How to increase your stores conversion rate

Introduction

Increase your conversion rate

The items discussed in this article can be applied to any eCommerce platform but is based on our platform of choice Magento. Magento is an enterprise eCommerce solution that helps merchants run and manage a successful online stores. We find Magento offers a comprehensive feature set to run and manage an online store. Implementing the items discussed in this article today will help increase your  stores conversion rate.

Overview

A successful eCommerce store should aim to remove all friction points that cause visitors to drop off.  Friction points can come in different forms – but basically anything that can upset, annoy or confuse a visitor can be considered as a friction point.  Removing friction points can dramatically increase your conversion rates. 

The world of user psychology comes to play when you are trying to get users to convert on your site,  building “Trust” with the user is another consideration – visitor’s anxiety is a symptom you have to address before a visitor can be converted to a buyer. Visitor’s question weather they will receive the goods they ordered or if their credit card details are safe etc.  As a merchant it is up to you to relieve these anxiety’s.

You will always hear merchants talk about the difficulty in acquiring a customer so once you have got over that hurdle you really need to look at how you are going to nurture and grow that relationship.
The principal behind all eCommerce stores is relatively simple – Get Visitors to your store – Convert these users to customers – re-market & re-sell to these customers.

How to increase your stores conversion rate

So lets look at what we can do today to increase our conversion rates.

Category Chunking

Restrict categories & drop downs to seven items or less items. Provide your visitors with less choice.

Build Trust

Align your store with trusted brands – Use logos – Visa, Mastercard, Cocomo, SSL, PayPal, Realex, FedEx, UPS to build trust.

Social Proof

Use reviews, testimonials, Users that bought this also bought, Most viewed, Best sellers

Page Load Speed

Make sure your server has enough resources and invest time in optimisation.

• .1 sec  = Great
• 1 – Second  – ok you will probably get away it
• >1 needs attention

Sinage

Don’t let your users get lost or confused – Use:

• Breadcrumbs
• Labels
• Sign posting
• Make sure multi-step processes  and wizards are clearly presented

Photography

Try and use real life photography other than stock photography – Users like to see real people  using your product.

Product Page

There are some interesting observations and recommendations here.

1. Buyers see price first
2. Price, Photo and add to cart should all be above the fold and grouped together
3. Video – Stats show that using video can double your conversion rate
4. Show “in stock” or product “availability” – How may times have you ordered something to find out that its out of stock – Annoying.
5. Blue hyperlinks – Twice as likely to be clicked by a user
6. Offer free shipping – or work towards this model
7. Have a “Sales”,”Specials”, “Offers” page – These pages record high visitor numbers
8. Use abandoned cart extensions – a 20% recovery rate can be recorded
9. Live chat – Again a good way to build trust
10. Multiple payment options  Visa, Mastercard,PayPal, google checkout, bitcoins etc
11. Search – Make sure you have good search functionality – Predictive/fuzzy search – Always return results
12. Use proper feature/attribute filtering where appropriate

Mobile Friendly

Create a mobile or responsive website – This is a must when redeveloping or redesigning an eCommerce store today.

Conclusion

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to increasing your stores conversion rates and they are things you can start working on today. Going forward I will be discussing other topics, tips and tricks to help you run a successful eCommerce store.

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