What is Conversion Rate Optimization? 14 Ways To Improve 

It is imperative that you design your store with your customers in mind.

Although increasing traffic might lead to more sales, it’s equally critical to concentrate on converting your present traffic into paying clients.

There are fresh opportunities for you to shorten, simplify, and enhance your clients’ shopping journeys at every turn. 

• What is conversion rate optimization?
• How to calculate conversion rate
• Where to start with CRO
• 14 conversion rate optimization strategies

What is conversion rate optimization?

A collection of marketing strategies called conversion rate optimization (CRO) can help you raise the proportion of website visitors that convert. It encourages individuals to perform a desired action by utilizing the psychology of persuasion in design. Multivariate and split, or A/B, testing is frequently used in CRO.

Conversions on websites are quite important. They’re the wonderful moments when infrequent customers ultimately purchase a product from you. Additionally, conversions are always occurring in the lead-up to that point on a far smaller scale.

A conversion on your homepage, for example, may be a visitor clicking through to a product. A customer selecting Add to Cart on a product page may be considered a conversion. The reason for a certain section of your website might have a direct impact on conversions.

For e-commerce firms, typical website conversions consist of:

• Internet commerce
• A client adds something to their shopping cart
• A visitor adds an item to their wish list
• Email registrations

But you are not constrained to the instances given above. Any ecommerce metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) unique to your company can be monitored and optimized for.

A CRO approach is highly beneficial in the following five areas:

• home page
• Product webpages
• landing pages
• Experience of checking out 
• Pages by category 

You must continuously test every element of your website personalization if you want to see an improvement in conversions on your online store. Numerous CRO case studies demonstrate how minor adjustments can have a significant impact on your optimization efforts. 

How to calculate conversion rate

Ensuring that conversion rates are tracked across all of your channels is a crucial component of keeping up a successful conversion rate improvement process. You must understand how to calculate CRO in order to achieve it.

This is an example of a typical conversion rate formula:

• (Total number of conversions / Total number of visitors) × 100 is the conversion rate.
• Let’s say that last month saw 1,000 visitors and 50 transactions in your store. 50 divided by 1,000 (.05) multiplied by 100 = 5% for your conversion rate.
• For your store, what is a good conversion rate? According to the most recent benchmark, the typical conversion rate for e-commerce websites is 3.65%. 

Aiming for a conversion rate of 2% to 3% is a good target for a new store owner. With time, you can raise your conversion rate by implementing the following conversion rate optimization techniques.

Where to start with CRO

There are several approaches to conversion rate optimization. We’ll concentrate on one that we know works in this guide. This type of experimentation is termed split testing, or A/B testing.

Comparing two iterations of the same webpage to determine which yields better results is known as A/B testing. Two variants of a page are simultaneously shown to two comparable groups of users when using A/B testing. Ultimately, the version with higher conversion rates and better performance is crowned the victor.

Developing a repeatable procedure is essential if you plan to begin conducting CRO tests for your store. You can use the following five-step CRO procedure for each trial you conduct:

• Investigate. At this stage, identify areas that need improvement. Find out what customers are doing in your store and how various website elements influence user behavior. User interviews, usability tests, Google Analytics, and customer surveys are some of the methods you might use to collect data. 
• Theory. Choose the modifications you’ll make to your pages based on the information you’ve acquired.
• Set priorities. Choose one of your hypotheses to test first. Prioritize the pages that will have the biggest influence on growth. Seek for underperforming pages or those with simpler adjustments that can increase conversion rates more quickly. 
• Examine. Try various theories on various pages to find which ones perform the best. Apply the modifications in a methodical way by conducting split or A/B testing. 
• Study. Examine the testing results and determine whether a change has to be implemented permanently. If not, think about why it didn’t work and apply that knowledge to guide your next attempts.
• Determine whether your website receives enough traffic to get findings that are statistically significant before doing any CRO tests. Your results won’t be able to teach you anything if your sample size is too tiny because they won’t fairly represent the usage of your site by a bigger population.
• You merely need to enter your desired test page’s current conversion rate into this calculator to see how big of a sample size you’ll need for an A/B test.

14 conversion rate optimization strategies

For e-commerce, optimizing your online store is a continuous process that will help you continuously learn more about your target audience and how you can better offer them. It’s not a one-and-done deal. It’s a continuous process of improvement that you should engage in regardless of the outcome of the tactic.

1. Make the user interface simpler

Simplicity is essential when creating a successful homepage. Customers develop their first impressions of your website in just 50 milliseconds, so you need to make the most of those moments. 

Steer clear of overpowering prospective buyers with words and visuals. Instead, use a straightforward, eye-catching design to keep true to your brand and message.

Just glance at Canada’s Provinces. It made use of two hero photos on its homepage, taking up the majority of the area above the fold. The language is brief and to the point, and it includes an obvious call-to-action (CTA) that directs readers to a collection.

It’s normally advisable to stick with your top-selling or most lucrative products, or collections like new arrivals or ongoing specials, if you’re unsure about what to highlight as your main hero. 

2. Display discount codes, in-the-moment purchases, and more

You may start creating buzz and directing visitors toward your products as soon as they land on your webpage. For Shopify store owners looking to increase traffic to their products, the following fantastic apps can help create demand and encourage purchases:

• Greeting bars. You may share specials, coupon codes, promotions, and more with your clients as soon as they visit your website by using apps such as 20+ Promotional specials Tools. With the help of these tools, you can place a discreet floating bar at the top of your homepage, which will draw clients in and direct them to the precise location you desire.
• Pop-up windows. Pop-unders and pop-ups work great to grow your email list. To add a quick pop-up to your homepage that offers a promo code in exchange for signing up for your newsletter, try utilizing an app like Privy or Popup.
• instantaneous purchases. Applications such as Fomo Social Proof allow you to display real-time purchases completed by other customers in the bottom corner of your store as a little notification. These apps give users social proof that other people are actively purchasing your things at this very moment, which creates a sense of urgency. 

3. Include endorsements to foster reliance

Have you appeared in any prestigious publications? Are any prominent influencers using your products?

To establish credibility and foster confidence, place badges, reviews, and testimonials beneath your primary information on your homepage. Considering this, 88% of shoppers place equal weight in internet reviews and referrals from friends and family.

4. Make use of smart search

It’s likely that buyers who are searching for a product on your website may not be aware of the precise location of it.

Consider placing your search bar prominently on your site if your store has a lot of products. This will allow customers to find what they’re looking for quickly rather than having to browse through categories.

You may enhance your search bar with predicted results that assist your consumers in finding what they’re looking for by using apps like Smart Search & Instant Search. 

As users type, intelligent search functions recommend products and results, accounting for typos and misspellings of product names.

Alo’s search bar makes it easier for its yoga clients to locate exactly what they’re looking for.

5. Properly arrange your categories.

Your e-commerce site should be clear, easy to use, and most importantly, obvious to your customers. Aim to limit the number of categories into which you divide your products. Rather, use four or six overarching categories with a submenu that includes more specialized subcategories.

Your most popular category should be at the front of your navigation bar when you arrange your categories according to popularity.

6. Make use of excellent product photos

The most crucial component of a successful product page are excellent product photographs. Make an effort to include pictures that appropriately capture the feel and appearance of your merchandise from all sides.

Include a video of your product in use as an added bonus. If you sell t-shirts, for example, show potential buyers what your shirts look like in action by including a video of a model wearing one on your landing page. 

Love Hair has several excellent instances of well designed product pages. For nourishing hair oil, check out the link above, which has a ton of gorgeous pictures, entertaining product descriptions, and quick films that truly highlight the product.

7. Be truthful when discussing costs, delivery schedules, and out-of-stock items.

You should never intentionally mislead customers. The most recent statistics on online shopping cart abandonment show that 69.99% of carts are abandoned. The primary cause? Overspending is excessive.

Don’t be scared to fully inform them about details like availability, delivery schedule, and price. When you effectively market and convey the value of your products, clients won’t mind paying a little bit more for shipping or having to wait a little longer for delivery.

If you run a Shopify store, you can also offer your customers the option to receive notifications when new out-of-stock items are added to your store by using an app like Back In Stock.

8. Display your product evaluations

Customers who are unsure about a product can have their reservations dispelled by reading product reviews, which also provide the social evidence they need to click the Add to Cart button. It’s true that reading product evaluations online influences nine out of ten purchases.

When it comes to persuading consumers that a product is worthwhile to buy, positive product reviews can make all the difference. Reviews also assist consumers in making better choices about color, size, and other factors.

Product feedback and Yotpo are two apps that Shopify store owners may utilize to directly incorporate customer feedback onto their product pages.

Product reviews are particularly beneficial for companies in the skincare and cosmetics sector. For example, Beardbrand displays reviews on each and every one of its product pages.

9. Make use of heat maps

For ecommerce firms, heat maps are a well-liked CRO strategy since they take a lot of behavioral data and simplify it visually.

Spots of engagement on your website are shown on a heat map, which typically uses “warm” and “cool” color schemes. There is a lot of activity in a warm (red, orange, or yellow) area of the heatmap. Lower activity is indicated by cooler hues.

Heat maps let you see which parts of your website are most popular with users. They make visible the areas of your store where customers move, scroll, and click. Scroll heat maps display the depth that people descend before departing. You may examine how users interact with dynamic features like forms, drop-down menus, and pop-ups by using apps like Lucky Orange.

In addition, Lucky Orange provides additional methods for conversion rate optimization to lower cart abandonment and boost revenues, such as:

• Replays of screen recordings that allow you to observe how users explore your website and engage with your business
• With live view, you can watch visitors’ activities in real time and have a live chat conversation with them via the app if you notice any reluctance.
• You can target more specific client groups by using segmentation and filtering, which sorts heatmaps and recordings based on browser type, device type, traffic source, and other factors.
• Heat maps are an excellent tool for understanding how customers perceive your store. To enhance conversions, you can assess fresh concepts, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and enhance certain areas of your website.

10. Fill in your customer’s details in advance.

By automatically plugging up your current customers’ shipping and billing details with their customer accounts, you can make it even simpler for them to make more orders.

The fewer data that consumers must enter, the better. According to a Google study, customers using autofill complete out forms 30% faster, which can increase conversions at the checkout.

Installing Shop Pay, Shopify’s merchant checkout service, is another option. Shop Pay securely expedites checkout with a single tap by remembering and encrypting consumer information.

Clients are free to select whether to pay in full or in installments, as well as to use their preferred method of payment.

11. Send emails about abandoned carts

Regretfully, consumers may occasionally load up their carts with merchandise and then depart, never to return.

You may remind those consumers of the products they’ve already shown interest in and gently encourage them to come back to your site to finish the transaction by sending them emails about abandoned carts.

12. Establish a thorough Contact page.

It should be simple for your consumers to contact you if they so choose. 

It is incredibly difficult for customers to be unable to express their feelings, whether they are favorable or negative. In addition to providing options for customers to interact with your company in interesting and engaging ways, your Contact page should also contain means for them to get inin contact with you should something go wrong.

This is a brief list of all the contents your Contact page ought to have:

• A contact form or email address
• Your exact position, given on a map and with instructions
• The hours of your retail outlet
• Links to your online personas on social media
• Contact details relevant to the support, such as a phone number or email

13. Verify that your website is optimized for mobile.

Your company should prioritize becoming mobile-responsive. Smartphones and tablets account for more than 59% of all web traffic, according to Statista. You want mobile site users to have an excellent user experience.

Fortunately, every Shopify theme is automatically designed to look great on all devices if you own a Shopify store.

Enter your website’s URL into Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to see if it is responsive.

14. Improve the loading times of your website

As previously said, if your website loads slowly, visitors will go. Not only do faster websites offer an improved user experience, but they also improve the SEO of your store. Your bounce rate will decrease the longer visitors stay on your website, indicating to search engines that your site is reliable and deserving of attention.

Using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is the simplest way to find out how long it takes for your online store to load. You can get a comprehensive assessment on how quickly your website loads using PageSpeed Insights, which will also highlight any problems you can fix to speed up load times.

Although streamlining your store’s load times can be a challenging task, there are a few things you should constantly remember. Your website’s loading speed may be significantly impacted by the size of your photos. 

Try using an application like ImageOptim to optimize and compress each and every image. With ImageOptim, every image file has all superfluous data removed, leading to a significantly reduced file size and negligible visual changes.

Additionally, even if an app is disabled, it can still add to the load on your website, so Shopify store owners should try deleting any that you are no longer using.

Best CRO resources

In no particular order, here are some of the best Shopify apps for raising the conversion rate of your website:

• Privy: A tool for email, SMS, and pop-up marketing that increases purchases. 
• Smile: A customer loyalty app that drives VIP programs and referrals to boost sales.
• Blyp: a CRO tool driven by AI that monitors and uncovers untapped sales prospects. 
• Remarketing software called Firepush aids in multichannel marketing and cart recovery.
• Yotpo Product Reviews: User-generated content such as ratings and reviews are gathered and displayed by this social proof app. 
• Hotjar: A set of online analytics tools that includes surveys, feedback widgets, heat maps, and session recording to help you understand user behavior.
• You can engage a Shopify specialist to handle CRO if you don’t want to handle it yourself. There are 110 conversion rate specialists and agencies at your disposal. 

Higher conversion rates result from more experiments.

Whether you run a company or are a marketer, getting individuals to click that call to action (CTA) button is your only objective. It is obvious that page optimization and website conversion rate should be part of any e-commerce marketing plan. By carrying out the aforementioned experiments, you can improve the user experience of your website and motivate visitors to perform the required action, such as adding items to their carts, email signups, or purchases.

Conclusion

Reaching the maximum potential of your website requires embracing conversion rate optimization. You may increase conversions and take your online business to new heights by putting the customer experience first and putting smart ideas into practice.”

If you’re looking for an ecommerce development company to help you with the creation of a mobile app, Appic Softwares is a great choice. We have a talented development team available to help you with any and all of your requirements.

Why then are you acting so cautiously?

Give us a call right now!