E-commerce is a challenging domain, where sustenance and success come with dedication, diligence, and perseverance. The huge competition in the domain is one of the biggest hindrances as you have to beat a large number of competitors to stand out and be visible to the shoppers out there. At the same time, it is not only about getting people in but also about compelling them to convert. Conversion refers to enticing the visitor to complete the purchase before he leaves the website.
The metric that measures conversion is conversion rate which is defined as the percentage of visitors that have converted by completing the purchase. The seller would want to maximize this rate to drive higher sales and revenues for his business. For this reason, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is regarded as one of the main strategies for enhancing the performance of an e-commerce store. Let us try to understand the significance of this metric as a part of a digital marketing campaign.
CRO-The Building Block Of A Digital Campaign
CRO refers the process of optimizing the e-commerce website for boosting its conversions. The basis of a successful CRO strategy is creating high-end user experiences by working on the user interface of the e-commerce store. Here, it is important to consider parameters such as the website design, placement of CTA’s, loading speed, etc. The idea is to combine data with creativity for redesigning the customer journey to drive more conversions. Ideally, a conversion rate between 1-3% is the globally-accepted average for businesses and this is the rate that you should set as a benchmark.
Typically, digital experts work on the shopping carts, product pages, landing pages, and sign-up pages as a part of a CRO strategy. There is also a need to focus on mobile conversion rates. There are two ways in which stores can increase the CRO- firstly, by boosting the traffic while maintaining the conversion rate and secondly, by increasing the conversions with the same number of visitors. The latter is more feasible as there is need to put efforts only on hiking conversions rather than trying to boost traffic too (as it is required in the first option). Therefore, a smart digital marketer will make an effort to lift the ROI to boost the website’s CRO.
Crafting An Effective CRO Strategy To Drive Sales
Understandably, an effective CRO strategy can have a far-reaching impact on the sales that an e-commerce store makes. The current focus, therefore, is to maximize your conversion rate by applying best practices and innovative ideas. Here are a few measures that can be taken for crafting a new strategy or fine-tuning an existing one.
User Analysis: Everything depends on the user
To begin with, one has to understand the users, their expectations, demographics, and preferences. There is also a need to know the most searched keywords to assess what they are exactly looking for. If you are experiencing a low conversion rate, revisit your buyer persona and try and understand where it fails to align with the actual one. The best approach would be to find what your audience is truly looking for and give them the same in terms of the content and design of your website. Similarly, you may also need to revamp your products and/or services to make them more user-focused.
Easy-breezy Shopping: Simplify the checkout process
Another factor that has a fa-reaching impact on your site’s conversion rate is the simplicity of the checkout process. Online shoppers are an impatient lot that is always pressed for time. Making them fill long forms with multiple fields will just make their journey cumbersome and increase the chances of bouncing away. Making checkout as short as possible is a good idea and so is providing the option of guest checkout to the users. Furthermore, you can ease the checkout process by offering multiple and trending payment options so that the shopper has at least a few that he or she may prefer.
Design Workup: Capture their attention
Whether it is the landing page, home page, checkout page, or sign-up page, design matters the most when it comes to conversion. The visitors can judge the website in just a few seconds and make up their mind whether they would want to move further or abandon it right at the initial stage. Therefore, investing in an eye-catching design does not remain a choice for the seller as it not only improves the conversion rate but also gets the shopper return for shopping again. Ensure that the design is appealing, minimalistic, and intuitive, with clear messaging and well-placed elements.
Navigation: Make their journey easy
Navigation is another key aspect of conversion optimization as it enhances the customer journey and drives them to convert. Ideally, the shoppers who visit your website should be able to locate the products and information they require within three clicks or fewer. Offer easy search functionality along with filters to make shopping fast and efficient. As a bonus, you can include the innovative e-commerce trends such as voice search and image search too. Focus on simplifying the navigation with the contextual placement of elements so that the visitors can move through the website intuitively. Work on speed optimization as well.
A/B Testing: Aim for perfection
With CRO, you can take no chances because if you are not serving perfection, the visitor will move on. Go for A/B testing and multivariate testing to ensure that the store runs seamlessly and gives perfect shopping experiences. Ideally, you should test every single element on your website, from the images to sales copy, product descriptions, CTAs, and the entire navigational elements. The aim is to find an optimal list of elements that work for the prospective shoppers to get you the desired results in the form of an improved conversion rate for your e-commerce store.
Relevant Messages: Give them that special feeling
Relevance is the key to success and there is a need to serve relevant content that conveys the right messages to the prospective shoppers. Have a personalized targeting strategy to send across contextual offers and recommendations to the buyers. Reminder exit pop-ups can bring back the users leaving the site without purchasing, while Thank You pop-ups for conversions bring them back. Send across personalized abandoned cart reminder mails to be in sight and entice customers with special offers to bring them back to close the transaction. Similarly, you can re-target them with platform-specific messaging such as personalized push notifications on mobile.
Consistent Experiences: Optimize for the web and mobile
As e-commerce shoppers are no longer confined only to the web, you need to ensure consistent shopping experiences for your shoppers. Additionally, the mobile-first algorithm by Google necessitates them to get your website visible on the top of search rankings. Hence, there is the need to ensure responsiveness for your store so that it is capable of aligning itself with any device and any screen size. Optimize the placement and size of the navigational elements in such a way that they are easy to use irrespective of the device being used to access the store.
Super-strong Security: Make the experience as secure as possible
Security is something that can make all the difference to the shopper’s intent to convert. No visitor would want to share their personal and financial details or transact on a website that they cannot trust enough. Therefore, it becomes critical to make your site super-strong from the security perspective if you want to take the conversion rate up. Displaying an SSL certificate lets the potential customers consider the site as a trustworthy place for sharing their confidential details. You should also ensure that the payment processors on your store offer security and fraud protection as well.
Reviews And Feedback: Listen to the customers
Conversion optimization is not just about getting the customers to convert but also bringing them back to shop again. Listening to the customer has a positive impact because it gets you the trust of the buyers as well as gives you an overview of all that needs to be done to improve your products and/or services. Real reviews from real customers act as a branding support as well because potential customers are more likely to trust them more in comparison to any advertising campaign that you invest in.
Conclusion
In the end, there is a need to ensure that everything works, from the online store to the m-commerce mobile app, from home page to landing page, checkout page, and product page. You can take the experiences beyond expectations by offering superlative customer support along with live chat functionality. This will help you to connect with the customers and address their concerns and queries. The idea is to serve perfection at every step of the shopping journey that leads to conversion.
At OrangeMantra, we are a team of expert digital marketers offering a full range of online marketing services. We use our expertise to get in high traffic for your e-commerce store and boost conversion rates as well. Choose us as your digital marketing partner and make your online store a favorite shopping destination.
