10 CRO Tips to Improve your eCommerce Conversion Rates

It’s great to have a ton of new visitors to your website or online store, but if none of them end up making a purchase, can you really call your eCommerce strategy a success? The goal is to convert those visitors to actual customers, and the best way to do it is with conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Conversion rate is the proportion of people who answer a call to action. That might mean making a purchase, but it can also mean signing up for an email list, leaving a review, or booking a consultation. A typical rule of thumb is that 2 to 5% is a good conversion rate.

If your online store’s conversion rate sucks, try implementing these CRO tips. To get help improving your eCommerce conversion rates, consider working with a CRO agency to gain access to the latest technology and professional insight.

1. Conduct an eCommerce CRO Audit

A CRO audit is a data-driven assessment of your website aimed at pinpointing weak points in the conversion process. Start by defining your goals for your website and choosing which pages to audit. For an eCommerce site, this might be your product pages, landing pages, and/or checkout pages.

Then you’ll want to assess the page from the point of view of your target customer and start analyzing. Implement tools like Google Analytics and heatmaps, then use that data to evaluate the design of your web pages, identify points of friction, and start creating an optimization plan.

2. Make Sure Your Store Loading Times are Consistently Fast

The quickest way to lose a customer is with slow loading times. Over 40% of customers leave a site if it takes just 3 seconds to load. The loading speeds for the mobile version of your website are just as important as the desktop version.

Google provides the PageSpeed Insight tool to help you understand your website’s loading times. Generally, you want a score of 85 or higher. If you’ve failed this test, it’s time to make changes to your hosting plan.

3. Make a Habit of A/B Testing

A/B testing is a way of experimenting with design changes. It involves showing different segments of your website to a random selection of users. A/B testing removes the guesswork of improving your website’s design, giving you clear insight into which design works and which ones don’t.

A/B testing is not a one-time affair and should be conducted regularly to get the most out of your website’s design.

4. Don’t Cut Corners on Product Images and Description

Since your customers are looking at your products online, you need to give them the most accurate view with high-quality photos and descriptions. Include multiple angles and high-resolution pictures that make your product look appealing. 

Your product descriptions are nearly as important as your images. This is where you can sell your product, provide valuable information, and include SEO strategies to increase organic traffic and search engine rankings when people search for similar products. 

5. Take Advantage of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing has some of the highest returns on investment for a reason. It is a great way to capture customers’ attention and inform them of updates to your store. There are a handful of email marketing campaigns that can significantly improve your store’s conversions rates, like: 

• Welcome emails 
• Retargeting emails
• Promotional emails 
• Abandoned cart emails

6. Make the Checkout Process streamlined and Secure

Approximately 70% of online shopping carts are left abandoned. The easier you can make it for customers to checkout, pay, and receive your product, the less likely they will abandon their cart. 

A large part of this process is making sure your payment system has security signals so customers can trust your payment portals. 18% of carts are abandoned because customers didn’t trust the website with their credit card information. Security signals like a “safe checkout” badge can go a long way to building trust.

7. Create Urgency

Customers are more likely to make a purchase if they think they only have a limited time to do so. It creates a sense of loss and taps into consumer psychology. Adding things like limited-time promotions or limited-stock items can fuel the desire to pull the trigger on a purchase. 

8. Keep Your Inventory Up-To-Date

Of course, you won’t be able to keep your inventory fully available at all times. But it can be a frustrating experience for customers when they go to check out only to find out the product is out of stock. You can take steps to help this by:

• Only including in-stock items
• Clearly indicating the stock of listed products
• Providing an estimate for when items will be restocked
• Providing a pre-order option

9. Make Your Products Easy to Find

Your customers may or may not know what they are looking for on your site. You need to make it as easy as possible for customers to navigate your product categories and give them an easy option to search for items of interest. 

• Make category labels obvious, clear, and simple
• Make sure your web design is intuitive and easy to browse
• Keep a search option and test it to make sure keywords provide relevant results

10. Create an Efficient Omnichannel Experience

In the modern age, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, you should supplement the shopping experience by providing an efficient omnichannel option. A good omnichannel experience is about more than just having the option to place an order on your phone and pick it up in person. It’s about integrating all of your platforms into a consistent and cohesive customer experience. 

Get in Touch With Our CRO Experts 

If all of this sounds like a lot, Consultus Digital can help. Our CRO experts will work with you to create a streamlined click-to-sale process that produces results.

We can help you develop an effective digital marketing strategy to increase traffic to your store, then help you turn more of that traffic into sales by implementing all of the concepts in this article and more. 
Book a free consultation with Consultus to start optimizing your online store.