What is conversion rate in ecommerce? When you’re selling your products online, your ecommerce conversion rate indicates just how many of the people who visited your site went ahead and made a purchase. The simplest method to calculate conversion rate in ecommerce is to express it as a percentage. So, the number of people who made a purchase divided by the number of store visitors can be multiplied by 100 to give you a percentage.
An average ecommerce conversion rate comes in at two to three percent. If you’re below that, set three percent as an initial goal. After that, you can strive to gain an above average conversion rate. What is a good conversion rate for ecommerce? Well, if you’re at the two to three percent mark, that’s not bad. Five percent would be excellent. So much for the numbers. What you really want to know is how to increase the conversion rate in ecommerce. Use these strategies to get more of those all-important sales.
1. See Where and When You Lose Your Audience
There are a great many reasons why your average ecommerce conversion rate may be lower than you like it to be. The first question is whether your site is attracting the right kind of traffic. If you have a high bounce rate, it means that visitors viewed only one page of your website and then left. Think about how they got there and why they lost interest. Could landing page optimization help to attract the right visitors and keep them browsing?
The average time people spend on your site is also of interest. Attracting traffic is just the start. Are you keeping them there long enough to make a sale? If not, why not? You can look at how many pages the average visitor viewed. If most visitors view several pages but your conversions are very low, your site may not be helping them to find what they’re looking for.
2. Are You Displaying Your Products Well?
When we shop online, we can’t touch or try the items on offer. We can only look at them. Are you offering representations that help users to examine your products properly? High quality images, the ability to zoom in on images or view them from different angles, and videos showing your products at work will help your store’s visitors to form a clear picture of what you’re offering and help them to decide whether they want to make a purchase. Add a good product description specifying sizes and materials. Remember that if they’re unsure of the product, your store visitors won’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.
3. Offer “Free” Shipping to Certain Regions or Countries
“Free” shipping is really just the delivered price of the product. Shipping is costly and, in any business, costs must be covered and profits made. However, “Free” is the language customers understand, and it helps them to evaluate the exact cost of purchasing. It can be very disappointing to choose an item only to find out that actually getting it costs way more than you thought it would. What would you do if you were this customer? You’d probably abandon your cart and log off. Needless to say, that hurts your ecommerce conversion rate and loses you a sale.
4. Offer a Discount – If They Buy Soon
You’ve probably seen limited-time discount offers online before. It’s a tactic used to hasten the decision-making process. If a person is genuinely interested in buying from you, they might act sooner if they know they’ll get a discount. If they wait, they will pay more, so they decide not to wait. It’s a fairly standard tactic, but it works quite well in raising conversions.
5. Get the Price and Positioning Right
When you’re offering products that people can get elsewhere, you need to set your prices at a competitive level. If you’re offering an exclusive range of products, you need to present it as such and attract the kind of audience that will be willing to pay your prices.
For example, if a customer is looking for leather belts, and yours are mass-produced and rather ordinary-looking, they’ll expect to pay less because they’re buying online. If your belts are high-quality, handmade items, your ideal customer is less interested in price, but will expect a slick, smart presentation.
6. Make it Easy For Them to Part With Their Money
Once people start heading for the checkout, you’d expect the sale to be a done deal. But if the checkout process itself becomes a pain point, they’ll shrug their shoulders and simply leave. While you do need to take care of customer security, you also need to make it easy to complete a purchase. Keep it simple!
7. Let Them Know They’re Safe
You should be using robust security options to keep your customers’ information safe. You can provide cues by showing the logos for the security software systems you use and choosing trusted, mainstream payment options. SSL encryption is a must. You can also offer links to a page in which you describe the ways in which you keep customers safe.
8. Make it Easy for Visitors to Find What They’re Looking For
Organise your site for easy browsing. For example, you can add a “Shop by Category” menu so that your site’s visitors can quickly navigate to pages displaying the type of products they are hoping to find. Search boxes on your website can also help, and you can use your banner space to showcase your top sellers.
9. Don’t Force Them To Register in Order to Buy
Online shopping is all about convenience, so any extra processes that aren’t absolutely necessary will reduce your conversions. By all means, encourage users to register, but don’t make it a prerequisite for them to make a purchase. Upwards of three-quarters of online shoppers said they didn’t feel happy about being asked to register. That means that you stand a chance of losing all those sales if you insist on it.
10. Use Chatbots and Live Chat
Chatbots aren’t as bad as they once were. You can “teach” them to handle a great many routine enquiries. But you also need to set them up so that they’ll transfer the conversation to a human support agent when necessary or at least offer that option.
Nobody is going to spend ages trying to find the right question to get information out of a bot. They want relevant and helpful answers or they’ll move on. Offering human service options 24/7 can present a challenge, but it’s a problem that can be solved quite easily.
Choose the Right Partners
Beating the average ecommerce conversion rate means partnering with experts in a variety of fields. For example, a User Experience (UX) designer is trained to remove any frustrations and difficulties your customers might encounter when navigating your store and its payment process.
It will be economical to outsource your ecommerce customer support, especially if you want 24-hour support or support in several languages. To achieve the professional, customer-oriented experience you want your site’s visitors to enjoy, choose a company that is ready to train operatives to fully understand your business.
The customer care workers they employ must be communications experts who are able to express themselves well, understand customers’ needs, and report any hitches back to you so that you can further improve your platform. RSVP’s Back Office Support Services have what it takes. So, if you’re looking to improve your ecommerce conversions, it’s time you got us on your side. Manning your customer support centre is just one of the ways we can help. Let’s talk sales!