How to increase your e-commerce conversion rate

How would you define a great e-commerce website? Obviously it’s key that your site is able to bring visitors onto its pages. However, the more essential metric is whether or not it’s capable of conversion. Are your visitors bouncing quickly or simply browsing and taking no action at all? If that’s the case then you may want to take a look at ways that you could increase your e-commerce conversion rate – here are a few suggestions.

• Recommend products as your visitors browse. Displaying trending products or those that are new is a tried and tested tactic when it comes to driving visitors towards those product pages. However, you can make this even more effective by making your recommendations personalised to the visitor as they browse the site. For example, the recommendations you make on the home page might shift depending on their browsing activity.
• Optimise your hero banner. It’s this piece of content that visitors are often drawn to first when they land on a website and so there is a lot of opportunity here for using it to help boost your conversion rate. Don’t waste the banner on an image that means nothing or says little about your business. Instead, choose something that will hold their interest straight away and give them a reason to stay on the site. There are always options to personalise too, such as including data about where they currently are (such as local time or the weather).
• Apply some pressure. This works especially well when the customer has added something to their cart. You might consider adding a countdown timer that tells them how long the item will remain in the cart if they don’t purchase it now – or one that relates to cut off deadlines for express or next day delivery. Offers with an expiry time can also be very useful when it comes to taking customers through the purchase process.
• Capture data. Another key conversion to bear in mind is when users hand over their data – this will enable you to create a customised journey and give you more to work with. Make sure you’re not demanding data as soon as the customer lands on your website. Instead, give them time to browse and then display a popover that offers something, such as a discount, in exchange for email details. This could not only ensure that you capture essential data but also motivate a purchase too.
• Work with user generated content. When users land on a project page your next objective is going to be to get them to put the item in their basket. Half of consumers research and compare items before making a purchase and will look for reviews from other customers. So, this is a great place to feature reviews and also to work with user generated content – being able to see how others have enjoyed, used or worn a product can be the last bit of motivation that a customer needs to make the purchase.

If your website isn’t delivering where conversion is concerned then these tips could help.