With e-Commerce sites, so many marketing teams put a lot of effort, time, and money into getting customers to the site. But this all goes to waste if you’re not converting them. Converting customers is both easier and more difficult than before. If you create a system that easily converts customers, you can exponentially grow sales. But, you have literal seconds to capture attention to push customers along the buyer process. Refining the buyer process is key to increasing conversion rates.
Here are some tools and tips you can easily apply today to increase e-Commerce conversion rates:
Use social proof to qualify your product.
Buyers these days have the information of the world at their fingertips. They’re able to find information, reviews, and alternative products in seconds. For high conversions, it’s important you make a strong case for your products while customers are on your page. Social proof has become increasingly powerful for e-Commerce conversion as users are unphased by ads. 82% of consumers ignore online ads. We’ve become so accustomed, they don’t quite have the impact and trust they once had. However, 84% of people trust online reviews the same as a recommendation from a friend. Social proof is substantially more effective in convincing customers to purchase a product. Including social proof in pivotal points throughout your website and purchasing process are a great way to increase conversion rates. You can do this by enabling product reviews for your products and including a five-star rating system which quickly communicates value to customers (similar to Amazon). Another way is to add testimonials to product pages and your homepage for products as to build credibility and interest throughout the user experience. You can now add reviews and ratings to your ads off of your site as well with Google ad extensions.
Eliminate steps in the purchasing/checkout process.
The top performing e-Commerce sites all make it very, very easy for customers to go from interested to checking out. You should go through your buyer’s process and find points where you can remove some friction, or extra steps that take extra time, could be confusing, or allow for second thoughts. An easy way to reduce friction is data storage in the checkout process so when customers purchase again or have an account, some of their info is already in. Think of Amazon’s one-click checkout. You can also have product previews open up within a page rather than a separate link and make it easy to simply click and add to cart so the shopping experience is easy. For future purchases, make sure to have shopping cart data saved as well for customers returning. You can use the Woocommerce One-Click checkout plugin to add this feature:
Offer great support.
With customers more inquisitive as ever, it’s a good idea to have support on hand to help in their purchasing decisions. Any questions or concerns gone unanswered will result in less sales. Aside from an obvious FAQ section, customers vastly prefer live chat and it’s a great service to include.
92% of customers feel satisfied when they use live chat with a company. But live chat can be a very time consuming service as you grow; you need to be able to dedicate hours to speaking with customers but it’s something customers are beginning to expect.
Be generous with returns and shipping.
The process of purchasing online can still be nerve racking for many customers. Customers, even if buying in store, like to know they have a way to go back on their decision if they’re not satisfied. It’s expected that you provide the same luxury online. Work free returns into your pricing to decrease the decision process for customers and increase the likelihood you will have a happy repeat customer. 92% of customers say that if a return process is free and easy, they are highly likely to purchase again. Free shipping is also an expected perk for e-Commerce shoppers now: 9 out of 10 customers say that free shipping is the #1 incentive for them purchase online. It’s an expectation and can make your pricing look like a better deal. People don’t like to see the total go up at checkout. Build free shipping and returns into your pricing to create a better deal that customers can easily click “check out” on.
Offer strategic sales and deals.
When customers feel like your e-Commerce site is stagnant and there is no time pressure to make a purchase decision, they won’t. To get people moving towards making a purchase quickly, make time-sensitive sales and deals a regular (yet not too regular) event. You want customers to think this opportunity is going to end soon and they have to act quickly. But you also want customers to know that there will be more opportunities to check for in the future. Reach out to your customers in effective ways to let them know about time-sensitive sales (2-3 days is usually optimal). You can schedule email campaigns, re-targeted ads, or use Beamer to announce sales on your site and to customers off your site with push notifications. Beamer is a news feed that blends right into your interface. You can add photos, videos, GIFs, and actionable CTAs to engage your audience. You can also configure Beamer to send out push notifications to those who opted in and bring them back or use Zapier to send out your updates to your social pages.
Automate the sales process with email marketing and retargeting.
The sales process used to happen in person with employees helping to show customers products and convince them to purchase. That opportunity is gone now with e-Commerce. To get customers coming back, reconsidering products, and discovering other products, you have to retarget them and automate your eCommerce business. You can use AdRoll to retarget customers who have been on your site or social pages before. AdRoll is so personalized, you can place products or related products customers have already viewed on your site in front of them again. They make the right suggestions at the right time for you off your site to get them back and shopping again.
Eliminate extra pages where you can.
Have you ever browsed a site where every time you wanted to look at a product, you have to open a new window? It’s infuriating. Anytime you add additional pages to the shopping and checkout process, you run the risk of pages not loading fast enough or customers getting annoyed and confused navigating through. The few the steps and pages required to explore, compare, and buy products, the more you will convert. A few ways you can eliminate pages are through product quick views so when a customer wants to look at a specific item in your shop more closely, they can simply open a quick view window that hovers above the same shop page rather than clicking away. Here they can add to cart and keep shopping as well. Use YITH Product Quick View for an easy way to add this feature. At checkout, you can eliminate pages as well by using a one-page checkout format. BigCommerce allows you to have all checkout steps in collapsable sections so customers don’t have to click through pages. This eliminates risk of them dropping out the process or technical problems.
Once you get the conversion process refined, you can really start to take advantage of the time and money you put into getting customer to your site and increase sales exponentially. For an easy way to better engage and convert e-Commerce customers, install Beamer on your site today.
