Are you looking to boost your shopping site’s sales? The best way to do this is by improving your webshop conversion rate. This is simply the number of visitors who perform a desired action on your site. If your webshop has 1,000 viewers and 50 of them make a purchase, that is a 5% conversion rate. You may use it to check if your website’s call to action (CTA) is effective and help you better understand your customers. Let’s find out how to optimize your conversion rate, which will lead to happier customers and a happier you.
Getting familiar with webshop conversion rates
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So what exactly do we mean by the term “conversions”? A conversion is when people perform a desired action on your site, such as buying a product or filling out a contact form.
Your conversion rate, which factors in all the CTAs on your website, indicates how well you’re reaching your goals. These include buyers purchasing goods or services on your site, visitors signing up for your newsletter, and contacting customer service or support. The higher your ecommerce site’s conversion rate is, the better the chances you’re generating plenty of sales, as it’s likely your desired call to action is purchasing your product or service.
Conversion rate is also a solid indicator of how your brand and marketing strategy are doing. It’s relative and different for each webshop because many factors can affect it:
- Brand recognition
- Different audiences
- Marketing strategy
- Price
- Usability
What are micro and macro conversions?
You should consider two types of conversions. Micro conversions focus on small user tasks, such as viewing an item or adding an item to the shopping cart. Macro conversions are larger tasks, such as buying an item or completing the desired call to action on your site.
Micro conversions help guide the user to complete a macro transaction. Both types impact your conversion rate, which goes beyond persuading users to make purchases on your webshop. If your users are completing micro conversions, they’ll be more likely to complete a macro conversion. But if users are having issues with smaller tasks, such as difficulty adding an item to your shopping cart, that will negatively impact the amount of completed purchases. You may also get conversions from email newsletters and social media campaigns.
To get the most conversions, consider the goals of your webshop. What do you want visitors to accomplish? You may want them to:
- Create a new account
- Download instructions and other materials
- Fill out a contact form
- Subscribe for an email newsletter or service
- Contact your ecommerce store or support
All of these actions are common goals for ecommerce shoppers. Taking care of your users’ needs and helping them accomplish their goals will lead to a higher conversion rate.
How to measure your webshop conversion rate
You might be wondering how your webshop conversion rate is measured. It’s the number of visitors who perform an action, such as buying a product on a website, compared to the total amount of users.
These are measured by website analytical tools, such as Google Analytics and Matomo. You may set up a conversion tracker on your website through Google Analytics, which is free. KissMetrics offers a bevy of tools to analyze your website’s conversion rate and traffic in many ways. Due to their high pricing, starting at $300 a month, this solution is better suited for larger ecommerce sites. Matomo is a privacy-focused open source alternative with free and paid plans. These tools provide the data you need to measure and strengthen your webshop’s conversion rate.
Understanding conversion rate optimization (CRO)
What is is a good conversion rate? If yours is increasing over time, you likely won’t need to worry about it. The simple indication of a rising conversion rate tells you “hey, business is good.” If you note spikes and upticks, it may occur during sales events, such as summer savings, and difficult economic times.
If your conversion rate is dropping or stagnant or your sales are slipping, it might be a good time to investigate why this is happening. A low conversion rate signifies users are leaving your site or not performing the desired action. Are your prices too high? Is your site easy to use? Are the CTAs obvious on the page? A low conversion rate could be due to a fledgling branding strategy or poor design.
On the flip side, a high conversion rate will bring new audiences to your webshop, a rise in returning consumers, increased brand loyalty, better visibility through search engine optimization, and, of course, more sales. If your conversion rate is increasing, you’re doing great! Be proud of yourself. If you’re unhappy about your conversion rate, don’t worry. We’re about to provide tips on how to increase it.
Insights on how to boost your webshop conversion rate
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Here’s a scenario of how conversion rate can significantly boost your business: Jamie runs a webshop where she sells handmade jewelry, such as bracelets, necklaces, and rings. Her sales have been lacking of late and her conversion rate is low. But how can Jamie improve it? As we explore some helpful tips on how to boost conversion rates for webshops, we’ll use Jamie to accentuate the different methods.
1. Pay attention to your SEO
Is your ecommerce store easily discoverable on search engines? If it isn’t, users won’t be able to organically find your webshops.
That might be desirable for low-production webshops that want to avoid mainstream culture to upkeep an exclusive reputation. But most webshops don’t operate like this and are more open to wider audiences.
Perhaps your brand is more similar to Jamie’s jewelry shop. Remember, one of her goals was to reach out to more customers and expand her business. She focused on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by analyzing and adding relevant keywords from her site analytics: jewelry, apparel, and trendy. She streamlined her website’s content. This led to more traffic to her webshop, increasing her sales. While you’re at it, scan your content for grammar, spelling, and readability. Make sure your product images and videos are clear and high quality. Consistency and quality of content is key for SEO and usability, as both strongly impact conversion rate.
2. Be open-minded about your audience
Often, you may not realize who is buying your product or service: Jamie’s initial target audience for her webshop was fashionable women in their 20s and 30s. Yet, after reading customer reviews and looking at images of people wearing her jewelry on social media, she was surprised how many teenagers and seniors of all genders wore her jewelry.
She conducted research into this new market, using focus groups, email surveys and interviews to establish what it is they liked about her brand and what she could do to better serve their jewelry needs. And one thing that kept popping up was the consumers’ request for international shipping.
For many webshop owners, shipping outside of your country can be costly but it pays to expand to new markets. With this attitude in mind, Jamie decided to offer international shipping for an increased global presence. Through these improvements, she noticed a higher conversion rate and more sales within months. Consider offering international shipping and be open-minded about expanding your audience to attain a wider reach.
Jamie gained new customers by catering to a wider audience than she first imagined and offering international shipping on her webshop. She made lots of effort to make new customers feel welcome and give a positive, lasting first impression—and you should do the same.
Reach out to your customers and explore their social media pages. Like Jamie, you should always look for opportunities to better understand your consumers. You can greatly boost your conversion rate by catering to them and their needs.
3. Strengthen your brand identity
Think about how your branding impacts conversion rate. Going back to Jamie’s webshop, her store has a fun, trendy vibe with vibrant colors arranged in an elegant manner. For her, she thought this aesthetic would be highly appealing to teenagers and young adults. Turns out, a lot of elderly people were drawn to it as well. Jamie’s webshop attracts many new customers, positively affecting her conversion rate.
Just as everyone has their own personality, your brand should as well. Take the luxury jewelry brand, BVLGARI. They create an exclusive, glamorous brand identity through a minimalistic web design and featuring high-profile, aspirational celebrities in lavish ads. Everything is consistent in their branding; everything feels expensive.
Compare this to another jewelry brand, like Claire’s. This high street label finds it’s target audience in kids and tweens, using cheerful imagery and bright, energetic colors.
It’s vital to understand how your audience is receiving your brand identity. Is the language and imagery you’re using connecting on an emotional level to them? Is every interaction they have with your brand a consistently positive memorable experience?
Another bonus of running focus groups with audiences is to analyze your branding. And a consistently strong, authentic and believable brand identity creates consumer trust. It offers them an experience, product or service they can rely on. With this on your side, you can feel safe your consumers trust in your enough to choose you over competitors.
4. Make it easy for the user
User experience plays a vital role in every website. Visitors should use your site effortlessly. If your site is easy to use and navigate, your conversion rate will balloon up. According to the research and consulting body, Forrester, “a well-designed user interface could raise your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.” Shoppers should always be able to easily perform routine tasks, such as creating an account and checking out. If there are any bumps in the road, they probably won’t stick around to smooth things out.
Jamie studied how visitors used her website through usability testing, which consists of gathering live feedback from your products’ users. She asked them to check out and sign up for a newsletter. Not only did she better understand her customers, but she found where they struggled and what they enjoyed about her site. Apparently, many users found the checkout process on her jewelry store too complex, so she simplified it, resulting in more completed transactions. By optimizing the following, you should gain a higher conversion rate:
- Make your webshop responsive, which means it can adapt to different devices
- Implement effortless navigation so users can quickly accomplish tasks
- Robust search function with filters to help users narrow down search results
- Simplify user tasks, such as signup and checkout, to save time and reduce cognitive load
- Always keep your customers in mind for better engagement and customer satisfaction
5. Optimize your webshop’s performance
If your pages take several seconds to load, users will bounce, or leave. You, me, and Jamie have all left sites that took forever to load. Long loading times is one of the biggest negative influences on conversion rate. Ensure your website loads quickly, as it will make it more accessible for those who do not have fast internet connections and keep visitors engaged. And don’t forget about prioritizing mobile users with mobile-first design: over half of online consumers shop on their mobile devices.
Here are some tips on optimizing your page load times:
- If you use a site manager like Shopify, Webflow, and WordPress, eliminate unnecessary plugins to reduce page load times
- Reduce the number of interactive elements, such as code-heavy interactions and videos
- Remove redundant code
- Use smaller file sizes for images and videos, especially for those with slow internet speeds
6. Offer incentives and rewards
Always keep an eye on your webshop’s competitors. You can use them as a barometer of what you’re doing well and where you can improve. Plus, you could even draw inspiration from them! Jamie noted her prices are slightly higher than her competitors. . After lowering them, she realized keeping her pricing competitive sells more jewelry.
Consumers love saving money. Knowing this, Jamie implemented a rewards program based on the amount of money a customer spends at the store. Reward customer loyalty through discounts, whether it is through offering free shipping, coupons, or rebate programs. This builds relationships and trust with them, incentivizing customers to return to your store. A rewards program can strengthen the bond between both new and recurring shoppers and your webshop. What a fantastic way to bolster your conversion rate!
Jamie now offers a variety of features and incentives on her ecommerce site. After implementing a privacy policy section on her site, she established trust with customers by revealing how their privacy is protected. She also embedded a chat support platform so users can quickly get help or learn about products.
And Jamie created a loyalty and rewards program for returning customers, which resulted in an uptick of consistent consumers. By offering free shipping and multiple payment options, Jamie’s webshop was better able to compete with other jewelry shops. Embedding testimonials from customers and social media on product pages meant that Jamie was able to further establish credibility and trust with her customer base.
Feel free to use any of the features and ideas Jamie implemented for your webshop—it might result in a nicely sized increase in conversion rate.
Tales from the conversion rate treasure trove
If we reflect on our little scenario, we see Jamie was able to boost her webshop conversion rate in a myriad of ways. She interviewed customers, implemented their feedback after conducting usability testing, offered incentives and rewards, optimized her SEO, and simplified the checkout process. All of these factors led to a huge sales boost and more new and returning customers. Now Jamie is all smiles with her jewelry store and you could be as well.
Your conversion rate can be the key to your webshop’s success. Like pirates relentlessly on a quest searching for gold, always look for opportunities to increase your conversion rate. You never know when you’ll make treasured moments with your customers.
