The success of your ecommerce store depends on its ability to convert traffic into paid customers while maximizing the amount these customers pay. Shopify provides entrepreneurs with a powerful platform for creating and managing an ecommerce store, but success on the platform is in no way guaranteed. Not only does it require thoughtful design and a great product, but also a decent understanding of how to increase conversion rates.
You probably know the basics: keep a simple layout, focus on features vs benefits, and make the checkout process fast and easy. But there are also some more advanced approaches you can use to increase conversion rates, such as optimizing product pages, emphasizing social proof, and A/B testing. We'll cover each of these techniques and explain how they can help generate more sales and maximize your return on investment.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing a website or DTC ecommerce shop to increase the percentage of visitors that take a specific action such as signing up for an email or SMS list, or most commonly, completing a sale. This can include an entire website, landing pages, or even individual components of a shop.
CRO involves analyzing user behavior, adjusting the design and placement of elements on the site, rewriting copy, A/B testing, and more.
How to Optimize and Increase Conversion Rates?
There are hundreds of ways to increase conversion rates on your ecommerce store. The technical implementation of these strategies depends on the ecommerce platform you use. For this guide, we focus primarily on Shopify.
Further, this guide includes only a handle of the strategies you can use to increase conversion rates. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive list, check out our free Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist.
1. Optimize Product Detail Pages
Since product detail pages include the most detail on your products, implementing an effective CRO strategy for product detail pages is imperative to increasing sales. Here are some steps you can take to optimize your product pages and improve your conversion rates.
First, make sure that all of the product pages on your site are aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. This means making sure the page layout, design, and images are all clean and professional. It also means providing simple and easy-to-follow navigation that makes it easy for customers to learn about your products and effortlessly add them to their cart. People scan pages from left to right. Showing the first product image on the left side of the page will ensure you're naturally catching their attention.
Second, make sure all of the product information outlined is detailed, accurate, and up-to-date. Customers should be able to easily understand all the features and technical specifications that are included with each product. Providing detailed product descriptions that answer all of the customer’s questions and focus on the benefit the customer will receive can help to increase your store’s conversion rates.
Third, include customer reviews or testimonials on your product pages. Reviews and testimonials are a great way for customers to get an idea of what other customers think about the products and will help to build trust and confidence in your brand. Additionally, offering and displaying incentives such as free shipping, discounts, and reward points can also help increase conversions.
Finally, make sure you have at least 4-5 product images and consider adding videos to your product pages. This can help explain complex features or products more effectively to customers which will help increase conversion rates but also decrease returns as your customers will know exactly what they’re getting from you.
By optimizing your shopify store’s product pages, you will be able to increase your store’s conversion rates and sales. To learn more about optimizing conversion rates on product detail pages.
2. Use A/B Testing
A/B testing is a great way to identify which elements of your site, emails, or other marketing strategies are most effective in driving conversions. A/B testing involves creating two variations of the same page, email, or marketing element, collecting performance data, then measuring which one is performing better. Once you have sufficient data to determine a clear winner, you will continue with the winning element and discontinue the losing one. There are a variety of A/B testing tools for ecommerce. Our preferred, which happens to be free, is Google Optimize.
There are a variety of different things to test such as copy, button colors, page layout, product photos, pricing, and so much more. For more ideas on what to test, check out our free Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist.
To ensure accuracy in your A/B testing, it’s important to make one change at a time and to measure the results over a period of a few weeks or even months.
A/B testing is an effective way to increase conversions on Shopify, which can help you maximize the number of customers that convert when visiting your shop.
3. Analyze Your Traffic
Analyzing your site traffic is key to understanding the effectiveness of your online shop and CRO strategies. Knowing who your customers are, how they arrived on your site, and how they interact with your site is crucial in uncovering ways to improve conversion rates. Google Analytics is a great free analytics tool. If you’re looking for something more advanced, check out Triple Whale.
First, check out the demographics of your visitors. Knowing the age, gender, location, and device being used can help you determine what types of content will resonate most with each audience and how to tailor messages that speak to them.
Next, analyze your website's landing pages and the types of traffic they are attracting. Knowing which pages convert well and which don’t can help you understand what’s working that you can then replicate on other, lower-performing pages. You should also consider using A/B testing to experiment with different design, copy, and calls-to-action on your landing pages.
Finally, don't forget to look at the sources of your traffic. Are people finding you via organic search, paid ads, blog posts, or referrals? Knowing where your visitors are coming from can help you adjust your marketing efforts and ensure you're focusing on channels that are bringing in the most qualified leads. For example, if organic traffic is converting the highest, it likely makes sense to invest more in organic efforts.
By taking the time to analyze your traffic and user behavior, you'll be better equipped to improve your conversion rates on Shopify. Keep in mind, though, that all data is not created equal. Make sure to track the right metrics that are meaningful for your business and provide insights on how you can improve.
4. Leverage Customer Reviews
One of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates on Shopify is to leverage customer reviews. This is because social proof provides other potential customers with useful information about your products/services and helps to establish credibility and trust.
To start, you can ask customers for reviews on the product order page, or you can use a third-party review platform like Okendo or Junip. Once you’ve started to build up a collection of reviews, you can start to display them on your website. Showcasing these customer reviews on your product pages will help to give potential customers the confidence they need to complete their purchase.
For more ways to collect and display reviews, check out our free Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist.
Collecting and displaying reviews on Google’s Review platform is also a good idea. Google will display your customer reviews prominently in search results which helps to build trust and increase click-through rates, which, you guessed it, helps to increase conversion rates.
In summary, collecting customer reviews is a great way to increase customer confidence and convert more customers on Shopify. As you build up a collection of customer reviews that you display throughout your site, you should start to see significant improvements in conversion rates.
5. Focus on User Experience (UX)
User experience (UX) is a key factor when it comes to increasing conversion rates on Shopify. If the customer has a positive experience while shopping, they are much more likely to purchase something. Here are five ways to improve a customer’s user experience and thus, increase conversion rates:
- Keep it simple. A simple and easy-to-navigate design will help customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Don’t overwhelm them with too much content, products, images, colors, and overly annoying popups.
- Include quality photos. Photos need to be relevant, high quality, and have good lighting. This will help your brand look more professional and trustworthy while also helping the customer visualize and inspect your product.
- Mobile-first. A majority of your customers will be visiting from a mobile device. Ensure your site design and UX are optimized for mobile.
- Speed. A fast-loading website will ensure customers don’t get frustrated and leave your site. They want to move through their shopping process quickly, so make sure that your page loading times are fast.
- Security. Customers want to feel secure when shopping on your site, so having a secure checkout process in place is essential. Many shoppers will look for the “HTTPS” and lock symbol in their browser before they proceed with their purchase. If they feel their details are in good hands, they are less likely to abandon their cart.
Overall, focusing on user experience can make a big difference when it comes to increasing conversion rates on Shopify. Everything, from simple design to security measures, can have an effect on the user’s experience. It’s important to get this right for a successful Shopify store.
For more ways to increase conversion rates on Shopify, check out our free Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist.
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