7 Strategies To Improve eCommerce Conversion Rate

According to the Baymard Institute, 68.63% of online customers abandon their online shopping carts.

That’s just one area an eCommerce entrepreneur must look to improve their conversions. This is what we call the low-hanging fruits. At Arkenea, while auditing our clients’ eCommerce websites, we find many areas that can be potential low-hanging fruits that can be leveraged to increase conversions – such as adding a fast predictive search.

There are areas that are specific to your website that require an expert eye to suggest improvements and then there are those areas that apply to most eCommerce websites.

We asked some of the eCommerce industry experts about how can one improve the conversion rate for their web store, and these are their nuggets of wisdom:

#1 Nail your unique selling proposition

Andrew Youderian, founder at eCommerceFuel

I think the best thing you can do to increase your conversion is to really nail your unique selling proposition which takes time, so probably isn’t a hack.  🙂  But in terms of something you can quickly implement that will provide a big payoff I’d have to recommend screencast recording.  

Install a tool like Hotjar that can capture user sessions and spend some time watching how people interact with your site, especially on some of your most important pages like the cart and the checkout.  You’ll likely learn that customer don’t act like you think, and it’s a great way to uncover bugs and/or changes to your UX that can make the experience easier for your customers.

#2 Make your users feel more involved

William Tjernlund, co-founder at Goat Consulting

The best thing you can do is add a checkout with Amazon button. People feel a lot more comfortable buying online when Amazon is involved. It makes sure you breeze past the pain points of filling out all your information, because customers can check out through their normal Amazon account.

#3 Feature your speciality

Shakil Prasla, partner at SZ Ventures

When I acquire an online company, my top hack to improve conversions is to simply show above the fold why you should buy from me. This includes the top 3 bullets on why my company is better than my competitors, showing real customer reviews, a call to action button and a big phone number.

#4 Check what customer queries convert into sales

Greg Mercer, founder at Jungle Scout

I like to increase my chances of having highly qualified traffic arrive on my page. That certainly adds a boost to conversion rate. One great way to do that is to look in the Search Term reports (for Amazon, you have to be running Pay Per Click campaigns to do this) and see which customer queries actually convert into sales. Then I add those keywords to my listing if I have not already included them. This ensures that I am addressing actual customer needs, and also improves the likelihood that I am ranking organically for keywords that actually convert!

#5 Observe the customer behaviour

Jason Broughton, VP of user experience at LexisNexis

I like to dig into the behavioral metrics, identify an opportunity, then quickly put together an A/B test to prove the hypothesis. It works or you learn every time!

#6 Engage with the customers who have shown interest

Susan Su, head of marketing at Reforge

A lot of site visitors will drop off simply because of the fragmented attention economy and the naturally multi-step conversion process.    

To improve your eCommerce site’s conversion rate, try sending cart abandonment notifications to activate visitors who’ve already demonstrated interest but haven’t followed through. Emails with a simple reminder, or time-limited deal, or in-browser push notifications, can be an effective way to reengage warm leads to complete the transaction.

#7 Track customer behavior through live chats

Eric Siu, CEO at Single Grain

Live chats have been really effective. Especially live chat that tailors the messaging towards how people are behaving on a site: which page they’re on, time on site, # of pages visited, etc. I recommend using a tool like Intercom.io.