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The online market today is highly competitive and crowded. Competing in such an environment is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for new ecommerce businesses. However, to remain both competitive and relevant to customers, ecommerce businesses opt for various tactics that will increase their conversion rates.
But what exactly does conversion mean? Simply put, the conversion is any desired action your leads will take. That can include actions, such as subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading an eBook and so on. In the case of ecommerce, ideal conversions are sales. In other words, leads convert to customers by making a purchase at your online store.
Increasing conversions can be a major challenge, especially since consumers, nowadays, have specific needs, expectations and preferences. What’s more, there’s also the issue of numerous competitors fighting over the same customers all the time. That’s why you need a solid strategy and efficient tactics that will drive customers your way. With that in mind, here are a few tactics that will help increase your ecommerce conversion rate.
Improve browsing experience
Any website visitor that lands on your store will want to explore further and get familiarized with your products before they decide to make a purchase. To encourage visitors to convert, you have to provide them with a seamless browsing experience.
Otherwise, they will simply bounce away and find another store. In other words, you’ll have to work on your website to ensure that it performs exceptionally well. Here are a few examples of what you can do to make the stay of potential customers as enjoyable and seamless as possible so that there are greater chances of them converting:
- Ensure that your website speed is up to the task and that your pages are loading fast
- Organize and categorize your products
- Make your store easy to navigate
- Implement a responsive design to ensure mobile-friendliness
- Include a lot of informative and educational content
Work on your marketing efforts
Conversions don’t solely depend on what happens on your website. As a matter of fact, nurturing leads throughout their entire buyer’s journey is what encourages them to convert in the end. That’s why it’s essential to improve your marketing efficiency and guide potential customers down your sales funnel.
For example, you can leverage a conversion rate optimization tool to better understand customer behavior so that you can enhance their experience and encourage them to convert.
You must also be wherever your customers are so that you can target them with the right messages and promotions. Here are a few ways you can improve your marketing efforts:
- Use an email campaign to nurture leads
- Establish a strong social media presence
- Engage in content marketing to help educate and inform your audience
- Leverage SEO to boost visibility and exposure of your online store
- Develop a brand to make your store unique and valuable to customers
Optimize your checkout process
Regardless of how effective your marketing efforts are or what an amazing experience you provide to customers in your store, a lot of conversions fail at the very end. In other words, consumers mostly give up on their purchase at the checkout process, which is why shopping cart abandonment worldwide is 69.57%.
What it means is that there’s usually something wrong at the checkout process that drives consumers away. All your other efforts are in vain if consumers won’t convert in the end. Therefore, it’s vital for your ecommerce store to properly optimize the checkout process so that consumers won’t abandon their carts. Here are a few things you should do:
- Send a follow-up email to consumers who abandon their cart to determine the issue
- Send a reminder email once you’ve resolved the issue. Many customers are willing to complete the purchase if their problem has been resolved
- Implement proper security measures at the checkout process
- Offer multiple payment options
- Have clear shipping and delivery policies available to consumers to avoid misunderstandings and inconveniences
- Offer incentives and discounts that expire soon to encourage customers to complete the purchase
- Offer convenience, such as free shipping, same or next day delivery etc.
Improve customer experience
Customer experience plays a vital role in ecommerce conversions. As mentioned before, if consumers don’t find what they need or if you’re unable to meet their expectations, they’ll simply move on to the next store and never come back.
Customer experience spans from the beginning to the end of a buyer’s journey, which means you must ensure customer satisfaction on each step of the way. For example, customer service and support are vital components of customer experience and consumers are quite focused on these factors when determining whether or not to do business with you.
By improving both customer service and support, you will not just encourage consumers to convert but also ensure their loyalty. Here are a few examples of how you can boost customer experience so that you can boost conversions as well:
- Provide customer service over multiple channels, such as phone, SMS, email, social media etc.
- Choose the best business VoIP phone system so your customers can easily reach you.
- Be available to consumers 24/7
- Implement a live chat feature on your website
- Include self-service features as well
- Engage with your audience on social media channels
- Share user-generated content and ask customers for feedback
- Organize contests, giveaways and incentivize customers
- Implement a loyalty program
For ecommerce businesses, conversion rates are essential for business success. That’s why you must have a solid strategy that will help you understand your audience and help you find the way to serve them the best way possible so that they’ll be happy to convert.
Image Credits – Freepik