Conversion magic: turning visitors into buyers

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:

• Avoid spammy marketing 
• Use social proof, including real customer reviews 
• Show your human side by putting your address and contact details on the site and perhaps some team photos 
• Include trust seals, so shoppers know their card details are secure 

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:

• ‘Try it today’ 
• ‘Start your free trial now’ 
• ‘Get a free 14-day trial’
• ‘Start a free trial – no credit card required’ 

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. 

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.