E-commerce: 5 tips to boost your conversion rate
For an e-merchant, increasing the conversion rate of their site is of paramount importance. One of the best practices in e-commerce is to monitor the factors that influence it and to master the techniques that can be used to improve it.
Attracting a large number of visitors every day is already the first step towards selling on the Internet. But the number of visits is not enough to guarantee a significant volume of sales and an increase in your turnover.
Rather than trying to increase the number of visitors, let's take a look at how to boost their purchases and turn as many visitors as possible into buyers.
What is the conversion rate?
The conversion rate measures the ratio of people who have carried out a specific action to the total number of people targeted.
In a marketing context, the conversion rate is the benchmark KPI (key performance indicator) for evaluating and assessing the success of a campaign. The actions sought must be able to be measured or tracked and most often concern :
- the purchase of a product/service in-store or online,
- Filling in a contact form (requesting a quote or making an appointment),
- subscribing to a newsletter,
- visiting a web page,
- registering for an event
- etc.
In e-commerce, as in physical sales outlets, the main objective is of course to sell! The conversion rate therefore refers to the percentage of visitors who have made a purchase in relation to the total number of visitors, in other words the ability of the online sales site to convert its visitors into buyers.
What is a good conversion rate?
It is difficult to define what level of conversion is good or bad for a company, since it will depend on and evolve mainly according to 3 factors:
- the type of offer: the sector of activity concerned and the level of competition,
- traffic, both quantitative and qualitative,
- the effectiveness of the content and pages visited.
Internally, monitoring and comparing your conversion rate will enable you to identify the factors influencing it and determine the actions you need to take to improve it.
Why improve the conversion rate of your e-commerce site?
Most e-tailers still think that the more visitors they have to their site, the greater the volume of orders they will receive... However, focusing solely on acquiring traffic in order to increase sales and turnover can waste time and money.
Improving the conversion rate of your e-commerce site means first and foremost trying to prevent visitors from "leaving" your site and going to your competitors, and not necessarily coming back. So it's all about generating more revenue from the same amount of traffic by ensuring that visitors buy (almost) every time!
So how do you go about it?
It's much simpler than just increasing the number of visits to your site: it's often as simple as optimising your online sales site. The aim is to reduce the disincentives that can prevent visitors from taking action and completing their purchase.
To achieve this, it is important to identify in advance the factors that will influence the purchasing decision and to define the objectives to be improved:
- click rate on "buy",
- average basket size
- purchase abandonment rate
- bounce rate,
- time spent on the site, etc.
5 tips for optimising the conversion rate of your e-commerce site
1- Look after the presentation of your product sheets and your site in general
For more than 9 out of 10 people, a site's design and visuals are the main factors in their purchasing decision.
The quality of the photos, their number, the variety of angles from which they can be viewed, the situations in which they can be seen, the possibility of zooming in on the product... these are all criteria that will make people want to buy and reassure them that your website is serious and that the product is real. The use of a video format can also be a valuable addition that will increase the time spent on the site.
To reinforce the visitor's sense of trust and security, the product description should be as complete as possible. Don't hesitate to highlight the benefits and advantages rather than just listing the features!
Finally, it's always worth remembering that these days a responsive site is essential for comfortable browsing on any medium (computer, tablet, mobile).
2- Offer efficient customer service
The ever-demanding needs and expectations of customers are making customer relations a growing challenge for most companies. This is all the more true in e-commerce, where the trend is to think in terms of and adopt a "traditional commerce" approach to improve and enrich interactions.
To achieve this, more and more sites are using online chat solutions (click-to-chat, livechat, etc.) to humanise their customer relations. Thanks to these marketing tools, e-tailers can make instant contact with their visitors and advise them while they are browsing.
The benefits are clear for both Internet users and e-tailers:
- Time and money saved (compared with telephone customer services),
- Real-time assistance,
- Improved customer experience and corporate image,
- Increased engagement... and conversion rates!
3- Analyse your visitors' behaviour
Identify the buttons that generate the most interaction, the product sheets that convert best or on the contrary those that don't trigger a purchase, measure the time spent on each page... Generally speaking, this will enable you to observe the elements that work (or don't work) and to be able to define areas for improvement and optimisation of the e-commerce site, without losing sight of the need to improve the conversion rate.
Numerous tracking and marketing automation tools make it possible to monitor the activity of Internet users through their clicks and to plan web marketing actions or campaigns accordingly. Retargeting, or remarketing, for example, is a way of targeting people who visit a website but do not complete their order.
Other solutions integrate such tracking functions with the aim of predicting needs and anticipating problems that visitors may encounter before placing an order. This is the case with the iAdvize conversational commerce platform, which, thanks to behavioural targeting and keyword filtering, enables e-tailers to inform their visitors at the right time, unlike other intrusive chat tools that are systematically triggered on every page of a site.
4- Highlight customer reviews and testimonials
One of the best practices you can adopt in e-commerce to boost your conversion rate is the integration of ratings, comments and other "like" and "share" buttons on social networks. These reassuring elements enable visitors to refer to the experiences of other consumers and make an informed choice.
Product evaluations and customer reviews play an increasingly important role in the purchasing process , as they are consulted by 88% of Internet users before they buy, and for 85% of them, negative consumer reviews are likely to dissuade them from buying (IFOP / Reputation VIP survey, 2015).
Potential buyers are more likely to take a consumer's opinion into account than a seller's description. iAdvize has understood this, since the platform uses customer ambassadors, members of a community of experts, to answer e-buyers' questions. A user-friendly experience, authentic and reliable advice and optimal responsiveness all contribute to improving the level of satisfaction and increasing the conversion rate of ecommerce sites that use it.
5- Optimise your e-commerce site's conversion tunnel
Optimising the overall visitor journey, or conversion funnel, is the most effective solution for reducing basket abandonment and therefore increasing your conversion rate.
The shorter the online payment stage, the more likely it is that visitors will complete their order. In this respect, shortening the purchasing tunnel, and in particular the customer journey (the path taken to access pages, i.e. the number of clicks before reaching the shopping basket), is just as important a lever for improvement as the design of the site, the product catalogue or the marketing strategy.
The aim is to simplify and streamline the purchasing process, making it as intuitive and reassuring as possible.
Several elements will contribute to this:
- Transparency when it comes to delivery charges: be explicit and don't wait until the order summary to display them.
- Simplifying the account creation procedure: for some people, opening an account is a real obstacle! Give them the choice, but don't force them to create an account to finalise their purchases. Offer them the option of connecting via the social networks Facebook, Twitter or Google, for example.
- Simplify the contact details form: it's all too often long and tedious, so only ask for the information that's essential for invoicing and delivery.
- Diversity of payment methods: try to accept as many payment methods as possible so as not to slow down the purchase process, and don't forget to clearly display their logo to inspire confidence and security in your visitors.
Conclusion
Article translated from French