchase.

To calculate your conversion rate, you simply have to divide the number of buyers by the number of visitors and then multiply by 100.

Conversion Rate = (Conversions / Total Visitors) * 100%

For instance, you have had 1000 visitors to your site this week and 89 people have made a purchase, this means that your conversion rate is 8.9%.

Tracking your conversion rates alongside your site’s traffic is important because it tells you how your customers react to your site and its products and if there is anything you can change or optimize.

For websites that get a lot of traffic but aren’t converting enough visitors, this can indicate that your offers are interesting, but conversion needs to be optimized, as potential customers seem to be navigating away instead of making a purchase.

Tracking your conversion rate is the first step in identifying problems when it comes to CRO and figuring out what may be going on.

What is the Ideal Conversion Rate?

Ideal conversion rates can vary widely, and it can depend entirely upon your industry. Generally, the conversion rates for ecommerce websites fall between 2.5-3%. These numbers are already considered good and ideal, although top-performing sites can see higher conversion rates through CRO. The ultimate goal is to benchmark your conversion rate against the set industry standards and strive to continuously improve your conversions and sales through your CRO efforts.

Key Website Pages for CRO

Getting started with CRO can seem daunting, but it all comes down to 3 website pages that you can drive your focus on. Prioritizing these pages will simplify your strategy and support your customer’s journey to converting.

1. Homepage:

First impressions do matter. CRO of the homepage involves keeping things visually engaging, easy to navigate, and inviting for users to explore. It’s important to keep the homepage easy to navigate and friction-free, with elements like strategic call-to-action buttons to drive customers on the buyer’s journey.

2. Product Pages:

Product pages display your products in the best light through images, detailed descriptions, and customer reviews to boost trust and engagement. CRO on your product page should encourage customers to add to cart, explore further offerings, and move on to the checkout page.

3. Checkout Page:

A smooth checkout process is key to reducing cart abandonment and boosting conversions. CRO of the checkout page includes strategies like keeping form fields to a minimum and offering guest checkout options.

CRO Strategies that Boost Ecommerce Conversions

1. Improve Checkout Flow

Checkout is where conversions happen, making the checkout flow vital for optimization. Streamlining this process minimizes cart abandonment, which is a common issue when checkouts are lengthy or complicated.

Shopify is known for having the fastest ecommerce checkout, helping customers complete purchases in as few steps as possible. By reducing the number of fields and clicks needed, you can make checkout faster and less frustrating for users. Additionally, offering guest checkout and digital wallet options like Apple Pay or Google Pay can make the process even quicker, boosting the likelihood of conversion.

2. Conduct Customer Behavior Analysis

Behavioral analysis of how your potential customers interact with your website is important to boosting conversions. Analyzing behavior makes you better at identifying elements of your website that may be hindering conversions. Using tools like heatmaps and session recordings can reveal where users are clicking, scrolling, or getting stuck on your site.

An example of behavioral analysis in action is if you have an online clothing store experiencing an increase in bounce rates from the homepage. Upon analysis, your team may discover that users have issues with the cluttered layout or are overwhelmed by your large, unorganized categories, prompting them to click off your site. As a result, you simplify the homepage and organize your categories, making your site so much more navigable to customers and boosting conversions.

3. Price Products Competitively

Competitive prices are attractive prices, making it crucial to find the sweet spot between keeping your prices competitively low yet profitable in what can be a crowded ecommerce landscape.

This can also mean regularly monitoring your competitor's prices and ensuring that you can either match prices or lower them. Alternatively, you can find other ways to provide customers with more value compared to competitors through superior quality, exceptional customer service, or exclusive features that justify the price difference.

4. Simplify CTAs

Call-to-action buttons, or CTAs, are a powerful tool for guiding user action on your site and boosting your conversions. To optimize your CTAs to reach their full potential, make sure that they are prominently and strategically placed and use action-orientated language that’s clear at communicating the next step, like "Add to Cart" or "Checkout Now.”

Strategic placement also means limiting the number of CTAs on each page to avoid overwhelming visitors and directing their attention to the most important actions.

Using contrasting colors and strategic placements for your buttons can make them stand out, further increasing the likelihood that users will respond.

5. Use Limited Time Offers

Using scarcity and urgency strategies can be a great way to boost conversions online, as limited-time offers can help you drive immediate action from customers.

You can leverage discounts, promotions, or exclusive deals that are only available for a short period to encourage potential buyers to make quicker decisions. You can also create exclusive coupons or discount codes that can be applied at checkout for a percentage off on their purchase. These coupons should have an expiration date that drives urgency.

These time-sensitive offers can be highlighted on your homepage, product pages, or through email marketing campaigns, reinforcing FOMO or the idea that customers might miss out if they delay or ignore what you have to offer.

6. Offer Free Shipping

Your competitors offer free shipping, and so should you. Your customers certainly have come to expect it, with services like Amazon setting the standard—free shipping included. If your store does not offer free shipping, customers are likely to look elsewhere, having a negative impact on your conversion rates.

You can offer domestic standard free shipping or have a minimal order fee where once a customer’s order reaches a certain value, free shipping is applied, while your business gets to enjoy a higher average order value.

7. Improve Site Speed

Imagine landing on a website only to get frustrated by how slow images load and how clunky everything is. Today’s shoppers are used to fast devices and quick-loading websites, meaning that if they land on a slow-to-load online shop, they’ll get frustrated and click off.

Slow-loading websites hurt your shop’s ability to convert, but optimizing your site for speed is simple enough. Simply compress the images and videos you use for your website. You’ll maintain image quality while improving your site’s speed and keeping your customers engaged throughout each shopping session.

8. Share Reviews & Testimonials

Social proof is a powerful tool to leverage when working on your CRO strategy. Sharing social proof through positive reviews and testimonials will help you build trust and convince customers to hit the buy button.

Shoppers love to check product reviews before buying something online, and having positive feedback from previous customers reassures them about the quality of your products and services, convincing them and making them much more likely to convert.

You also need to encourage customers to leave reviews after their purchase so you can gather more user-generated content. By leveraging reviews and testimonials, you can enhance your brand’s reputation and create a more compelling case for potential customers, boosting those conversion rates.

9. Send Retargeting Emails

CRO can extend outside of your website, even when a session ends. When customers abandon their cart, you can send retargeting emails or ads to remind them of their unpurchased items and even entice them with a coupon or notify them when an item they were eyeing goes on sale.

Moreover, retargeting emails can include personalized product recommendations based on browsing history, which enhances the customer experience and increases the chances of conversion.

10. Have a Great Return Policy

Having a flexible or generous return policy has a positive influence on your conversion rates, as it makes customers feel as though there is a reduced risk in shopping online with your brand. With flexible returns, customers are more likely to complete a purchase since they know they can easily return items that don't meet their expectations.

An example of a brand with a great return policy is Zappos with its 365-day return. This customer-friendly approach not only builds trust with customers but also encourages them to make purchases without the fear of being stuck with a product that didnt perform as expected.

Having a great return policy like this can turn hesitant shoppers into loyal customers who will choose your store every time over your competitors.

Conclusion

Boosting your conversion rates by implementing some key CRO strategies is an important aspect of running a successful ecommerce business. In this article, we learned about the key concepts around conversion rate optimization, how to calculate conversion rates, and some key strategies you can implement on your website.

By using some of the strategies we mentioned, like improving checkout flow and conducting customer behavior analysis, you can significantly boost your conversion rates and sales.

Ultimately, a focus on CRO not only drives immediate sales but also fosters long-term customer loyalty and satisfaction, boosting the success and value of your brand. Making it a top priority for businesses.

Ready to boost your conversion rates with an effective CRO strategy? Contact our experts at Ecommerce Pro and discover how we can help optimize your store for maximum conversions!

FAQs on Conversion Rate Optimization

1. What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), and why is it important for eCommerce?
CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimization, is the process of optimizing a website to increase the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, like making a purchase. For online businesses, CRO is essential because it helps businesses maximize sales from their existing traffic.

2. How can I calculate the conversion rate for my website?
Simply divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors, then multiply by 100. For example, if you had 1000 visitors and 89 made a purchase, your conversion rate would be (89/1000) * 100 = 8.9%.

3. How does CRO differ from SEO, and how do they work together?
CRO focuses on converting existing site visitors, while SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about increasing site visibility and attracting more organic traffic from search engines. While they have different objectives, they complement each other; high-quality traffic from SEO efforts provides more potential conversions that can be optimized through CRO practices.

4. What are the key website pages to focus on for CRO?
The main pages to optimize for conversions are the homepage, product page, and checkout page.

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At Ecommerce Pro, we help entrepreneurs and business owners build better and more successful Shopify businesses. Have a question or a project in mind? Get in touch with us today!