Every e-commerce business wants more sales and revenue. But simply driving more traffic to your online store is just one piece of the puzzle. You also need to focus on successfully converting your site visitors into paying customers. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes into play.
CRO involves strategically fine-tuning different elements of your e-commerce site to increase conversion rates and generate more sales from your existing traffic. The key is experimenting with and optimizing landing pages, product listings, checkout flows, and more to minimize friction in the buying journey. With the right tactics from our digital marketing services, minor changes can add up to major revenue growth.
Let’s explore some of the most impactful CRO techniques for e-commerce businesses.
Tracking Key E-Commerce Conversion Metrics
Before testing CRO ideas, it’s critical to understand your current conversion and sales funnel benchmarks. These key e-commerce metrics allow you to quantify your baseline performance and optimize the proper areas of your site. Metrics to continually monitor include:
- Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors who land on a page and then immediately leave without any other site interaction. A high bounce rate suggests your landing pages aren’t resonating with visitors.
- Add to Cart Rate – The percentage of site sessions where a product gets added to the shopping cart. This measures initial product interest and consideration.
- Checkout Completion Rate – The percentage of checkout processes that make it to the final payment submission stage. High abandonment here reveals issues at checkout.
- Sales Conversion Rate – The percentage of site sessions that result in a sale being generated. This accurately measures your site’s ability to turn visitors into customers.
Keeping tabs on these critical conversion funnels over time is crucial for isolating areas for optimization and quantifying CRO impact.
Crafting High-Converting Landing Pages
Your product and category landing pages are often the first touchpoint for engaging potential customers. But crafting pages that quickly grab attention while communicating value can be tricky. Use these landing page best practices to boost conversions:
Lead with a Strong Value Proposition Your headline and supporting visuals/copy should clearly communicate primary benefits and quickly answer “why should I buy from you?” in the first few seconds.
Prominent Call-to-Action Buttons
Calls-to-action for adding to cart or visiting key site pages should use high-contrast colors and be prominently positioned on the page.
Quality Product Images
Showcase your products in-use and style them attractively. Allow zooming in on details. But limit image file sizes for fast loading.
Reduce Distractions
Avoid excessive ads, pop-ups, and links. Declutter page layouts to keep the focus solely on your products and messaging.
Optimize Page Speed
Faster loading pages can dramatically cut bounce rates. Compress images, minify code, and optimize web host configuration.
Testing even small tweaks to these elements over time using A/B testing tools can yield surprising conversion gains.
Improving On-Site Search Relevance
It’s not uncommon for over 20% of e-commerce site traffic to use on-site search to find products. So poor search experiences directly translate to lost sales. Use these tips to boost search-driven conversions:
Make Search Visible
The search bar should be easily scannable and prominently placed on all pages inside the site header or menu.
Suggest Relevant Queries
Display dynamic suggested queries to provide search guidance and show product demand signals for site visitors.
Prioritize Relevant Results
Carefully tune your search algorithm and metadata to prominently display the most relevant products based on search input.
Allow Refining and Filtering
Add facets and filters like price range, ratings, brands, and other refiners to let visitors drill down to pinpoint product matches.
Simply helping site visitors find the right products quickly and easily using robust on-site search can notably move the revenue needle over time.
Driving More Product Page Conversions
Product listing pages have the highest conversion potential within e-commerce sites. Be sure you implement these best practices:
Spotlight Product Visuals and Details
Zoomed high-res imagery along with titles, pricing, features, and descriptions should be front and center on each product page.
Make Pricing and Offers
Clear Prominently display pricing, discounted pricing, sales badges, and limited-time promotions near the top to indicate deal value.
Include Sizing and Variant Options
Having to navigate to secondary pages to select configurations and sizing is a conversion killer. Keep it on the same page.
Streamlined Add to Cart Experience
The buttons and flows for adding products to the shopping cart should be highly visible and require minimal effort/clicks.
Continually optimizing product listing pages as your catalog evolves ensures each product puts its best foot forward on its path to conversion.
Leveraging Exit-Intent Popups
Exit-intent popups display a targeted offer or incentive when a visitor appears ready to leave your site without making a purchase. The idea is to capture their attention for one final conversion attempt.
For example, you can offer a discount code or free shipping through an exit popup placed strategically right before they exit the page. The messaging should be concise and relevant to products they were browsing.
When combined with remarketing ads to drive visitors back to purchase later, exit-intent popups can notably reduce false early exits and improve cart add and sales rates.
The Power of Testing and Optimization
It’s easy to theorize and make guesses as to what CRO approaches might work best. But without structured testing, you won’t know for certain the revenue impact of changes.
Tools like Google Optimize allow simple A/B testing by creating two versions of a site element and evaluating performance over time. For instance, you could test the impact of 30% off messaging compared to free shipping messaging on category pages. Or you could experiment with moving your checkout button higher up on product pages.
The key is continually coming up with ideas for improvements, running structured tests, and doubling down on changes that yield positive results. Even conversion lift as small as 2-5% when rolled out site wide can yield impressive sales and revenue gains at scale.
Start Unlocking More E-Commerce Sales Potential
Implementing strategic conversion rate optimization is crucial for every ecommerce store. Using the tips outlined here related to site search, landing pages, product listings, and testing forms a great starting point for incrementally improving conversions.
Be sure to closely monitor key conversion and sales metrics over time as you roll out changes. And keep brainstorming and testing new ideas. With the right focus on CRO, your existing site traffic will convert considerably better, reaching more of its revenue potential.
