Actionable Ecommerce Conversion Optimization Tips
There are millions of e-commerce websites on the web, and all of them compete for customers’ attention. They try to appear on the front line of the niche, attract potential customers, engage, and encourage them to place an order. The world of e-commerce is pretty crowded, so if you want to compete, you need to be unique.
In this post, you will find useful conversion optimization tips and hacks that will help you pump your rates and increase sales. Let’s get in!
Make it Fast
Your site must load really fast, or you will lose your clients. You have only a couple of seconds before they get annoyed and switch to your competitor! Indeed, there is nothing more frustrating than a web page that loads too slow, which becomes one of the key reasons for visitors to close it. Let’s face it – we live in a world of rapidity. Optimize your site to make sure that it withstands competition.
- Test your speed
Make sure to test your site’s speed with the help of such tools as PageSpeed Insights. This feature will help you find out how long your users have to wait until your page loads. What is more, the program provides recommendations on how to improve the situation – PageSpeed will inform you which are the problematic spots to consider. Also, you may want to know how to interpret the results. According to statistics, your visitors will leave the resource in case it takes more than 5 seconds to load the page.
- Check your hosting plan
Here are three core hosting types:
Shared hosting allows thousands of websites to use the same server. This option is the cheapest, but it is also the less advanced one. You might opt for shared hosting if you have a small business, but consider other options if you have a massive site and count on flawless performance. Shared hosting decreases the speed of your website a lot.
VPS is something like a golden middle between a shared hosting and a private server. The users still share one server, but they have larger portions of traffic and better control. This hosting plan may suit medium businesses. As for the speed, VPS might provide you with a relatively high one, but it won’t handle large sites.
A dedicated server is a perfect option for e-commerce sites because it offers excellent performance and security. This option allows customization, full control over your resource, load balancing, and other configuration. Considering the fact that you own a server, the speed of your website will be perfect. However, as you can understand, this plan is not cheap.
- Optimize your media
If you have too many pictures, videos, and other features on your site, think about reducing their amount or making them less heavyweight. Visuals are great, but they should improve your website performance, not ruin it.
Get Stellar Texts
Reading articles on conversion rate optimization tips, you must have seen the advice like this: “You need to create perfect texts!” Well, it is quite obvious that you should, but these articles rarely explain how to do that. And here are the basics:
- Inform
Make your texts useful and informative. Your main task is to help your visitors.
- Drive action
Encourage your visitors to act! Convince them that your services will solve their problems (explain how) and encourage them to order. Use strong words like “stunning” and “supreme” instead of “good” or “cool”. Note some limited offers or products to evoke urgency and make your visitors convert into customers immediately.
- Forge relationships
Make your texts relevant to real-life experience, tell stories, and give advice. Write with a thought of your target audience in mind.
- Format your copies
Use subheadings, leave enough white space, and make sure to choose an easy-to-read font.
CRO and SEO are Important
One of the actionable techniques that will improve your conversion is to use both SEO and CRO. What is the difference? Let’s see:
- SEO strategies are aimed at optimizing your pages for search engines and therefore get a higher position on the results page.
- CRO strategies are aimed at your customers, where the goal is to motivate them to complete particular actions (place an order with you and buy your goods).
How to make them friends? Sometimes, superfluous SEO can result in truly unreadable and useless content. It is necessary to keep the balance here and don’t overload your texts with keywords. Don’t forget that Google checks sites for usability from the perspective of the user, so opt for convenience and buyer experience whenever you have doubts.
For your SEO strategies, use tools like Keyword Tool, KWFinder, SEMrush, or Google Keyword Planner. To make CRO attempts more productive, pay attention to tools like Google Analytics, VWO, Crazy Egg, and Hotjar.
Implement a Live Chat
Too often, users leave a website when they cannot find answers to their questions. To let them get informed fast and keep them on your resource longer, you should try implementing a live chat. A direct communication line with your potential buyers is a real human connection and support. This is something that builds trust towards your brand and lifetime loyalty in the long run. According to Forrester’s statistics, live chat as a channel of face-to-face communication makes customer experience more personal and memorable. That is why 46% of them come back for more services!
Offer Freebies
People want freebies! When you offer free shipping or a small pleasant gift along with the order, you stand out of the crowd, because not all shops do this. If your budget is too tight to allow free shipping, think about the price point you need to reach to cover the shipping expenses. Also, you can offer free shipping for orders that have a particular price – $100, $200, or more. Free shipping increases conversion rates significantly, while it doesn’t harm your revenue at all. Think about it! And one more thing – if you offer free shipping, mention it on the main page of your website with large letters. Don’t add this information only to the Order page or Delivery Information – this is a straight road to a lost sale.
Conclusion
As you can see from these website conversion optimization tips, there are plenty of techniques that can help improve your website performance. Maybe, you didn’t pay attention to some of the highlighted aspects before, and that’s quite normal. Try using these hacks, and you will definitely see the positive results soon. You can start with something simple, like optimizing the visual elements to make your site work faster. There is no need to hurry and try to polish all the areas at the same time – analyze your actions and see what works better for your business. Do your best and let your conversion rate skyrocket!
