Insights
Head of CRO
CRO
If your digital marketing efforts have paid off, and you’re getting more traffic than ever, but online revenue still isn’t where you want it to be, it’s time to look at Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). CRO removes barriers to conversion, reducing the likelihood that a visitor will abandon your site without making a purchase (or completing a different action depending on your website’s goal).
In this blog, we run through ten different features that can be added or optimized to improve your ecommerce website’s conversion rate and grow online revenue.
Is there anything as frustrating as a customer who gets all the way to check out, and then abandons the cart at the very last minute? We doubt it. One way to reduce the number of visitors who do this is by removing unnecessary navigation links on the checkout pages.
These links serve as a distraction and the more links available, the more likely it is that someone will click on one and leave the checkout. They might come back and continue their purchase, but they might not. By removing the links in the first place, you make it less likely that they’ll leave the page before they’ve finished their purchase.
For a customer, filling in a form and getting all the way to ‘submit’ before being told only then that part of the form is invalid, is frustrating – particularly if they then have to scroll all the way back up through the form and manually check which field is wrong.
Adding in both positive and negative validation increases visitor confidence and improves the rate at which they recover from an error in the form, meaning by the time they read the ‘submit’ button, they’re able to go straight through to the next page. Removing this frustration makes it more likely that they will continue with their purchase.
Messages of urgency can influence visitors into taking action, rather than going away and thinking about their decision, as they don’t want to miss out. There are several ways you can use urgency messaging in the product pages; highlighting when there are low levels of stock, counting down to when a discount or promotion finishes, or displaying cut-off times for faster delivery are all subtle but powerful ways to increase conversions.
Shopping online poses a risk to consumers, as they are not able to rely on senses like touch to assess whether a product is suitable for their needs. Using high quality images is essential in building consumer trust in your products, but it is still difficult for your visitors to assess if it’s what they need. Utilizing lifestyle imagery alongside high-res product shots can help people to envision how the product might fit in and function in their own lifestyle. Being able to picture your products this way can increase the likelihood that they’ll buy.
Product reviews are another way of helping your customers decide whether something is right for them and having positive reviews can build trust in both the website and the product.
Hosting the reviews within the product page means visitors have no need to leave and head to external review sites, where they could easily get distracted and never come back.
Being met with unexpected shipping costs at the checkout can cause visitors to leave without finishing their purchase. By being transparent about shipping options from the start, for example by pulling in shipping information onto the product pages, you can relieve customer anxiety about unexpected costs and ensure that they know exactly what they can expect to pay from the beginning.
Search filters improve a website’s usability and make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently. Without a search function, consumers are required to manually look through the website, often to no avail; this may cause your visitors to get frustrated and leave your site in favor of a competitor with search filters. Adding in a detailed search filter functionality is a fail-safe way of improving the user experience. By making it easier to find the product, you make it easier for them to buy the product.
Giving visitors the option to add products to a Wishlist is a great way of encouraging visitors to stay on site for longer and return to the site at a later date, particularly if they’re currently in the awareness and consideration phase of their journey. It also means that products they are interested in are easily accessible when they want to make a purchase.
Ecommerce USPs are a great way for businesses to communicate value to their visitor; having a sitewide banner or promotion displaying these USPs ensures your website visitors can easily identify them, no matter how deep within a site structure your visitor is.
This is particularly important for traffic which lands directly on a landing page, as they may not be aware of your brand’s differentiators if they are predominantly mentioned on your website’s homepages.
Single page checkouts can improve conversion rates for desktop visitors but translate poorly to mobile devices, appearing as an extremely long page that requires a lot of scrolling. Testing on all devices is essential when deciding whether to go for single or multi page checkout, to ensure that your page is optimized for all visitors.
Do you want to know more about driving growth through CRO?Download our webinar with Optimizely today
Insights
Insights
Insights