E-commerce Conversions 101

TODAY we are going to be talking about ‘conversion rate optimisation’, or CRO for short.

Wondering why not as much of the traffic that visits your store isn’t converting as high as you want them to?

Well, in this article we’re going to explore that…

The Verdant Rocket way: quick, simple, no BS guidance. So let’s get straight to it.

REASON #1

One of the reasons why your conversion rate could be sub-par is because people are dropping off at checkout. Either your brand mission and/or offer aren’t strong enough to carry them all the way to the end of the sales funnel, where they make that sweet purchase…

OR

The reason is because you’ve thrown a surprise shipping expense at them. What a turn-off!?

If you absolutely can’t afford to make shipping free, then make it clear on your product pages that you have to pay - customers don’t like stuff being hidden from them. However, there are some ways around turning this into a positive.

Take a look at the most commonly ordered products of yours. Are they typically bought together? If that is the case, then you can create a free shipping threshold around this order value. If these products/offers are your best sellers, then having new customers reach that free shipping threshold won’t be so difficult. If your threshold is quite high, then think about what products you could slightly reduce the price of in order to make it easier for the customer to reach the threshold with an initial basket that matches your AOV. Essentially, set the threshold (or try to get free shipping for all goods and raise the product prices to compensate) and adjust the prices of your products accordingly, to make achieving that threshold psychologically easier.?

REASON #2

People don’t even add to cart. Why? Well, it could be that your navigation sucks, the website is clunky, images are outdated… BUT, we’ll cover this soon. A KEY and perhaps OBVIOUS reason is that your product/offer isn’t good enough. How can you make your offer irresistible? Could the product copy be better? Does your product blend in with every other one on the market??

Maybe it’s time to get back to the drawing board and brainstorm ways to differentiate yourselves better.

REASON #3

This kind of relates to the previous point, but one other reason is that you haven’t made your brand story/mission congruent across your website and social media channels. A lot of the time, which is especially true for sustainable brands, one of the factors a customer considers is whether they can get behind your brand mission, and all the good you do for this planet. If you haven’t made that clear in most places that one can see, you’re missing out on a huge window to capture more conversions.

REASON #4

Make sure your best practices are all in check. Simple, but vital. For example, is your collection page navigation smooth and easy to use? Do you have a shipping and returns policy page visible on your site?

You’d be surprised but there are actually a portion of customers for which the first thing they do when they visit an ecom store is check the shipping and returns policy page.?

Another thing: are you abandoned cart email flows on point? Do you have follow up emails for customers who purchased? Are you incentivising these customers to return and keeping top-of-mind awareness?

REASON #5

You’re not capitalising on seasonality.?

Sometimes conversion rates for your store change simply because the time of the year is different. You may find that your conversion rates skyrocket in the time of Christmas because your products are well suited for gift purchases.?

SO, when these moments do occur, increase your ad budgets to bring even more traffic to your site and capitalise off these opportunities. Yes, CPMs would be higher, but the tradeoff is definitely worth it.?

FINAL POINTS

Another thing to keep in mind is that your conversion rates do depend a lot on context too.?

If you have a high AOV, your conversion rates will be smaller.

If you’re attracting a bunch of 15 year olds to your site, with negligible purchasing power, then your conversion rate will be low.?

People are 2X more likely to purchase on a desktop than on mobile.

And the list goes on…

NOW, time for a poorly executed segway (and where most of you are done reading).

If you’re not opposed to hopping on a 30 minute call with me, where we can help map out a CRO strategy for you for FREE, here is a link to book that call:

This is a no obligation, no strings attached call where you are GUARANTEED to leave with new insights about how to scale your brand.

The testimonials speak for themselves.?