Anyone who is looking to build an online store should be looking for ways to increase sales as well. And if you can boost your sales without spending extra on marketing, the better.
The only question is, how to do it?
Easy, by increasing the conversion rates on your ecommerce store.
Wait, what are conversion rates?
Conversion rate is every time your customer clicks the ‘buy button’, or signs up to your service. In other words, it is the number of people that enter your site as visitors and leave out as customers.
Some of the ways to skyrocket the conversion rate of your ecommerce website
1. A Personalized Call to Action
We understand how important conversion rates are for increasing sales. That’s why we recommend you to optimize the area where maximum conversion takes place i.e. your CTA.
What is CTA? We are glad you asked.
A CTA or Call-to-Action is an important element of a page that prompts your site visitors to take action. You too must have seen it in product pages, a button labelled as “Buy Now” or ”Add to Cart”. Apart from this, CTA can also call visitors to do other things such as-
- Follow a social media page
- Subscribe to a mailing list
- Share content etc.
Focus on designing a personalized CTA when you build an online store. Though it won’t address every visitor separately but will help you label them as to where they stand in your sales funnel.
For example, if you have an email marketing campaign, you can divide it by directing paying customers to a specific landing page while unconverted leads to a different one. Thus by personalizing the CTAs as per your customers, you will be better able to help them take action. Remember, the key here is to keep the customer journey in mind while designing your CTA.
Fortunately, ecommerce platforms such as StoreHippo come pre-installed with dynamic page features that help you create new pages within minutes. Moreover,Storehippo offers you in-built design tools as well that can easily assist you to design and personalize your CTA buttons.
2. Declutter Your Site’s Navigation
CTAs can be the main focus on most pages but it’s also important to declutter the navigation menus on your ecommerce website.
So, how do you do it?
Simple, by minimizing the navigation elements on your key pages. The idea here is to direct your visitors’ eyes to the CTA. By decluttering, you will make them follow through your CTAs rather than bouncing unnecessarily from one page to another.
For example, a study conducted revealed that by removing the friction causing elements such as the top and sidebar navigations on checkout pages, you can easily improve the checkout rates by 10%.(source)
Just keep in mind that we are not asking you to remove all the navigational elements from your website but only the ones that distract your visitors from the main purpose of the page.
Once again you can rely on StoreHippo for decluttering. All the sites powered by StoreHippo offer easy search and navigation tools such as faceted search, autocomplete etc. These tools allow your customers to find exact matches of the products they are looking for, thus boosting your engagement and conversion process.
3. Improve the Quality of Your Product Pages
While building an online store if we’d have to bet on one thing that would sell a product online, it’s images. The power of images is such that you can even run your ecommerce store with just images and no product descriptions, although we won’t recommend it.
Why? Because your customers after going through the images might have a few questions regarding the product he/she is considering. Here, a product description can easily answer their questions besides explaining as to why they should purchase your product.
But try working it the other way round i.e. only product description and no images. You will fall flat. The thing is, people want to see what they are getting. When was the last time you purchased something without looking at it?
So, if you are looking to boost conversion rates for your ecommerce website then there is no better way than having some high-quality photos of your product.
The more images you display the merrier your customers will be. Also, make the products zoomable, show them from different angles, and in context.
Same goes with videos. What? You don’t consider videos important for your store?
Let us tell you something. Images, without a doubt, are good for ecommerce websites but with everything going on, it's safe to assume that video is the future.
Now, we are not discrediting images here, but they do have their limitations whereas videos qualify as the next step before actual touching and feeling.
So if you are not doing product videos yet, you are missing out on something big here. At least do them for part of the inventory and see if it makes a difference or not.
Now, this is where ecommerce platforms StoreHippo comes in handy. It not only offers all the features mentioned above but also comes with a 360° view of products. These features can easily turn your product pages full of images into high-converting resources.
4. Product Descriptions Matter
See, exactly what we were talking earlier, they matter too. The role of product descriptions is simple; to give buyers enough information to help them make the buying decision.
The best sales copy is one that offers full, complete information. No hype needed.
But that poses another question. What should be the length of the product description? Should you keep it long or short?
Try to offer both when you build an online store, i.e. the concise version and the longer version. The purpose of the concise version is to capture the essence of the product i.e.
- What does it do?
- Who’s it for?
- Why is it good? etc.
The longer version, however, is designed to offer so much information that the customer will not have a single question left. Just make sure to add keywords in between. Also, do not repeat the manufacturer’s canned descriptions, add your own personal touch and recommendations.
When you partner yourself with StoreHippo, you get a feature-rich platform that is SEO-friendly to the core. It means you can easily add keywords and meta in your product description, thus helping your site rank higher in top searches.
5. Notifications
What did you think about notifications when you built an online store. Do you too take them as annoying distractions that jump out at you while browsing any website?
Well, if such is the case, you need to ‘open up’ your eyes.
Pop-up offers such as notifications might seem irritating but only if you don’t know how to use them effectively. Because when employed strategically and sparingly, they can easily reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and help improve your conversions.
Just make sure your notifications perform well by offering something that is useful and relevant to your ecommerce site’s visitor. Also, if you are offering a promo or a gift, then they are perceived as a gift rather than a nuisance.
Even better, use StoreHippo platform for your online business. It allows you to effectively use various forms of notifications to help you with better conversions.
6. Offer One-Click Buying
You will be amazed to know that more than half of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts right before checking out.
Why do you think that is?
Yes, you guessed it correct; a complicated checkout process. It easily makes customers distracted, frustrated, or simply bored.
Don’t you think it's your responsibility to offer them something to check out faster when you build an online store? It is.
How about simplifying the payment and checkout process? Sounds good, right?
So, why not go for one-click buying for existing customers who are already logged in. Isn’t it why you have fallen for Amazon and its likes?
It's simple. Try out an ecommerce platform such as StoreHippo, its in-built feature remembers all your customers’ details for future use. Not to mention our single page checkout that makes ordering easy without going through the messy checkout process. We also offer multiple payment options to your customers for hassle-free purchase.
7. Offer “Buy as Guest” as well
In our last point, we discussed about the existing customers and how they can check out with one click on your ecommerce website.
But what about the guest users who don’t want to sign up or sign in?
After all, this is another major reason why customers abandon their carts; being asked for endless amounts of information.
So, what can you do?
Easy, give your guest users a super-easy way to pay, a “buy as guest” button, and move on. Remember, the more information you ask, the more likely you are to lose that sale.
Guess what? StoreHippo offers guest checkout facility to your customers as well which allows new customers to buy products easily without filling out all the unnecessary forms.
8. Free Shipping
We know to offer free shipping leaves you in a tough spot when you build an online store, but just hang on with us for a while.
Think of it from a customer’s perspective. They have mentally committed themselves to buy something, have justified prices in their heads, and are finally going to check out.
But wait!
Now they are seeing 60/- or 80/- shipping charges. And although it's a tiny amount, it changes the entire psychology of buying. What do you think people will do?
They will simply turn away.
To avoid this, offer them free shipping on your ecommerce website. You can always price the delivery cost into your products to make up for the cost. We know its a bit tricky but then nobody said, the way to entrepreneurship will be easy.
Here, StoreHippo comes to your rescue once again with its aggregator ShipKaro, offering solutions to all your shipping-related needs. With its help, you can easily give free shipping to your customers. Also, ShipKaro offers you multiple shipping options and that too, at discounted prices. Hard to ignore, right?
9. Be Available for Them
It might sound like a small thing but at times, it can easily escalate to matters of life and death for your conversion process.
Being available to your customers is more of a trust thing. And you can easily earn this by making your contact info such as your email id and your phone number clearly visible on your store when you build an online store.
It will help your customers to see that you are a legit business.
Another thing you can do to build trust is to offer live customer support to your customers. Handling your customers' purchase-related queries in real-time might make all the difference you need to boost your conversion rates.
With Storehippo backing you up, you will always stay connected with your customers as it gives you the freedom to integrate multiple support channels such as online chat, ticketing system etc. to help you out.
10. Be Transparent
Last but most importantly, be transparent as it goes way beyond honesty and detailed product descriptions. Be upfront and clear about policies and fees on your ecommerce website that affects your customers.
Majority of customers who abandon their shopping cart do so because they are unable to see or calculate the total order cost. These hidden costs often come as an unexpected surprise to otherwise convert customers.
To avoid this, make your costs, shipping and return policies clear and easy to find. Also, listing all the shipping options along with a blurb about the return policy on each product page might be a good strategy.
This will greatly reduce abandoned carts and help improve the conversion rates of your online store.
Wrap-Up
Armed with these 10 mega-tips, you can increase the conversion rate of your ecommerce store without spending extra on marketing.
Looking for more info on the subject? Check out our other blogs at StoreHippo. And when you feel motivated enough to go for a complete website overhaul or to start with a new one, give StoreHippo a try.
It is the next-generation ecommerce website provider whose platform is compatible with all the features mentioned above that can give your business the conversion boost it needs.
Book a free demo with StoreHippo today!
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