6 Ways to Increase Your E-commerce Conversion Rates

Your conversion rate is an often overlooked factor in your sales funnel. Your customers are visiting your website but aren’t buying. In the worst case scenarios, they have items in their shopping cart but abandon it.

Let Them Be Sure of What They Are Getting

One simple way to avoid shopping cart abandonment is to put images and direct descriptions of the products (beyond part numbers and serial numbers) on the shopping cart page. Then the customer knows exactly what they’ve selected for ordering. 

The shopping cart page should give customers the option to edit the order in case they want to eliminate one item without abandoning the whole shopping cart. Make the checkout button a stand out feature on this page to entice people to actually place the order.

Eliminate Surprises at Checkout

A significant fraction of shopping cart abandonments occur because someone sees a final price tag much higher than they were expecting. You can reduce this rate by putting shipping and handling fees up front in clear language and bold text at the start of the checkout process. 

Another alternative is increasing prices to offset shipping and handling fees so that people only pay the price they see for the product. Or make it clear that someone gets free shipping when the order amount is above a certain threshold, encouraging them to put another item or two in the cart.

Let people know if the price they see is only available for a limited time to increase conversions, as well as avoid confusion if they see a higher price next week. Another solution to this is making shipping cost calculators available before someone starts filling the shopping cart so they can see what it would cost to send a standard order to their home address.

Let them see how much expedited shipping costs. And give them an expected delivery date based on the shipping selections before they place the order to eliminate surprises or dissatisfaction when the item arrives one to two weeks later. You can use time sensitive shipping discounts, though, to increase conversion rates.

If your company uses coupon codes or discount codes, make it very clear where those get entered during the checkout process. And if clicking on a link in an email results in application of those discounts, make that evident on the shopping cart screen. 

You can also add discount codes on promotional items and pass them out to spread the word about your business. You can always have custom buttons made by companies such as StickerMule (check them out here) and send these out with all your orders.
Give Them Their Preferred Payment Method

Around a quarter of shopping carts are abandoned because the customer could not find their preferred payment option. Sometimes this occurs because their preferred payment option is available but isn’t obvious – that can be corrected with bolder, stronger icons to find those payment options.

Other sites don’t offer the customer’s preferred payment option. Offer payment options like PayPal in addition to debit and credit card information. Remember that not all users have PayPal accounts, PayPal may block accounts and its international fees are high, so offer at least one other payment method like Stripe, Amazon Payments or Google Wallet.

Another benefit of giving customers multiple payment options is that it gives you a way to recapture the 10% of customers whose main payment method was declined. Others may choose a different payment method out of security concerns, so always give customers a choice. Two different payment options are a minimum, but rarely do you need more than four or five.

Regardless of the payment methods you select, always prominently display security logos that show it is safe for customers to enter their payment information on your site. You may want to do A/B testing as to the placement and style of these logos to see what eases the fears that cause around 20% of customers to abandon a shopping cart.

Avoid Too Much Data Entry

Every delay in processing the transaction increases the odds of shopping cart abandonment. Little changes like removing the drop down for titles can reduce shopping cart abandonments. Website navigation that is too complicated like multi-screen checkouts generally hurt you, while taking too long costs you time the same way every second your page takes to load costs you 10% of your potential website visitors. 

Remember that you need to prioritize your e-commerce site so that it never, ever times out. Be careful of excessive payment security checks, too, since it can kill a transaction and discourage customers from coming back.

Every piece of data you demand of the customer increases their hesitance to work with you. Don’t demand a phone number unless it is actually necessary. You should, however, implement a remember me option to save someone’s cart items and order information for later to increase the odds they come back and reduce the amount of data entry later if they become a repeat customer. 

This option also lets you recapture those who were not ready to purchase at that moment but become more likely to come back if they know they don’t have to repeat the process.

If you have to use a multi-page checkout, give customers a progress bar so they know where they are in the process. Don’t use the checkout process to force customers to sign up for an account. 

User Interface Engineering found a nearly fifty percent increase in purchases after forced registration was ended. And always make “Do you want to receive related offers from us?” option an opt-in instead of an opt-out or you’ll ensure that most people who bought from you now will not buy from you in the future.

Offer Support

Offer assistance to those having problems with the checkout process, whether they want to know if you deliver to their region or their payment method is incorrectly being declined. If they have hesitation, they are more likely to abandon the order. If they are having problems, it is cheaper and easier to deal with it before they complete the order and then have to call customer service for a correction.

It doesn’t have to be a toll free phone number; a chat box with a professional or well developed chatbot could be enough.

Use The Perfect Call to Action Button

The perfect call to action button stands out on the page, impossible to miss. It is usually located on the first page of the landing page whether they are on a mobile device or PC so that there is no chance someone will miss it because they didn’t scroll down.

The perfect call to action button clearly and concisely communicates what happens when you click it, whether you are signing up for an email newsletter, downloading an app or whitepaper, ordering a free sample or signing up for a free trial.

Conclusion

If you want to improve your conversion rates, make sure that your customers know what they are buying. Don’t let them be surprised by the product’s cost, shipping costs or other fees at checkout, since this drives many customers away. 

Make the shopping cart easy to fill out and edit. Give the customer multiple payment methods and make it clear it is safe to enter payment information on your site. Don’t require too much information, and never require them to register or agree to solicitations to buy your product. 

Offer support during the ordering process to avoid problems, and use clear call to action buttons so they know where to go whether to order your item, request help or sign up for a customer newsletter.