If you have an E-Commerce business or are likely to start one, you already know that the higher your conversion rate is, the better your chances of sales would be. It is the most important thing all sellers should focus on and work on if they want to expand their business. As the E-commerce market is getting more and more competitive as days pass by, it is not easy for any retailer to keep customers loyal unless they have something unique to offer. Now, you may think that your services would make every customer who buys once from you, continue to make every purchase from your website, but that doesn’t happen. There are thousands of other websites offering a huge variety of products that are constantly attracting viewers. So, many customers see a product, add it to the cart, and forget about it. This negatively influences the sales of any website. To reduce the cart abandonment issues, you need to make sure you offer various features on your website that would make them purchase products, and be satisfied with them so that they come back for a second purchase. This needs proper planning.
What are Conversion Rates?
Firstly, let’s understand what E-commerce are, and how it works. It is mainly the percentage of website viewers who complete the purchase process from an E-Commerce store. E-commerce site optimization adds to the shopping experience and increases sales. Optimizing conversion rates, there are a few ways of doing that. Conversion rates are decided by basic percentage calculations. To focus on conversion rates, first, you need to understand your visitors and their preferences and provide the service to get a better response. You may wonder what can be a good conversion rate. Around 2 to 3% is the average conversion rate, and anything more than 3% is considered good.
How to Increase Your Conversion Rates?
Now, let’s look at the various ways to increase the E-Commerce websites’ conversion rate :
1. Provide High-Quality Images and Videos Of Your Products
Since the whole process is online, customers can’t check the products properly, as they can’t touch them or look at them properly. To compensate for that, a seller needs to provide high-quality and real pictures of the products, and proper videos, so that customers get an understanding of the product. You can provide live images as well so that when they search for a product, it appears on the search page as well.
2. Provide Live Chatbots
Customers may get confused or not get relevant results on your website, which would lead them to have many questions that need immediate answers. You can introduce live chat customer service on your website for them. It will help the customers get easy answers, and build a one-on-one communication system with your brand and the buyer. This way they will be satisfied with the service, and you will improve your brand image at the same time. Customers are more likely to make a purchase when all their doubts are cleared, so this feature can help increase conversion rates.
3. Notify About Abandoned Cart
It is a common fact that many viewers leave a certain product in their cart and forget about it. Studies suggest that the global cart abandonment rate is around 75%. Customers engaging with your website doesn’t guarantee sales. There can be various other reasons for buyers to abandon a product in the cart. For example, unexpected shipping costs, better prices at other websites, the checkout process is complicated, limited payment options, and so on. Introducing recovery emails to customers can solve this issue. Notify your buyers about the possible offers on the product that is abandoned in the cart. Emails that are sent within 3 hours are said to have about a 40% open rate and for customers who receive mail, about 11% return to make the purchase.
4. Optimize for Mobile
In case your E-Cmmerce site isn’t optimized for mobile platforms, you are missing out on a good percentage of customers, and thus a significant number of sales. If your E-commerce platform provides a great user experience on mobile as well, it increases conversion rates.
5. Include Detailed Product Descriptions
Product information is an essential factor that many websites miss out on. Customers don’t get a proper understanding of the product unless it’s properly described, including its colour, size, and other details. This will help increase conversion rates, and thus improve sales.
6. Display Customer Reviews
Add customer reviews of every product on the website. Studies suggest customer reviews are really helpful to increase sales, because new visitors read them, and follow them before making any purchase. Also, allow them to add photos and videos with their reviews. This adds to building trust in the new customers, and they get interested in making the purchase.
7. Allow Shopping Through Social Media Platforms
In the current market situation, every brand needs to make themselves seen on social media to get more visitors to their website. But customers often may not be interested in going to the website and would prefer your social media platform, i.e.- Instagram, directly. You can add shoppable tags to the Instagram page that directly takes the customer to the product page. Advertising the product or anything unique that you can offer is not enough. Allowing customers to make direct purchases will reduce their work, and lead to an increase in conversion rates.
Know What Your Website Needs
Even though there are various ways to increase E-commerce conversion rates, it is essential to understand that every E-commerce business is different from others, and therefore not every website can use the same ways to improve the business. As a merchant, you need to have a complete understanding of the website, and focus on your customers. The above-listed ways will surely give you a direction in which you can focus because these are some important features that any E-commerce website should offer. Customer satisfaction is the main factor, as the more, they are happy with the services, the more they’ll be willing to make their purchase from your website. It is seen that often conversion rates aren’t as high as you’re expecting them to be. In that case, you have to point down the reason that’s causing this issue, and solve it. Once you find out the benchmark that helps in conversion (it can be any particular service or product) that will help you plan out your business plan further by increasing sales to a certain extent.
