Do you know eCommerce websites have an average conversion rate of 3.5%?
However, high-performing sites far outperform this lean figure. Their conversion rate is as high as 25.8%.
But what makes these masters of sales different from the rest?
Simple! They focus on conversion optimization.
Do you want to boost sales during the holiday season?
Instead of just winging it, figure out what site features affect conversions and then test, measure, and analyze them.
Identifying the best eCommerce website practices for conversion optimization will help you boost your site’s conversions.
Are you curious about the top sales tactics?
Take a look at what those high-performing eCommerce sites do to boost conversions and sales based on actionable website practices.
Conversion Optimization Website Practices
Let’s start by describing conversions.
People tend to compare conversions with sales.
More conversions mean more people are transitioning from potential customers to buying. Sales count as a type of conversion.
Conversions occur when a user makes an action on your website. This action can be anything.
Examples of conversions are:
- Email Opt-Ins
- Newsletter Subscriptions
- E-book Downloads
- Form Completions
- Free Trial Signups
Conversion Optimization is the process of increasing the conversion rates on your website.
The most efficient conversion optimization techniques for an eCommerce website are to make the conversion process clearer, comfortable, and faster for your target audience.
They include everything from optimizing your website performance to revising content.
Check out the best methods high-performers use for pushing eCommerce conversions.
11 Actionable Ecommerce Website Practices to Increase Sales and Conversions
You need to make it easier for your customers to convert if you want more conversions.
Buyers will leave a website if the buying process is confused and overly-complex.
Make sure to simplify the buying and conversion process. You can use these eCommerce website practices to reduce cart abandonment rates.
1 – Improve the Performance of Your Website
Nothing is more frustrating than buying something from a slow-loading website with broken links and missing images.
Make sure your website is performing well. To boost sales and increase conversion rates, it must be easily accessible securely.
81% of marketers agree that slow-loading sites experience fewer conversions. This is because slow-loading websites tend to lead to more abandonment.
If you want more sales, make sure visitors stay on your website.
If your site loads between one and three seconds, 90% of traffic will not abandon it.
The abandonment rate will rise to 38% if it exceeds the five-second mark.
If your page takes more than 10 seconds to load, you will miss 65% of your visitors.
Compress the images, optimize the code, and reduce the dependency on third-party scripts to speed up your website.
Choosing a faster web host like Rovity is a crucial strategy to speed up your website.
2 – The Website Design Must Be Responsive
53% of eCommerce sales come from mobile devices.
If you don’t optimize your website for mobile devices, you stand to lose over half of your conversions.
However, mobile-first design is not the only thing you need to worry about. Tablet conversions are better than mobile conversions — 53% better.
You must ensure that your website is fully optimized for all smart devices. This will enable eCommerce sales across various shopping channels.
Think of how well images load on smart devices, whether the text is easy to read, and whether clicking on call-to-action elements is challenging.
The page should not be too heavy or too cluttered to load on a mobile device. So, customers will easily understand what to do next in their purchase flow.
3 – Test the Elements of a Website
Testing website elements is an effective way to determine which ones promote conversions and which ones do not.
A/B testing landing page design is one way to do this.
This kind of test involves designing two different landing pages and randomly sending some customers to one and others to the second page.
Here, you can observe which landing pages convert better.
Another way to test your website elements’ performance is to use a heat map tool like Hotjar.
Heatmaps show you what your customers are clicking on and hovering over the most.
By studying your website’s heat map, you can eliminate ineffective web elements and replace them with effective ones.
4 – Prove Your Credibility With Social Proof
The internet makes getting your product to a broad audience easier. And your customers can easily compare your products to your competitors.
Your website should illustrate how your products and services solve their problems better than your competitors.
5 – Add Reviews and Testimonials
Consumers use reviews to compare similar products online. 92% of shoppers read product reviews before making a purchasing decision.
Reviews and testimonials demonstrate that your product is satisfactory to the customer and solves their problems.
This type of social proof can boost conversions by more than a third.
6 – Use Trust Badges
A trust badge indicates that customers can trust your site.
Your website and products might be more trustworthy when you present a trust badge.
Some of the values are:
- Highly Secure
- Award-Winning
- Authentic
- Endorsed by a Reputable Third Party
Other trust badges may indicate that you offer free shipping and returns or that customers can return items for a full refund.
By adding trust badges to your website, you help buyers believe in your product’s quality, which raises conversions.
7 – Streamlining Customer Experience
Make your products easy to buy.
Is your website confusing, or does the buying process take too long? Your customers will become not interested and stop buying altogether.
Increase the chances of conversion by streamlining the customer experience.
8 – Include the Call to Action Buttons
Make sure your customers know the next step easily.
CTA buttons signal to the customer the correct steps to take next.
You should make sure your CTAs relate to the actions you want your customers to take.
It may be for a newsletter subscription or a purchase of your services.
Add buttons that indicate what to click and where to click so that customers understand what they need to do.
It would be best if you found the most effective CTAs by running various tests.
For your CTA, the button color may be different than your competitors.
Even more impressive, you can boost conversions by 621% with the right CTA wording (CTA copy).
Click-through CTAs work 2.8 times better than CTAs that request customers to fill out forms. So try CTA buttons for more conversions.
9 – Build Excitement and Express Joy
Conversion rates for eCommerce are greatly influenced by emotional content.
People want to feel enthusiastic about their purchases. If you express anticipation and joy in your copy, you can generate more sales.
Recent studies have shown that wording that creates anticipation boosts conversions by 5%. And happy words increase conversions by 5%.
Negative wording, however, can cause conversion rates to fall by 2%.
When describing how your product solves problems, keep this in mind.
Here is an example.
If you sell hair care products, you might try to use a copy like ‘Craving a Good Hair Day?’. And try avoiding words like, ‘Having a Bad Hair Day?’
Here are some of the positive words to try on your eCommerce site.
- Love
- Winner
- Vivid
- Gift
- Passion
- Smile
- Freedom
- Enlighten
- Cheer
- Abundance
10 – Enable Multiple Payment Methods
50% of all consumers are likely to cancel a transaction if their preferred payment method is unavailable.
There are so many ways to pay online. If you have only one payment method available, you might miss out on many sales.
Don’t limit yourself to card payments. Provide alternative payment methods on your website.
Think about payment methods like Paytm, Google Pay, Net Banking.
11 – Organize Your Website
When it comes to shopping online, consumers like simplicity. You will need to declutter the look and wording of your website.
Please keep it simple, stupid (KISS) in terms of visual design.
The simple, clean design makes it easier for eCommerce shoppers to follow the customer journey.
With fewer images and texts on the page, you can directly draw customer attention to primary things, such as a CTA.
Keep your content under 300 words.
For the best conversion rates, your content should be tailored to middle-school reading levels.
Conclusion
As you can see, by focusing on features that increase conversions, your website will become more productive.
The performance of your website is as vital as its design.
Having a slow and clumsy website will result in people abandoning your site before they’ve even started their shopping.
What other strategy have you used to boost the conversion of your website?
Share that in the comments.
