When a visitor to a website performs a desired action, it’s called a conversion – and if you’re an ecommerce business, you want to turn website visitors into customers. Getting people to your site is only the first step. Even with a ton of traffic, if your website isn’t optimised for conversion, you’ll find it hard to hold customers’ attention and guide them to make that purchase.
In ecommerce, a conversion rate is a form of contextual data used to demonstrate the percentage of website visitors who purchase a product. You can calculate your website’s conversion rate using this formula:
Conversion rate = number of website visitors/number of purchases *100%
Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can track your goal conversion rate. Goal conversion rates can be based on a variety of goals specific to your online store, such as ‘purchases completed’ or ‘newsletter signups’. Tracking your conversion rate can give you valuable insights into customer behaviour on your website, and can allow you to make suitable amends to features on your website so that you can make the most of your traffic.
The average conversion rate of ecommerce stores globally is 2.58%. However, a good conversion rate is unique to your business and is a highly contextual figure which can depend largely on several factors, including:
For instance, if a company sells high-end electronics, it’s not going to have the same conversion rate as one selling cheap t-shirts. Therefore, when analysing your conversion rate, it is important to consider all of these contributing factors. Industry benchmarks aren’t always an accurate comparison guide.
So, to work out the best conversion rate for you, you need a baseline. What is your current conversion rate? And what conversion rate do you want to achieve in the next month or the next six-to-12 months?
James King, Head of Professional Services, Elavon Europe
The conversion rate is useful because it tells you how successful your website is at guiding visitors into and through the sales funnel. A high conversion rate shows that your website is convincing users to become leads or customers, while a low rate indicates that you may need to shift tactics.
So, what contributes to a good conversion rate? We’ve outlined the main ones below:
It’s important to look at your pricing when thinking about your conversion rates. Are you competitively priced? If you are selling branded products that other companies offer, then you will need to price your products at or below the average price. Always adjust your prices frequently to see what works well with your customers and what doesn’t. Remember your marketing and imagery will heavily influence the price someone is willing to pay.
Ultimately, a good reputation will help boost sales. If you experience low conversion rates, then one reason could be that visitors don’t trust you. To improve your reputation, it’s important you address the following:
70 percent of online shoppers typically read between one and six customer reviews before making a purchasing decision. Less than one in ten shoppers did not have a habit of reading customer reviews before buying.
As mentioned above, one of the important ways to increase ecommerce conversions is to use customer reviews or testimonials at key points in the decision-making process. This helps to instil trust and confidence in you, especially if you place them throughout the whole customer journey.
98% of shoppers say reviews are an essential resource when making purchase decisions. Nearly half (45%) of consumers won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews available for it.
Around 47% of people abandon shopping carts because of high costs, including shipping costs. Offering free shipping over a certain basket value threshold can encourage customers to complete a purchase on your website. Strategies such as free shipping thresholds can often mean customers feel as though they are getting a better deal by shopping on your website.
If a customer is on your site and needs help, it’s important to be there for them as soon as possible. Real-time help works wonders and, more often, website visitors choose live chats over phone or email. Using on-site live chats on all pages of your website helps to reduce the chance that they may navigate away from a key page or leave your site altogether.
Live chats can help to increase the chances of a visitor converting if an issue is sorted efficiently or a question about a product or service is answered.of your pages, but not know where to go next. Adding ‘next’ buttons to sequential pages on your site can direct users and improve user engagement.
Guest checkouts help keep all visitors to your site engaged, especially if they are first-time customers. It can often cause friction for the user if there is that additional step of creating an account before purchase. Single-step checkouts are also one of the easiest ways for existing customers to finalise their purchase, as their details will have been saved previously. With all this in mind, it’s important to also offer multiple payment options – especially if you have a global customer base. This helps to ensure their needs and expectations are met.
Often, generic calls to action (CTAs) like ‘Sign up’ and ‘Start trial’ won’t give you the best conversion rates. Therefore, it’s worth brainstorming alternatives that will boost sales. For example, if you are offering a free trial of software, you may use the following offers:
Analyse your analytics report to see where most of your traffic comes from. If your top channel is social media and you have very little direct traffic, it might be a good idea to divert marketing resources to pay- per-click (PPC) or invest in an email campaign. Email yields better conversion rates than social and search, so it might be worth investing in an email marketing strategy to boost overall conversions.
Customers typically expect a website to load in just a few seconds and often expect websites to load faster on mobile devices. Having a fast page-load speed can help to increase your website’s traffic, as sites with faster page speeds are more likely to rank higher in search engine results, providing you with a larger potential customer base.
An ecommerce site that loads within a second converts 2.5 times more visitors than a site that loads in five seconds.
Collecting data on your website visitors can allow you to create a personalised shopping experience for them. By tailoring product suggestions and page displays, you can build stronger relationships with customers which can encourage repeat purchases and higher conversions.
Providing a quick and simple checkout process for your website visitors can reduce the likelihood of users abandoning their purchase due to unexpected costs, lengthy forms or surprise fees – therefore increasing your conversion rate. Also, consider using cart-abandonment software on your website that allows you to send follow-up emails to customers who have left items in their basket.
Product visuals are a powerful tool in ecommerce. Buying online is a very different experience than buying an item in-store, but providing videos of products and clear photographs can help to recreate that experience and allow customers to understand the product better. Product videos encourage customers to engage more with your product and visualise how they might use it, which can lead to higher rates of conversion.
Additionally, providing product videos can humanise your brand and answer questions about the product for your customers. This can increase trust in your business while also contributing to increasing sales. Photos of your products are also a useful tool for showcasing your product to potential buyers. Product photos need to be clear and professional, preferably photographed with a plain background to draw attention to your product and its features.
James King, Head of Professional Services, Elavon Europe
Product videos are an effective way for ecommerce stores to showcase the features and benefits of items on their website. Without being
able to physically touch or see products in person, many potential customers may have questions about items that could hold them back from making a purchase.
Product videos give ecommerce businesses the opportunity to recreate part of the in-store shopping experience by demonstrating the key features of products and how they can be used. Product videos can also be a useful tool for increasing conversion rates, allowing you to make the most of your website traffic.
Product videos can be a powerful tool for increasing conversion rates and improving the user experience across your website.
Customers who watch product videos are 84% more likely to make a purchase.
Product videos can have a range of benefits for your ecommerce website including increasing user engagement, establishing trust in your brand and providing an enhanced customer experience, all of which can contribute to increasing conversions.
Videos encourage your website visitors to spend more time on your product pages and learn more about the products that you offer. Videos are effective at telling a story and building a narrative and can easily grab visitors’ attention, drawing their eye to the video. Encouraging customers to become more invested in your product’s details through the use of video can make them more likely to purchase that item.
Videos are particularly effective at grabbing a customer’s attention if they incorporate psychological cues through faces, voices, body language and movement. Combined, these elements can help to convey the nature of your brand and can help to define user trust in your products.
Many customers may be wary of making online purchases as they may not feel certain that they will get the item that the description and images promise. Inserting a video on your product pages can allow your business to be more transparent about your products and therefore appear more trustworthy to potential customers.
Additionally, videos can help to humanise your brand which can allow customers to connect more with your business and products, encouraging them to purchase from your store.
Videos are able to delve deeper into product specifics than a product description or photograph, as they can keep the attention of the customer for longer. Providing more detail in an engaging way can help to answer questions that customers may have had about your product which were holding them back from purchasing.
Videos are shared more than any other medium across social media platforms. Creating a successful product video can increase conversions from your current website traffic and allow you to reach more potential customers.
1. Avoid surprising customers with high fees and shipping costs
Be transparent about your shipping costs or additional fees from the start. Removing these surprises from the checkout process will increase your customers’ trust in your business, as well as reduce the possibility of cart abandonment.
2. Keep the shopping cart visible
Keep your basket icon visible on all your website pages to offer a reminder to your customers about how many items they have in their basket.
3. Avoid surprising customers with high fees and shipping costs
If a shopper leaves your site and returns later, autosaving the contents of their basket could help encourage them to complete their previously abandoned sale. This also streamlines the checkout process.
4. Optimise page-load times
The world of ecommerce is highly competitive. If your pages are too slow to load, customers may leave your site and search for their items elsewhere. Faster load times improve the user experience, while increasing engagement with your store.
5. Use trust seals in transaction forms
Many customers may feel wary handing over sensitive payment information, particularly if they haven’t shopped with you before. Including security badges throughout the payment process can increase your customers’ trust in your business and reassure them that their information is being handled securely.
6. Include product images in baskets during the checkout process
Reminding your customers of what they’re buying can reassure them throughout the checkout process and encourage them to complete the transaction.
7. Provide a guest checkout option
Providing guest checkout can significantly streamline your checkout process. Many customers may not want to or have time to create an account, so providing the option for a guest checkout makes your products more easily available to shoppers and makes your checkout process more efficient.
8. Offer multiple payment options
Providing the option to pay via a range of different methods allows your customer to checkout in their preferred way and reduces the likelihood of cart abandonment.
9. Display clear and bold icons
Direct your customers towards the checkout using clearly visible and bold call to action buttons, such as ‘Proceed to checkout’. Bold buttons also simplify your website navigation, improving your user experience.
10. Create a sense of urgency
Displaying the number of items left or adding a countdown clock for the time remaining on a deal will create a sense of urgency or scarcity, which can encourage shoppers to complete their purchase to avoid missing out.
Be real and genuine
Avoid exaggerating the features or benefits of your products, as this could mislead your customers. While exaggeration may increase conversions in the short term, it can leave your customers dissatisfied and reduce trust in your brand. Product videos are a great opportunity to convey what makes your product and your brand different, and maintaining a genuine tone will allow your customers to more easily relate to your brand.
Keep it brief and concise
The key to keeping your site visitors engaged in your product videos is to keep your videos short and to the point. Having lengthy product videos can cause customers to become disengaged, particularly if they do not address their questions in the first few minutes. If your product has different versions, consider creating separate videos so that you can explain the features and benefits of each version in enough detail.
Engage directly with your customer
It can be easy to become too focused on talking about your product when making a video. Make sure that you’re also addressing your customer’s needs, questions and interests.
Make it shareable
A video shared on social media acts as a positive review for your product and increases awareness for your brand. This can allow you to reach more potential customers and increase your conversion rate over time.
There are many factors that can affect conversion rates for your ecommerce store, and the role of website personalisation is one worth considering.
Website personalisation involves tailoring and customising the way information is presented to appeal to customers. This can include the way your website looks, and how copy and images are presented. Presenting your products in a way that appeals to particular customers can help to build strong relationships and, when implemented successfully, can encourage customer loyalty and higher conversion rates.
To personalise your website successfully, you need to be able to collect, and effectively use, relevant data about your customer to enable personalisation. Wanting to get to know your customers well is the key to good website personalisation.
This can be done using the information provided when visitors sign up to your website, or by collecting demographic information when a customer uses a social login. These methods will allow you to gather information on your customers’ location and interests and start to build up information about their order history, browsing habits and searches.
Website personalisation also encourages customers to return to your site, and the more they shop at your store, the better the personalisation and suggestions you can make for them. By applying personalisation to your website, you can start to increase the odds of selling the right content to the right customers, which can in turn increase your conversion rates and average order value (AOV).
Although it is easier to personalise your website for returning customers, there are ways you can segment all your site traffic. This can allow you to personalise your website even for new customers. Here are some common methods used to segment website traffic:
Geographic information
Information on a customer’s location can be collected from IP addresses or from information given by returning customers. This can be used to suggest more relevant products or products more popular within your customer’s region.
Device type
Although this method of personalisation is not as in-depth as others, ensuring the right site format appears on the right device can allow customers to more easily navigate through your site, making them more likely to make a purchase.
Self segmentation
This is an easy way to gain additional information about new visitors to your website. Self segmentation can be done using popups on landing pages that ask the customer questions about themselves or what they may be looking for on your online store. This can be especially useful to help new customers find suitable products on larger ecommerce sites and can lead to increased conversions.
James King, Head of Professional Services, Elavon Europe
Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that individual product recommendations are a form of personalised content on a website. Recommendations became popular in the early 2000s when Amazon introduced the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought...’ product carousel, which offers a selection of products by comparing each individual customer profile to another.
Recommendations can be based on search history or order history, if they are a returning customer. For new customers, you can recommend products based on what information you have about their location or demographic, to encourage them to explore your site further allowing you to begin to gather further information about their preferences. Presenting customers with new products that match their interests or purchase history will ultimately help to increase conversion rates and even average order value.
Changing images or text on your site to suit particular customers can refine your customer’s experience. For example, you could use information collected about the country your customer lives in, and tailor content to the season, weather or public holidays in that country, making your products more appealing to those visitors.
For returning customers or customers who have signed up to your website, consider including their name around your online store. This could be within an order confirmation or directing them to their account information. By doing this, customers can feel more connected to your brand, which can encourage them to keep returning to your store.
Using information about their browsing history, you can add features such as ‘Recently viewed’ to your site or promote discounts relevant to products that your customer has viewed or purchased in the past. Additionally, if a customer is often returning to your site to purchase the same product, use this opportunity to promote offers such as subscriptions or multi-buy discounts on that item. This could save your customers time and money and help to build a stronger relationship with them.
Another great personalisation tactic is sending your customers ‘abandoned cart’ emails. These types of emails and communications deliver a personalised experience right to your customer’s inbox to show them how much your company cares and how you value the shopper’s custom.
Adding elements of personalisation to your ecommerce website can be a valuable tool in building profitable relationships with customers and increasing your conversion rate. The better the user experience on your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Personalisation is becoming an increasingly popular tool for ecommerce sites to boost conversion rates. Regardless of the size of your store, offering elements of personalisation across your site could also help you to grow your online business.
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Copyright© | U.S. Bank Europe DAC. Registered in Ireland with Companies Registration Office. The liability of the member is limited. United Kingdom branch registered in England and Wales under the number BR022122.
U.S. Bank Europe DAC, trading as Elavon Merchant Services, is a credit institution authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Details about the extent of our regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority are available from us on request.
Helping thousands of customers around the world grow their business through payments
We’re here to help!
Customer service: 0345 850 0195
8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday
Opayo product support: 0191 313 0299
24 hours a day, 365 days a year
Copyright© | U.S. Bank Europe DAC. Registered in Ireland with Companies Registration Office. The liability of the member is limited. United Kingdom branch registered in England and Wales under the number BR022122.
U.S. Bank Europe DAC, trading as Elavon Merchant Services, is a credit institution authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Details about the extent of our regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority are available from us on request.
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