4 Easy Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies to Increase Online E-Commerce Sales

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the art of tweaking your website to boost the number of leads and sales you receive. A higher conversion rate means your site is quickly converting more visitors into customers.

CRO can be a complex subject, but there’s no need to overcomplicate things. Still, there are a few simple strategies you can implement to improve the quality and quantity of your site’s traffic.

In this article, we provide 4 e-commerce conversion rate optimization strategies that can be implemented immediately to improve the conversion rates for your e-commerce business.

What is a good conversion rate for e-commerce?

Before we dive into the strategies, let’s talk about conversion rates for e-commerce businesses. One of the frequently asked questions regarding conversion rates is: “What should my conversion rate be?”. This is important because by determining what the current conversion rates are, and what the conversion rates should be, you can set a goal for your CRO efforts.

It will depend on your industry to determine what a good conversion rate for an e-commerce website will be. If we look at the average e-commerce conversion rates of all industries, it’s 1.82%. This means that out of a thousand website visitors, 18.2 visitors are paying customers. Depending on the industry you’re active in, this varies from 0.0% to 5.0%.

So if the conversion rate of your shop is currently below 2.0%, there is enough room to improve. By knowing your current conversion rate, it’s time to improve this rate.

 

1. Optimize your website for mobile users

In 2022, it sounds cliche to mention that the amount of mobile viewers visiting your webshop is growing. That’s why it makes sense to optimize your website for mobile users as much as possible. If you’re planning to redesign your website, it’s a good idea to think “mobile-first”, which means to design with mobile users in mind, then designing for other devices.

Improving the speed
It is important to optimize your website speed. If the visitor needs to wait too long, they will leave and unlikely will return. Make sure the website pages are as small as possible, by limiting the file sizes of images and the number of files that pages are referring to.

If it is not possible to reduce the number of images or videos on the website, organize your website HTML code in a way that the, “above the fold content” (content that can be seen when the page is loaded) is shown as fast as possible. If visitors see content, they will likely continue browsing the website, even though the complete page hasn’t been fully loaded yet.

Make the website easy to navigate
Because you have a much smaller screen to work with, it’s essential that you try to make it easy to navigate your webshop. Don’t make it difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for, which means that it also makes sense to drop specific parts of the desktop version of the website for mobile users. A good option is to add the link to your catalog in the main navigation menu.

 

2. The Product Page

The purpose of the product page is to inform your visitors about the product and convince them to click on the add to cart button.

Product descriptions
The product description should be as clear as possible and should contain all the specifics of the product. Don’t make people search for additional information on other websites or you’ll lose another potential customer.

Add social proof
One of the best ways to convince visitors to buy your product is product reviews from previous customers. Try to find a way to gather product-specific reviews and display these clearly on the product page.

Add in-stock-reminder form
If you’re working with stock management in your e-commerce store, allow people to leave their e-mail addresses when the product is out of stock. This way you can send the visitor a reminder when the product is back in stock again so that the potential buyer is not lost forever.

Improve product photography
Use good quality images of your product so that visitors can clearly see what they’re buying. If you have videos, include these too. If you want to take it a step further, allow the visitors to see your products in 3D, so they can see them from every angle and also the tiny details by zooming in. And if it makes sense, use Augmented Reality so customers can view your products in their setting. If you don’t know how to start with 3D and AR, we’re happy to help you get started.

 

3. The Checkout Process

The more clicks required to complete a purchase, the more customers will drop off during the process. Lowering the number of steps for adding the product to the cart, makes the purchase process shorter and will likely boost the conversion rate. It’s also essential to make the checkout process as short as possible, without any other unnecessary distractions.

Allow guest checkout
If it’s not essential that a client needs to create an account, offer the option to checkout as a guest instead of creating an account first. Sometimes people will leave the checkout process because they don’t want to create an account to make a purchase.

Offer upsells after checkout
Offering upsells is a great way to increase the average order value (AOV) of your customers (if you’re not doing this already, start doing this right now). Usually upsells are offered on the cart page or during the checkout process, but this might distract your buyers from actually checking out. A great way to offer upsells is when the customers have already paid for the initial items, but before they see your thank you page, so they can add the upsell items to their existing order.

 

4. Category Pages

If you have a website with many categories and products, it’s essential to make it easy for your visitors to navigate your catalog.

Use filters
Make good use of filters, so that visitors can only see the products they are interested in. The filters should be prominently displayed and only be shown if the filter is relevant for the category. For example, if you offer a color filter, make sure it applies to the products in this category.

Displaying products
Trending, top-rated, and best-selling products of your store should be shown on top of each category by default. For better scannability, it’s better to use a consistent style of images and the so-called product cards should have the same sizes. Try not to add more than 3 or 4 products to a row.

Sorting
Make sorting of the category pages available, so that customers can order the catalog by price, “best sellers”, “new items”, “most popular” or “most discounted”. This will improve the user experience of your webshop a lot.

Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization for e-commerce makes it possible to sell more to visitors you’re already attracting. This could mean that you don’t need to pay more for paid advertising platforms but increase your profits nonetheless. If these e-commerce conversion rate optimization tips are new to you, start implementing these right now and your conversion rates will likely increase.

If you’d like to know more about how 3D and Augmented Reality can increase conversion rates for your e-commerce business, head over to this page.

Which eCommerce Platform is the Best for Your Business?

Since Expivi’s a solution to many new eCommerce businesses, we often get asked what the best eCommerce platform would be for their business. There are many options to choose from, but we’ll have a look at the three of the top eCommerce platforms at the moment. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each one, so that you can decide which is the best CMS for eCommerce for your business.

As of February 2022, the most popular eCommerce platforms are: WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento (source: Built With).

WooCommerce

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free, open-source eCommerce platform that can be used to power any WordPress website for selling products, and is being used by over 3 million online stores, including some of the biggest names in retail.

Because WooCommerce is a plugin for the popular WordPress content management system, it can be used with all available free and paid WordPress themes and plugins, making it a budget friendly and cheapest eCommerce platform.

Pros and cons of using WooCommerce

Pros:

  • Relatively low cost eCommerce platform
    No need to pay a subscription fee. You only need a domain name and hosting package. If you’re tech savvy enough, you don’t even need to hire a developer.
  • Open source
    As WordPress is an open source CMS platform, you have total control of every aspect of the platform, including the source files to create special functionalities or make tweaks.
  • Easy development if you’re familiar with WordPress
  • Widely supported
    Because of the popularity of WordPress, there are a lot of available themes and plugins (both free and paid) to add new features and integration options to your store. For example Expivi has a native plugin that makes it possible to integrate a 3D and AR configurator with your WooCommerce website. Get in touch and we’ll give you a demo.

Cons:

  • Can be slow as you grow
    As your store grows with more products and more visitors, your website could be slowed down. It’s important to know how to optimize your website.
  • Extra plugins needed for extra features
    Although the base version of WooCommerce is shipped with the essential eCommerce functionalities, you might need quite a lot of additional plugins for extra functionalities and integration options.
  • Time consuming to develop
    If you’re not tech savvy enough or have no experience with WordPress, there’s a steep learning curve to have your WooCommerce store up and running.

Why you should choose WooCommerce

If you want the best low budget eCommerce platform and total control of your webshop (in terms of coding and design), then WooCommerce is a very good option for you. Thanks to the many plugins and themes, you can build your own webshop that’s catered to your needs and that’s why it’s considered as the best eCommerce platform for small businesses and startups.

Shopify

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a Canadian eCommerce company that provides a powerful eCommerce platform that allows small and medium-sized businesses owners to set up their own online stores.

Shopify is more than just an eCommerce platform; it’s also an excellent CRM software with features like automated marketing campaigns and sales reporting. Shopify integrates with many third-party apps, too, so you can easily manage your inventory, taxes, shipping rates and more.

It offers a variety of themes and designs to choose from, so you can find a design that matches your brand and Shopify is considered as one of the best and easiest eCommerce platforms there are.

Pros and cons of using Shopify

Pros:

  • Relatively easy to set up your own store even if you’re not tech savvy.
  • Lots of supported themes and apps to choose from to add extra functionalities and integration possibilities.
  • Cloud based software as a service platform, so you don’t need to worry about hosting and installing your store on a server first.
  • The base setup of your Shopify store comes with anything you need to run a successful eCommerce store.

Cons:

  • Closed platform, so there’s hardly any custom coding possible to optimize your store.
  • The more apps you install on your Shopify store, the bigger the risk of your shop being slowed.
  • Subscription based: you pay a monthly or annual subscription fee and in addition you need to pay payment processing fees.
  • Special functionalities and features you want to add to your shop can usually only be achieved by installing paid apps.

Why you should choose Shopify

If you’re not on a very tight budget and don’t want the hassle of installing, setting up and maintaining your eCommerce store, then Shopify is the go to platform for you. Thanks to its popularity, there are quite a lot of supported themes and apps for special functionalities and features to choose from to build a successful webshop. Keep in mind that you might be confronted with paying a considerable amount of fees for payment processing and paid apps.

Magento

What is Magento

Magento Community Edition is the free, open-source version of Magento. It provides a fully-featured eCommerce platform for small to medium businesses with limited (but not small) budgets or resources.

Because Magento was built as an eCommerce platform, a fresh installation of Magento comes with a lot of features and functionalities for your webshop that you might never use. Thanks to its popularity, there are lots of themes and extensions to add special functionalities and integration options.

Pros and cons of using Magento

Pros:

  • Base version of Magento is shipped with functionalities and features that other eCommerce platforms only offer by installing additional plugins or apps.
  • Magento is also shipped with a lot of B2B functionalities, making it one of the best B2B eCommerce platforms available.
  • Magento is an open-source platform, so you have full control of every aspect of the website to optimize your website.
  • Because of how the infrastructure of Magento was designed, it can handle stores with tens of thousands of products, making it a very scalable platform. This is the reason why bigger eCommerce stores are built on Magento.

Cons:

  • Requires a resourceful server and in terms of page speed, it’s not the fastest platform.
  • Custom coding might require very knowledgeable and skilled developers. Also adding special paid extensions could be costly, making Magento not a very good option if you’re on a very tight budget.
  • Because of the many features available, there’s a steep learning curve to set up, use and maintain a Magento store.
  • Community support might be lacking in comparison to other platforms, as Magento requires highly skilled developers who are probably needed elsewhere.

Why you should choose Magento

If you’re looking for a robust eCommerce platform that is scalable and you’re not on a tight budget, then Magento is an option you might want to consider. Because of its scalability, it’s used by a lot of enterprise level companies with the best and most popular eCommerce sites.

Although Magento is already shipped with a lot of advanced features and functionalities, adding extra functionalities with paid apps or custom development can be very costly.

eCommerce platform with a man in an orange shirt looking at a 3D sofa

Conclusion

Choosing the best CMS for eCommerce for your business could be very overwhelming at first. In this top eCommerce platform comparison we gave you a quick overview of the 3 best eCommerce platforms for your consideration and hopefully it will give you a couple of discussion points with your web development agency.

If you’re already using one of the eCommerce platforms mentioned in this post (or any other platform), we’d love to discuss with you how Expivi can enrich your eCommerce webshop with 3D and Augmented Reality. Since we have native plugins for these platforms, integrating Expivi in your webshop is very easy.

Contact our team and we’re happy to show you how.

Did you like this article? Then read all about why product customization is great for online businesses.