Posted by Running an eCommerce business means fighting tooth and nail to dive out of the vast sea of competition because eCommerce platforms keep popping up.
The competition is getting fiercer every day, so how can you ever stand out and make your business thrive?
The key lies in your landing pages. Well-designed landing pages can supercharge your conversions and sales, so that’s where you should focus most of your attention.
But even the best landing pages aren’t enough to convert visitors if other website elements aren’t optimized. You could still face high shopping cart abandonment rates unless you play your cards right.
Best ways to optimize your eCommerce site and generate skyrocketing conversions.
1. Influence Purchase Intent with Clear CTAs
CTAs (calls to action) are paramount for every eCommerce site, as they drive people to take action. They can make or break your attempts at generating more leads and conversions.
Display them prominently on the site and make sure they’re clear, concise, relevant, and compelling. Create a unique value proposition, include strong action verbs like “get,” “claim,” “grab,” “buy,” “shop,” and “order,” and create a sense of urgency with words like “today” and “now.”
Be sure to do some A/B testing to compare and analyze different CTAs and discover the most converting copies, colors, and button placements.
According to HubSpot, optimizing a CTA can help you boost lead generation by a whopping 99%!
2. Remove Friction with a One-Page Guest Checkout
There’s hardly anything more frustrating during the checkout than being redirected to a “Create an account” page. It’s what makes lots of people abandon their online shopping carts.
According to a report by Baymard Institute, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.80%.
The report shows that the main reasons why most people (49%) abandon their cart during checkout are high extra costs, such as shipping. Requiring them to create an account will make 18% of them leave without purchasing.
That’s why you shouldn’t make it a requirement but rather design a one-page guest checkout for a frictionless shopping experience. Make sure everything is straightforward and placing an order doesn’t take longer than a few minutes.
Mind you, your registered users should enjoy a one-page checkout as well, but it’s significantly more critical for converting first-time visitors.
3. Safeguard Customer Data with an SSL Certificate
Adding an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate to your eCommerce site will help you protect sensitive customer data, such as credit card details. It will help you authenticate your site’s identity, enable encrypted connections, and build trust with consumers.
Having an SSL Certificate means having an HTTPS site, which is the secure version of HTTP. It means being PCI-compliant as well, which is a requirement for accepting credit card payments.
4. Implement Payment Security Measures
Payment security measures are a must for all eCommerce platforms, as they can help prevent and mitigate cybersecurity risks.
Apart from an SSL Certificate, you should use a secure, PCI-compliant payment gateway with end-to-end encryption. Keep your website up-to-date, back it up regularly, run security and vulnerability tests, and use tokenization to store customer data securely.
Don’t forget to enable two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized access to registered users’ accounts and your merchant account.
5. Prompt Visitors to Take Action with Product Reviews
According to Vendasta, 88% of consumers rely on reviews when making a purchasing decision. After reading positive reviews, 48% of consumers will visit a company’s website.
That’s why it’s vital to provide social proof on your website. Product reviews are some of the best types of social proof in eCommerce.
Of course, there are social media endorsements, trust seals, real-time activity pop-ups, user-generated content, and other tried-and-tested strategies to increase sales. They all work like a charm, but product reviews drive most sales as long as they’re authentic.
Encourage your buyers to leave honest reviews of your products on trusted third-party review sites, such as Trustpilot, Yelp, and Google Customer Reviews.
6. Use High-Quality and Detailed Product Images
Product images are the most critical elements on eCommerce platforms. They’re among the first things your visitors see when they start browsing your online store, so they should make excellent first impressions.
Unless they showcase your products in the best possible light and help people visualize using them, many visitors may start looking elsewhere.
Use high-resolution images that showcase all the product features clearly and accurately. Make use of different angles to capture the most intricate details and let consumers know what to expect. Enable them to zoom in and out to inspect the details and determine if the products meet their expectations.
7. Keep the Conversation Going with Live Chat Support
Offering exceptional customer support will help you build trust, inspire loyalty, and forge strong customer relationships.
Integrating live chat into your site is one of the best ways to increase conversions and sales and reduce your cart abandonment rates.
According to Acquire, 57% of consumers won’t complete an online purchase if they can’t find quick answers to their questions. What’s more, 44% of consumers agree that chatting with a live agent when shopping online is one of the most important features of an eCommerce site.
Live chat is great for proactive customer support, too, and for seizing upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Now, your live chat should be available 24/7, which is possible with remote work, as you can hire customer support agents in different time zones. You can implement a chatbot as well, but live agents should still be there for complex issues or when consumers request talking with them.
To enhance your remote communication, consider setting up a call center for eCommerce. And if that solution isn’t available 24/7, utilize an IVR system to provide support during the off-hours.
8. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
There’s no doubt that mobile-friendly eCommerce platforms generate more conversions and sales than their non-optimized counterparts. After all, mobile accounts for 68% of all eCommerce traffic, according to SaleCycle.
If you still haven’t optimized your eCommerce site for mobile devices, you could lose many growth opportunities.
There are many ways to make your website mobile-friendly. The key steps include using a responsive theme, media queries, standard fonts, simple forms, and mobile-friendly popups. You should also optimize your image files, JavaScript, and CSS.
9. Craft Persuasive Product Descriptions
Product descriptions might be as crucial as your product images. Without persuasive descriptions that tell a story, you could miss out on many conversions, even if you upload the best product images.
Detailed product descriptions will help potential customers learn all about your products, including how to use them to make the most of their features.
When we say “detailed,” we don’t mean big blocks of text that may overwhelm your shoppers. A good product description should be concise yet informative and compel people to add the product to their cart.
10. Design a User-Friendly UI
A user-friendly UI (user interface) is an essential element of your site, as it enables seamless, intuitive navigation that leads to an enjoyable shopping experience.
Remove any clutter from your site and create an intuitive layout with a well-positioned search bar, eye-catching CTAs, a sidebar with product categories and filters, and all the other handy functions that will simplify every customer’s journey.
Ready to Supercharge Your eCommerce Conversions?
Implement the tried-and-true strategies above to start attracting more visitors, generating qualified leads and conversions, reducing cart abandonment rates, and turning a profit.
But don’t stop there because there are plenty more website optimization strategies for boosting eCommerce sales and conversions.
Some of the most effective strategies to increase sales include email marketing. It can come in particularly handy when it comes to following up with website visitors after cart abandonment.
Did you know that recovery cart emails have a 45% open rate, driving 11% of consumers to make a purchase?
So, don’t miss out on an opportunity to bring back those visitors before your competitors snatch them.
Check out these brilliant abandoned cart email marketing examples that you can use to win back customers. They’ll help you develop an effective email marketing campaign for skyrocketing conversions.
If you think of anything we may have missed in this guide, or have any burning questions about optimizing your eCommerce site, feel free to leave a comment below, and we’ll get back to you quickly.