If you have an ecommerce website, you could be missing out on sales if you’re not taking important steps to improve your optimisation and boost your conversion rate. Optimising your ecommerce website is a great way to increase sales, improve the buyer’s journey and streamline the sales funnel.
Read our 9 tips to start developing your ecommerce website for a greater conversion rate.
Assess your existing sales funnel
Before you change anything, it’s important that you understand the current status of your sales funnel. Consider the buyer’s journey from where they land on your website, right through to where they complete the purchase.
Where are you losing custom?
Once you’ve mapped out your sales funnel, you’ll want to look for where visitors are ‘dropping out’. This is the point where they lose interest and leave the site or abandon their purchase. It’s not unusual for shoppers to fail to complete their purchase as research from Baymard Institute highlights that 67.4% of online shopping carts are abandoned. However, visitors can drop off at any point in the journey, not just at the payment stage. Pinpoint the key sticking points in the funnel that are disengaging potential customers, such as your landing page, product description page, online basket, account creation or adding payment details.
Once you have identified the areas where visitors are leaving your ecommerce site, you can start taking action to optimise your website and encourage them to complete their buying journey.
Why are you losing custom?
You’ve identified where your customers are leaving your website but are there any obvious reasons as to why? For example, if customers are leaving on the landing page, is it because your call to action is hidden away? Alternatively, if customers are abandoning their basket further down the sales funnel there could be a number of reasons. According to research by Statistia, this could be unexpected costs (56%), the website navigation is too complicated (25%) or the process takes too long (21%). Try and identify if there’s any obvious steps along the sales funnel that could be deterring your potential customers from converting as this will help you to focus your optimisation efforts.
Now it’s time to start optimising your site
Here are some of our top tips to increase conversion:
Fix any glitches, errors or loading issues
Go through the customer journey and check that your pages are loading properly. Does your website work on different browsers, is it loading completely and does it function as it should? If your load times are slow, pages are broken or your website frequently crashes, then this will immediately put potential customers off. Your website should be user-friendly, easy to navigate and visually appealing.
Is your site mobile friendly?
If your site is not responsive then the user experience can be severely compromised. Your website should fit to whichever screen it’s viewed on and work just as effectively across these screens. As mobile has become a prominent platform for online shoppers, it’s vital that your site is optimised for mobile as well as desktop.
Are you really selling your products and services?
Review your product/service listings to consider whether you’re really showing them off to their full potential. Are the photos well lit, visually appealing and helpful to the visitor? Are you supplying a full, accurate and detailed description of what you’re selling? Are you omitting key information that could drive a purchase such as dimensions, materials or other important features? These are all things that could deter customers from completing the full journey.
Is your security sound?
It’s important that your visitors trust the security, reliability and accuracy of your website. If a visitor doesn’t trust your site to handle their details with care then they are likely to click away and not return. Ensure your customers know they’re on a secure connection, any details about security certifications and how you’re protecting their data.
Present information clearly
As visitors move through the sales funnel, are you offering clear details about their purchase? This should include: delivery costs, delivery options, estimated delivery times, any additional costs and the returns policy. These different elements of the overall purchase should be easy to locate and clearly stated as customers move through the journey. Be upfront as hiding this information or only including it at the last moment could lead customers to click away or become irritated by the lack of transparency.
Offer a quick and easy sign up process
Consider whether you can offer visitors the option to checkout as a guest or whether they need to set up an account. The guest option will allow busy shoppers to move through the sales funnel quickly and seamlessly, encouraging them to complete the journey. If you require customers to set up an account, ensure your sign up form is easy and isn’t overloaded with boxes to be filled out. The longer the form, the more likely you are to bore shoppers. Only collect key information and use drop-down boxes to speed up the process.