Running an
eCommerce store is an uphill struggle. You have to drive visitors to your
store, engage them, and persuade them to buy. There are some surefire tactics
such as paid ads to get them to your website. Yet, there’s no silver bullet
solution to make them buy from you.
If you’re seeing
visitors coming to your website but not buying from you, then the conversion
rate is low.
To detect this
problem, you need to measure the conversion rate of the website. The conversion
rate provides the percentage of visitors who bought your product. Conversion
depends on the goals you set for your website. The conversion rate is a better
measuring stick than conversions as it may give a skewed picture.
We will look at
nine potential reasons that might be causing a low conversion rate on your
online store.
Current
Scenario of Conversion Rates Across Different Industries
Before
understanding the reasons, let us look at industry wise conversion rates.
According to IRP Commerce, the average conversion rate in January 2020 was 1.76%. Here is the comprehensive breakdown:
|
Industry
|
Conversion Rate
|
|
Health and Wellbeing
|
3.23%
|
|
Home Accessories and Giftware
|
1.71%
|
|
Sports and Recreation
|
1.24%
|
|
Agricultural Supplies
|
0.76%
|
|
Fashion Clothing & Accessories
|
1.31%
|
|
Baby and Child
|
0.64%
|
|
Cars and Motorcycling
|
0.96%
|
| Kitchen & Home Appliances |
2.61%
|
|
Electrical & Commercial Equipment
|
2.14%
|
|
Arts and Crafts
|
2.86%
|
|
Pet Care
|
2.28%
|
|
Food and Drink
|
0.80%
|
So, What Is a Good Conversion
Rate?
While the table above gives an idea of the ecommerce average order value, there’s no definite answer for this. The conversion rate of your store depends on the age of your store, traffic, quality of the traffic, your reputation, etc. As long as you’re not spending more than your revenue (Unless that’s your strategy to plant your feet in the industry), you’re off to a good start. Use these benchmarks to compare where you stand, but don’t take them as gospel, especially if you’re lagging.
If you’re looking
for how much you can improve, unfortunately, there’s no answer to this as well.
The best way is to consistently benchmark your conversion rate over a definite
period of months to see the progress and set goals that would stretch the rate
by a bit to see if you can hit the target conversion rate.
Now that you know
how to evaluate the conversion rate for ecommerce stores, let’s see if your
website commits any of the following faux pas that negatively affect the
ecommerce conversion rate.
You Are
Not Clear About Your Target Audience
If you do not see the expected conversion rate, perhaps you need to reevaluate the characteristics of your ideal buyers. Know thy buyer persona. Everything you do on your website is guided by the understanding of who you’re selling to.
For instance, if you are selling to millennials, you can make your website more vibrant and technically bit intricate. On the other hand, if your audience is not tech-savvy, the same website may not work well in your favor.
When you visit
analytics, check the bounce rate, average time spent, location, device,
operating system, etc. of your visitors. Similarly, keep tabs on customer
reviews, emails, and complaints to understand their needs.
By not taking
into account these aspects, your ecommerce store is fated to have a low
conversion rate.
Your
Website Offers a Bad User Experience (UX)
UX is an essential component of your website. It’s how your visitors feel when they use your website. Designing UX is largely a research-driven process, and if you don’t take adequate time to understand consumer psychology, you may end up creating a subpar product.
One key indicator
of a bad UX is a high bounce rate. If your visitors leave the website without
browsing other pages, your website has some problems. Check if the navigation,
search feature, and key features are working correctly. Additionally, check if
the entry pop-ups are annoying the users to the point where they’re compelled to
leave your store.
You can check for these issues by using qualitative analytics tools such as heatmaps and session recordings.
Your
Website Is Not Properly Optimized
52%
of shoppers agree that a quick loading website is important to their loyalty.
A slow website is detrimental to the site performance and quite possibly
impacts search engine rankings negatively as well.
Another reason
for an un-optimized website could be targeting the wrong keywords. Knowing the
buyer’s journey and searcher’s intent are crucial during keyword research. For
instance, if you optimize the product pages for top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) or
awareness stage keywords, your conversion rate is bound to hamper due to the
expectation mismatch.
Your
Website Is Not Mobile-friendly
According to Statista, there would be approximately 3.5 billion smartphone users across the world in 2020. Also, 76% of shoppers shop via their smartphone. If your website does not cater to the smartphone users, you may see a severe dip in the conversion rate of your ecommerce website.
Use Google’s
Mobile-friendly Test tool by Google to see if your webpages are
mobile-friendly. Also, check your website on different smartphone devices and
mobile browsers to see their appearance. Compare the conversion rate of mobile
versus desktop traffic to understand the performance of your mobile site. If
the difference is vast, test if you find any difficulty navigating through the
website, using the search functionality, or placing an order.
Your
Selling Points Don’t Convince Buyers
Words move
people. The copy on the site, such as the headline, description, bullet points,
and call-to-actions (CTAs), should evoke emotions and drive people to act.
If any of these
elements fail to incite people from buying from you, your conversion rate will
go down. The copy should ideally be descriptive, persuasive, and emotive.
Knowing your target audience is essential because this will shape the voice and
tone of the copy. You won’t use casual language for a B2B product, which could
be perfectly suitable for a B2C apparel brand.
Also, when
crafting CTAs, include action verbs and create urgency by creating scarcity
tactics so that the shopper would act faster.
Your
Product Page Isn’t Compelling
Your product page is a major deciding factor that influences the purchase. If you are using a few images or bad quality images, then it will hamper the conversion rate, because the text on its own can’t convince people. Because humans are visual creatures. So anything assisted by image or video is bound to get a better response. In the following example, notice how Amazon has added multiple images to help shoppers understand more about the product.
Similarly, making
the product page too distracting by adding unnecessary pop-ups that draw user’s
attention from the primary CTA can drive visitors away from your website.
Your
Website Doesn’t Appear Trustworthy
If your store is
relatively new or unknown, shoppers might find it difficult to trust you.
People will hesitate because they don’t want to get duped. Please make sure
your website has the following elements:
- Clearly mentioned terms of service, shipping, and returns policy
- An easy way to contact you via email or telephone
- Assure that the shoppers’ personal and billing data is safe with
you. For this, highlight the trust indicators such as trust seals and
confirm that your website uses a valid SSL certificate
- Social proof is the online word-of-mouth that contains ratings and
reviews of your products. Keep a rating and reviews section on product
pages so that people know that legitimate users shop from your website
Snapdeal ensures that trust is clearly conveyed by highlighting the security aspect and contact details:
You Don’t Assist Shoppers During
Their Journey
When you go to a
retail store, you’d be greeted by a salesperson who will help you pick out the
best stuff for you. Although online stores don’t have the personal touch, check
if you’re missing out on any of these aspects:
- You are not using a live chat or chatbot feature to solve shoppers’ queries on the go
- You are not utilizing remarketing campaigns to re-engage with your buyers
- You haven’t set up cart abandonment email campaigns to remind users to complete the purchase
Since the rise of voice search and conversation artificial intelligence (AI), digital assistants and chatbots have become all the more common. Therefore, another way to assist them through their journey is to create content for micro-moments. These instances are intent-rich moments when the user is most likely to act on their needs.
Your Checkout Process Is Complex
According to Barilliance, 75% of your prospects leave the
store without completing the purchase. If you think your website doesn’t have
the shortcomings we just saw, you need to re-evaluate your checkout forms and
simplify as much as possible. A jarring checkout form is not only tedious to
fill, but users are also less likely to return to your website. Here are a few
ways you can simplify the checkout process:
- Populate certain fields automatically. For instance, if a user enters their zip code, the city and state should be fetched automatically
- Keep the checkout form on a single page. If you want to segregate it on different pages, do so by arranging fields in categories such as personal information, payment details, etc.
- Allow guest checkout. Don’t force users to register on your store
- Provide discount and coupon codes to users as an incentive to act faster
Amazon has a multi-page checkout form. But it shows a progress bar at the top to help users understand where they are in the checkout process.
3 Ways to Improve and Achieve a
Higher Conversion Rate
So, are you keen to boost your ecommerce conversion rate? Here are three quick tips you can implement to get started:
1. Run A/B Tests
In A/B tests, you
create two variations of the same page to test a hypothesis and observe which
variation drives more conversions. Running A/B tests is a common tactic to
boost the conversion rate. Pick out an element you’d like to test and create
two variants and run the campaign. It’s highly recommended to use an analytics
tool like HumCommerce
to measure the performance. If your website is set up on WordPress/WooCommerce,
you can install the HumCommerce WordPress plugin to make the
process easy.
2. Leverage User-generated Content
Since we’ve
talked about social proof, user-generated content can really help you boost the
conversion rate in two ways.
First, since
you’re getting content for users featuring your product, it acts as a vote of
trust for new users, which influences their purchase decision. Second, by
highlighting your customers, it can boost their loyalty towards your brand and
support your customer retention initiatives.
3. Ship for Free
People hate to
pay shipping charges. Although dropping shipping charges comes with operational
consequences, you can try shipping the products for free. If it works (i.e.,
boosts the conversion rate), it works! Just make sure to highlight it on your
website.
Conclusion
Improving the
ecommerce conversion rate is not an overnight phenomenon. You need to test
different things relentlessly to see what works and remove what doesn’t. As
said, having a robust analytics tool plays a critical role in getting feedback
on time. While Google Analytics can help you with numbers, a
qualitative/visual analytics tool such as HumCommerce can visually
tell you how you can improve your store’s performance.
Now that you know
what might be preventing your store from getting those conversions, start implementing
these tactics and let us know how it works out!
