6 Ways to Increase Conversion on Your Ecommerce Website

How can you transform unfamiliar site visitors into paying customers? A critical step is having an optimized and strategically aligned website that caters to your potential customer’s needs. It’s an essential part of making your ecommerce website into their preferred destination for the product or service you sell.

What can I do to increase conversions on my ecommerce website?

What is Conversion Rate Website Optimization and Why Do You Need It?

Implementing optimization and conversion rate strategies requires a well-defined plan and clear objectives.

1. Optimization involves making deliberate changes and improvements to your website, enhancing its visibility and user-friendliness for visitors.
2. More specifically, conversion rate optimization focuses on modifying your site to encourage visitors to take specific actions, such as making purchases, filling out forms, or engaging through reviews and comments and social sharing.

While your website may attract hundreds of monthly visitors, these numbers are meaningless if they fail to complete the intended actions. Although there’s no foolproof formula for boosting conversion rates, there are several effective practices to consider.  Here are six hacks to help optimize your ecommerce website so that visitors turn into customers, AKA, conversion.

1. Clarify the purpose of your ecommerce website. Offer your visitors a simple, concise value statement that explicitly communicates why they should choose you over competitors. Clarity helps ensure a positive customer experience (CX).

It’s important to ensure that the design, messaging, content (including images and video) and overall experience reflect your value statement. This enables customers to understand precisely why they have landed on your site.

2. Know your target audience and focus on them.  Recognize that your website cannot cater to everyone. The key to conversion rate optimization is transforming site visitors into customers, and this requires a deep understanding of your target audience and their online behaviors.

A journey map is a proven tool for understanding your customer, their buying process and preferences, and building a website to reflect that knowledge.

Utilize quantitative data from sources like Google Analytics and sales trends, and insights derived from customer feedback and site user input. By leveraging this information, you can customize your website to specifically cater to the needs and preferences of your target customers.

3. Make your ecommerce website easy to navigate. Even if you have an amazingly beautiful website, it won’t matter if your average customer struggles to find what they need.

The number of clicks a potential customer has to make to buy your product or service is crucial. The longer and more complex the process becomes for your customers, the higher the likelihood that they will abandon the purchase or opt out from receiving further information.

Ensure that site navigation is clear and that click-throughs function smoothly. Additionally, don’t overlook the importance of catering to mobile users; you will miss out on major revenue if you do.

Tip: Work with a professional web designer with expertise in guiding visitors through a website.  You will not regret it.

4. Provide value in your Call to Actions (CTAs). As people grow increasingly cautious about sharing personal information, it’s important to make your CTAs valuable to your audience.

Instead of simply asking for information, offer something in return. This could be a special one-time coupon, access to exclusive information, or educational resources to create a sense of reciprocity. Additionally, keep your forms simple, typically requesting only a name and email address.

5. Embrace a diversified marketing approach, not just paid ads. Relying solely on paid ads becomes unsustainable and unprofitable when the cost of bidding for crucial keywords rises.

Instead, combine pay-per-click (PPC) and paid ads with organic search optimization, consistent social media engagement, and effective email campaigns. Each customer has a different online experience, so relying on a single strategy may isolate a significant potential customer base and hinder conversions.

Here’s an example of how we helped one client generate more leads using an integrated marketing strategy. 

About the Author:

Hey, I’m Dianne Newton-Shaw, a principal at Placemaking Group.  I love what I do which is providing web development and web services that power small businesses. I also focus on creating the right content to engage customers — this is the fuel that drives engagement. There is a lot that goes into making these two things happen, from strategy and defining the customer journey to defining what marketing tactics will most influence an audience.

I certainly don’t do this alone – I work with a very creative director, a customer experience expert, an amazing programmer, graphic designers, and a cadre of videographers, content writers, and social media strategists to bring this work to life. For more about my background visit our team page, or connect with me on LinkedIn.