In today’s episode I want to talk about how you can improve your website to improve your conversion rate. I’ll be focusing on e-commerce stores here, but if you’re a coach or have a service based business, this could apply to you too.
When we talk about conversion rates, I’m talking about the percentage of people that purchase something from your store vs the amount of people visiting your website.
If 100 people visit your website and 3 people purchase something, that means you have a conversion rate of 3%. Which in ecommerce terms is a pretty good conversion rate. The average conversion for an ecommerce site is between 2-4%.
When I work with ecommerce stores I often ask them what their conversion rate is and if it’s below 2% my advice is to focus on improving your conversion rate before running Facebook ads.
So how do you improve your conversion rate?
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the new school of marketing podcast. Right now it’s mid February and I’m about to give birth to baby #2. I have the pregnancy waddle down pat and things are definitely slowing down.
In today’s episode, I want to talk about how you can improve your website to improve your conversion rate. I’ll be focusing on e-commerce stores here, but if you’re a coach or have a service based business, this could apply to you too.
When we talk about conversion rates, I’m talking about the percentage of people that purchase something from your store vs the amount of people visiting your website.
If 100 people visit your website and 3 people purchase something, that means you have a conversion rate of 3%. Which in ecommerce terms is a pretty good conversion rate. The average conversion for an ecommerce site is between 2-4%.
When I work with ecommerce stores I often ask them what their conversion rate is and if it’s below 2% my advice is to focus on improving your conversion rate before running Facebook ads.
So how do you improve your conversion rate?
There are a number of ways, but before you try any of them it’s really important to know your conversion each month. It’s also important to look at your overall numbers and know how much traffic your website gets. Sometimes businesses don’t have a conversion issue, they have a traffic issue. So know your numbers.
To improve your conversion rate, here are some things you can do.
- Improve your website speed
Your website needs to load FAST. If people have to wait more than two seconds for it to load, you might lose them. Especially on mobile.
People shop online every day. They want instant gratification and not wait forever for something to load.
You can test your site speed on Google PageSpeed or Pingdom. Once you know where you stand you can take the next steps.
Sometimes your web host will offer faster plans, so check if this is the case. The faster the plan, the better.
You also want to check all the images on your website, because most of the time it’s the images that make your website slow.
Images are super important for an ecommerce store, so you don’t want to delete them or compromise their quality, but sometimes you can compress them and your page speed will improve.
Optimise your images with something like tinyPGN to compress your images and increase your site speed at the same time.
2. Invest in SEO
For an ecommerce website it’s important to be found when someone searches for your specific product.
Keyword optimization can help drive traffic to your website and help you rank higher in the search results.
I’m no SEO specialist but I’ll put some resources in the show notes for you to take the next step.
3. Make sure your website is responsive
A responsive website means that no matter what device you’re using, your website will automatically fit the screen.
Your user shouldn’t have to resize, scroll or pan too much because everything is made for the screen size they’re looking at.
Make sure that your website works well and fast on a mobile device. So many shop on their mobile devices these days, make sure that it’s easy for your audience to shop in your store.
4. Copy is everything
For an ecommerce website copy is your best friend.
People can’t use all of their senses when shopping online. They can’t smell, touch or see your product in 3D so your copy needs to address all of their senses. It needs to inform them, drive action and also foster relationships.
Writing with your target customer in mind will help you create strong copy. If you’re not sure who your ideal customer is, sit down and complete an ideal client exercise.
Strong copy is what will really help you make sales.
5. A visual experience
Copy is important, but so are visuals. Your images and videos need to take your customer on a journey. It needs to clearly show your product from a number of angles and ideally also in-use.
If you create jewelry, a lot of people want to know what it looks like when a person is wearing it.
Make sure your images are high quality and your videos are on-point.
Creating videos will really help your customers see the product, especially if you create videos of your products in use. Focus on storytelling and evoke a desire for your ideal customer to purchase the product.
6. Social proof
People often want to know what others thought of the product, so if possible collect as many testimonials as you can.
People want to buy products that others are using and enjoying. Adding testimonials to your website will add trust for your buyers.
The purpose of social proof is to show that your products are being purchased, used and enjoyed.
7. Make checking out easy
An easy checkout is a must. People don’t want to go through 10 steps before they have finally bought your product. Offer a guest checkout option because it’s so much easier for people on smartphones rather than registering. If your abandon cart rate is high and you don’t have a guest checkout option, try that first.
Other than that, make it easy. Don’t ask for more information than you need to send the product. Also, offer a number of payment options so people can choose what suits them best.
8. Follow up abandon carts
Pay attention to your abandon cart rates. There are benchmarks for certain industries and everyone has a pretty high abandon cart rate but try to figure out why people aren’t completing their sales.
Look at your site design, shipping information, distractions on your pages. Anything that could make people leave.
Abandon carts are a massive opportunity to increase conversions.
9. Offer free shipping
People want free shipping. It’s a fact.
I know sometimes it’s really hard to actually give free shipping but it will help your conversions.
If it’s tricky, think about the price point of your product and what it would need to be to make shipping free. Is that an option?
That’s why you’ll see a lot of sites listing options like ‘free shipping over $100’.
If you really have to charge for shipping, make sure you tell people upfront. Don’t surprise them at the checkout because that’s how you get a high abandonment rate.
10. Always include a clear CTA
A CTA is a call to action. It means that you clearly tell your shoppers what to do.
For example, on your homepage you can have a CTA that says ‘shop womens’ and ‘shop mens’. On your product pages you’ll be focusing on CTA’s that make people take the next step, such as ‘add to cart’.
Once your customer adds a product to their cart, your main goal is to get them to checkout without confusing or distracting them.
Your checkout CTA should be prioritized over the ‘continue shopping’ CTA.
Your CTA buttons should be very visible but not obnoxious. Think about colours and colour psychology, sometimes the colour of your button can matter.
To wrap up, there are so many things you can do to improve your conversion rate that you might not know where to begin.
That’s totally ok. I understand.
You don’t have to do them all at once.
Look at your data, your numbers and pick one to start with.
Start with something like improving your site speed before you move on to revamping your copy.
Your ecommerce store (and your bank account) will really benefit from improved conversion rates. Start by taking action one step at a time.
If you want support with your ecommerce store, please connect with me on a free gameplan call to see how I can help you.
You’ll find the details in the show notes.
