A well-designed website is crucial for any eCommerce business aiming to thrive in the online marketplace. But just having a website isn’t enough; you need to focus on learning how to increase conversion rate to turn your website visitors into paying customers.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of making your website work better for your audience’s needs while also accounting for your specific business goals. Your goal may be to increase an action, reduce an undesirable action, or make sure that the rate of an action stays the same. Hence the word “conversion”: You are converting your website visitors into leads, customers, or evangelists for your brand.
Utilizing eCommerce Website Optimization to Improve Monetization
The key to learning how to increase conversion rate and make effective eCommerce website optimizations comes down to improving website performance and the shoppers’ experience. In CRO, when we run tests, we’re doing just that. We use the data from the tests to evaluate which changes make sense for your needs, so you aren’t wasting unnecessary money. But how can you successfully make website optimizations so they help increase conversion rate and drive sales? In this blog post, we will explore three main ways you can achieve this goal.
How UX Research Helps Drive Sales
A big part of successfully increasing sales on an eCommerce website is associated with a shoppers’ positive experiences when browsing your site. Friction points like the inability to quickly reach the checkout page or confusing homepage navigation may cause them to bounce.
Proper UX research can help you determine the reasons why shoppers aren’t completing a specific task (i.e., completing their purchases, signing up for email updates, viewing a secondary product listing page, etc.). It can also help you pinpoint where to focus resources to improve your website experience, so your business goals are met or exceeded.
When you’re looking to improve the UX of a website, you should first put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What aspects of your website are causing friction? What can be improved? Is this new checkout experience actually a good idea? Here are a few tips to get you started with UX research.
Keep customer-centric web design top of mind. Conduct user interviews, surveys, and usability tests to gather insights into what your target audience expects from your website. This information will enable you to design a user-friendly interface that aligns with their preferences.
Focus on navigation. Streamline your website navigation to make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Clear, intuitive menus and search functionality are essential components of a positive user experience.
Pro CRO Tip:
Conduct a simple competitive analysis of your website. For example, count the total number of tasks that need to be done to complete a purchase on your website. Do this same exercise for 2-5 of your competitors, then compare the results. What did you find? Does it take you the same, fewer, or more tasks to complete a purchase on your website than on your competitors’ sites?
A/B Testing to Save Money & Prevent Revenue Loss
Once you’ve gathered insights through UX research, it’s time to test your findings by conducting A/B tests (AKA split tests) to see if a proposed change accomplishes your intended goal, such as increasing revenue, driving more traffic to a particular area, or saving money by reducing expenses. Oftentimes, when companies implement website changes without first testing, they experience a negative impact on their revenue and end up needing to allocate unplanned resources to remedy the changes. But with CRO, it’s easy to turn off test variations if statistically relevant results aren’t in your favor, so you don’t waste excess time, money, and people.
Running A/B tests can help you save money and prevent revenue loss because you’re letting the test results and data guide your decisions. As an eCommerce business owner, you might be concerned about not having the necessary internal resources or CRO team to do the work. When you aren’t sure where to start, here are a few tips to help your business leverage A/B testing effectively and teach your team how to increase conversion rate to drive sales on your site:
- Identify Key Variables
Choose specific elements to test, such as headline text, call-to-action buttons, product images, or pricing strategies. Make one change at a time to isolate the impact of each variable.
- Create Variations
Develop two versions of the webpage with only one differing element. Ensure that both versions are identical in all other aspects to get accurate results.
- Set Clear Goals
Establish measurable goals for your A/B tests, whether they are focused on increasing click-through rates, adding items to the cart, or completing a purchase. This will help you track the success of each variation.
- Analyze Results
Monitor the performance of your A/B tests and use data-driven insights to determine which variation performs better. Implement the best version to optimize your website continually.
How to Increase Conversion Rate through eCommerce Website Optimization of the Checkout Funnel
While it’s true that you should look at the data from UX research and A/B tests to help guide any changes you plan to make on your website, a seamless and efficient checkout process can significantly—positively—impact your conversion rate. To ensure you’re making positive changes in the checkout funnel, you can improve the pages that lead up to completing purchases, such as:
- Category pages
- Product pages
- Navigation
- Blog posts
- Global headers
Additional eCommerce website optimizations you can make to improve the customer’s checkout process include:
- Simplifying Forms: Reduce friction by minimizing the number of required form fields during the checkout process. Only ask for essential information, such as shipping and payment details.
- Adding Progress Indicators: Implement progress indicators to show users where they are in the checkout process and how many steps are left. This helps reduce abandonment rates.
- Having Multiple Payment Options: Offer various payment methods to accommodate different customer preferences. Ensure that your checkout process is secure and easy to use.
- Using Trust Signals: Display trust signals, such as SSL certificates, security badges, and customer reviews, to build trust and credibility with potential buyers.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery: Implement a strategy to recover abandoned carts, such as sending reminder emails with incentives or discounts to encourage shoppers to complete their purchase.
Pro CRO Tip:
Removing force signups or adding an easy guest checkout will help your conversion rates within the checkout flow.
The Omnitail Difference
Omnitail is disrupting the digital marketing landscape with our unique profit-driven approach to eCommerce marketing. But annual growth requires your eCommerce business to continuously improve on these three metrics: Increase traffic, improve monetization, and boost margins.
Lucky for you, we’re a digital marketing agency focused on getting all three of these back on track for you. We increase traffic by sending the right traffic at the right time using our profit-driven performance marketing strategies. We improve monetization by continuously researching, designing, and testing to give you clear instructions on how to elevate your campaigns’ conversion rates. And we boost margins by accounting for the metrics that ad platforms usually miss: COGS, variable overhead, returns and cancellations, and more.
Contacting Omnitail is the optimal way to ensure you’re doing the right research, running the right tests, and making the right campaign optimizations to provide value and improve your profitability. Learn what works before you commit and contact our team today to learn more.
