25 Ecommerce Conversion Hacks

The total number of ecommerce websites on internet ranges between 12 – 24 million, but only about 650,000 of them are able to cross $1,000 mark in annual sales.

In fact, the second half of this information is worth more focus and attention than the first one. Why is it that no more than 650,000 of them are able to generate more than $1,000 in annual sales? The answer to this question might lie in another piece of information:

• 53% of businesses allocate less than 5% of their total marketing budget to the process of conversion optimization.
• Conversion rate for 35% of the businesses is reported to be less than 1%.

That’s why I have come up with 25 most powerful ecommerce conversion hacks to help you spruce up your ecommerce conversion rate like never before.

Speed up to amp up your conversion rate and sales

Just observe how speeding up websites resulted in improved conversions and sales for these companies, according to a report published on Radware.

• Firefox reduced average load time by 2.2 seconds and increased downloads by 15.4%, with 275,000 daily visitors, this translates to 10 million additional downloads per year.
• Walmart.com found that when load times jump from 1 second to 4 seconds conversions decline sharply. And for every 1 second of improvement, they experienced up to a 2% conversion increase.

Great On-page SEO

There are two components to great On-page SEO:

a) Focus on “conversion oriented” search keywords

According to Tim Soulo of Ahrefs.com, “The best way to increase ecommerce conversion rate is to get highly targeted traffic to your store. I mean if your website pops in Google for a keyword “DVD player Sony”- these people won’t necessarily end up buying, but if your site ranks for a much more specific keyword like “DVD Player DVP-SR510H buy in Singapore” – these people are highly likely to buy from you.”

so, just focus on “conversion oriented” search keywords and you’ll be good.

b) Structured data and rich snippets

Structured data markup and rich snippets on your web pages can help Google and other search engines better index your content and present it prominently in SERP results. According to a publication on Moz: Many companies have seen a 20 – 30% rise in click-through rates when using rich snippets; Users know what to expect before accessing the sire. The result is more qualified visitors who are likely to stay on the site longer.

Using Responsive Design

Want to know why responsive design has become so imperative these days? Have a look at these findings published by HubSpot:

• 48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring.
• 62% of companies that designed website specially for mobile had increased sales.
• 90% of people use multiple screen sequentially.

Use A/B Testing

A/B testing can help you enhance your ecommerce experience in many ways, empowering you to choose and decide which web page elements to be placed where for best conversions.

Be Accessible – Show Contact Info, Offer Live Chat

Being accessible to your customers is one of the best things to retain them, whether it’s a conventional brick and mortar store or a contemporary e-store. Make it easy for your visitors to find your contact info and offer them live chat to help them instantly and earn their trust and respect.

Kissmetrics blog share some interesting facts on how live chat can help ecommerce stores. A consumer trend study found that:

• 90% of customers consider live chat helpful.
• 63% of them were more likely to return to a website that offered live chat support.
• 38% of respondents said they had made their purchases because of the chat support they had received.

Clear, big calls to action – 10 to 25% Improved Conversion Rates

Of all other things, make sure your call to action button is big enough to capture attention of your visitors with appropriate call to action message and the most relevant color combination. Experts believe that bigger call to action buttons lead to increase in conversion rates by 10 to 25%.

Smooth Navigation – Increase Conversion Rate by 18.5
Make shopping on your e-store an enchanting experience for your visitors rather than an entangling one with useless diversions and hindrances. Conversion rte improved by 18.5%.

Improving Site Search and Recommendation
Many people fail to realise this, but search and sales are directly proportional; if people don’t find what they are searching for, they will not buy from your site. So, help them search better and recommend them relevant products where appropriate.

13% of visitors will use internal search and in a case study by e-consultancy after investigating 21 ecommerce websites, they found that the average revenue generated was highest from visitors who performed searches.

Social Proof
Social proof adds unprecedented value to your offerings online. Based on inherent human psychology, people feel more confident and secure in buying from an online retailer if it has reasonable social proof backing it up.

• Conversion rate improved 200% compared to paid search result, when a fashion magazine or blogger referred people to a design campaign “Rent the Runway”.
• Celebrity endorsement by Jessica Simpson and aesthetician Nerida Joy recently helped Beautymint attract 500,000 visitors in the first 24 hours of its launch.
• Zynga grow from 3 million to 41 million average daily users in just one year by friends inviting other friends on Facebook and other social networks to play it.
• A recent HBS study showed that a 1-star increase in Yelp rating leads to 5-9% growth in sales.

Use Personalisation Tactics
Implementing personalisation tactics on ecommerce stores has helped names like Amazon, eBay and Tesco by better assessing user preferences and developing a product bank based on that to individuals sharing a specific set of interests.

As many as 60% of consumers in the UK shop online every single week, with the majority of them understanding the concept of personalizations and having a positive attitude towards it.

Add Security Seals
Internet based scams have alerted modern shoppers quite well. Now they want to feel secure about their money and personal information, which makes adding security seals so imperative nowadays.

Conversions can be improved by 11% with the right security seal at right place.

Highlight returns, refunds and money back guaranty
Because these are the types of subtle pushes that transform site visitors to confident and satisfied customers.

In a survey by comScore and UPS:

• 63% of American consumers check the return policy before making a purchase.
• 48% would shop more with online retailers that offer hassle-free returns.
• 72% consumers in Germany would give more business to stores with hassle-free returns.
• A study in the journal of Marketing reveals customer who received free shipping on returns increased their purchases over the next two years by 58 to 357%.

Have a section for sales and specials discount

Why? Go through these points shared by ConversionXL to get a better idea:

• 47% users buy discounted products.
• 2% users are looking for sales and deals.

Describe Products Visually
You can describe products visually in two ways:

• Use images effectively from all angles and all users
  Not only shall you upload high quality products images covering every possible angle, but also allow people to upload their own images of your products. Such user generated content (UGC) helps other potential customers connect well to your products, thus improving sales. User-generated content (UGC) can boost conversion rates by anywhere from 5 to 10%. For example, Amazon lets customers upload their own images to each product page. These pictures are shown next to review to help customers make better buying decisions.
• Leverage videos – improve the odds of conversion by 80%
  Improving the odds of conversion by 80%; why on earth will you want to have another reason to resort to videos on your landing page?
  A study by eyeviewdigital.com shows that using video on landing pages can
  increase conversion by 80%.

Improve the Copy
There are two things that will help you improve your product copy more than anything else:

• Address customers’ pain points
  Instead of highlighting what your product is all about, elaborate on how it addresses the pain points of your customers, because no matter how good a product is in quality, if it’s unable to solve some problem of a person, it’s useless to them.
• Question checklist
  Make sure your copy offers your visitors everything they might be curious about. It’s pretty simple; get them what they want and you will get what you want, i.e. better sales. Here’s what Ian Rhodes shares with you on this:

Answer the most valuable questions your customers will be asking. What’s the total price I’ll be paying? Is is in-stock? How much will deliver be? When will I receive it? Is this definitely the latest model? Are there any color, size or other variations? Is the image shown the actual product I’ll receive? Can I trust you? Create a checklist of common questions and scour product pages where you’re seeing low conversion rates and ensure the answer to these questions are clearly visible.

Get your Products Reviews Published
Why? Because people trust them and feel confident in buying after going through them. According to Reevoo stats, 50 reviews can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion. 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews.

• Site visitors who interact with both reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting, and spend 11% more than visitors who don’t interact with UGC. (Bazaarvoice, Conversion Index, Q2 2011)
• Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted (nearly 12 times more) than descriptions that come from manufacturers, according to a survey of US internet users by online video review site EXPO. (eMarketer, February, 2010)
• According to Reevoo, reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales.

Manage your Shipping Costs Better
Do you know more than half of all merchants offer free shipping, according to TechChrunch? Some keep it free always, while others might have some conditions.

• An E-tilling Group study revealed that unconditional free shipping is #1 criteria for making a purchase. (73% listed it as “critical”).
• In another study 93% of respondents indicated that free shipping on ordered would encourage them to purchase more products.
• Orders with free shipping average around 30% higher in value those that charge a few bucks for transport.
• When 2BigFeet introduced free shipping for orders over $100, their conversions went up 50%.

Use the Trigger Word “FREE”
When it comes to ecommerce, the word “FREE” is really magical. People will just fall for it and your sales will improve. According to VWO, one of our customer made a quick AB test in our tool to add the words, “it’s free” with their call-to-action and this increased their conversion by 28%.

Create a Sense of Urgency and Improve sales by 332%
Wondering how creating a sense of urgency can help you improve conversion? The answer lies in understanding basic human psychology; capitalising on instinctive human behaviors when faced with urgent situations.

Marcus Taylor narrates his personal experience on ConversionXL: Creating a Sense of Urgency Helped Me Increase Sales by 332%

These four factors help you instill a sense of urgency in any of your campaigns:

• Low stock indicator
• Time-sensitive shipping
• Free shipping
• Limited time deals

Introduce Coupons for Login Customers
It is a two-pronged strategy. Introducing discount coupons for first time login customers can help you improve for first time login customers can help you improve your conversions. Even if they abandon sale for some odd reason, you can reach out to them again via email marketing, since you already have their email details.

Give Them a Price Match Guarantee
Confused whether or not to add Price Match Guarantee on your landing page? Think again, as Thomson Reuters bring you these figures:

44% of online shoppers said they shopped online during the holiday season so they could compare prices across retailers.

Upsell and Cross-sell Merchandizing
Back in 2006. Amazon reported to have piled up 35% of their revenue from Upselling and Cross-selling.

2-Step Simple Checkout
I know, it might sound contradictory to how so many “experts” vouch for 1-step checkout nowadays; but you can try this out to check its efficacy by yourself. Based on source from Baymard Institute’s research updated on January 14, 2016, 68.63% of people abandon their shopping carts on ecommerce stores on average.

This is where the idea of a simple 2-step checkout can be your savior, as suggested by Neil Patel. Confine the first step of the checkout only to ask for name and email of a customer. Even if he abandons later, you can retarget him with some other offer, since you have his email.

One simple way to increase your ecommerce conversion rates i to have a two step checkout process. Typically if you ask for someone’s name and email first you can then market to them if they don’t complete the checkout process. This is a simple tactic that works well.. a lot of ecommerce companies tend to ignore it, or if they leverage it they forget to follow up with the customers who don’t complete the purchase via email. – Neil Patel

Offer Multiple Payment Options
According to WorldPay, a payment processing company, alternative payment methods (anything other than traditional credit or debit cards) will account for more than half (59%) of all transactions by 2017, up from 43% in 2012.

Improving Transactional Emails

In simple terms, transactional emails are the email messages you send to users of your site or application whenever they specially, individually interact with either.

Welcome Emails

• In many cases, the average revenue for well optimized welcome emails goes up to $5.83 per mail sent, in contrast to bulk promotional mails averaging 53 cents only.
• Transaction rates can increase by up to 4.01% when special offers are included in email subject line and body text.
• Transaction rates can go up by as much as 40%, also boosting overall clicks and conversion when you serialize emails into small messages.

Sales Receipts

• Sales receipts enjoy 114% open rates, the highest in any kind of transactional email messages. This is because users often open a single one of these emails more than once.
• You can boost open rates of your sales receipt emails up to 35% by something as simple as adding a “thank you” to their subject lines.
• You can increase click-through rates up to 55% by adding social media links to your company’s profile inside the receipt email body.

Abandoned Cart Emails

• Of some 67% of your users who abandon their shopping carts anywhere before actual buying stage, you can redirect a significant number back to your site by sending out transactional emails.
• You can also increase clicks by about 10% by adding some of the abandoned items in the email subject line.
• You can further boost clicks by 50% if you add additional related product recommendations inside your emails.

Shipping Confirmations

• Shipping confirmations enjoy a whopping 107% open rate, thanks to the valuable purchase related information they contain.
• You can further boost their transaction rates up to 20% by including cross-sell offers for additional products or services related to the original purchase of your customers.

Product Reviews

• You can boost the open rate of product reviews by 28% or more if you add the word “review” in emails sent to your customers.
• Follow these conversion hacks to enrich your ecommerce experience, enjoying improved conversion, sales and revenues, while we bring more useful information your way.