eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization—What Should You Focus On?

A high conversion rate is important for your ecommerce business, because converting readers into customers is your ultimate goal.

You want visitors to your site to make purchases, sign up for exclusive offers, and stay engaged. 

In this article we’ll look at ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO), and some ways you can improve yours.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action. 

The formula for a conversion rate is:

The number of conversions divided by unique visitors to the platform multiplied by 100.

The resulting number is the conversion rate in percentage form.

The average conversion rate for ecommerce stores sits at around 4.31%.

That may seem low to the uninitiated, but just think about how many adverts you see every day that you don’t follow up with. 

How to Optimize Your Conversion Rate 

We’ve split the process of ecommerce conversion optimization into two categories:

• Technical optimization
• Marketing optimization

Technical CRO focuses on fine-tuning the aspects of your website that affect conversions, such as site speed, user experience, and security. 

Marketing CRO, on the other hand, focuses on strengthening your marketing capabilities, such as developing better ad campaigns, improving content strategy, and increasing brand awareness. 

By investing in both types of CRO, you can create a well-rounded optimization strategy that will help you maximize conversions and reach your business goals.

Technical Aspects

For the technical aspects, we’ll be looking at aspects of your site, and tools that you should focus on.

Ultimately you want to provide a good user experience meaning speed, responsiveness, and ease of use.

This is central to ecommerce CRO.

eCommerce Hosting

Hosting is the foundation of it all.

The ecommerce hosting solution you choose will have an impact on your conversion rate. 

You need a host that will give you a fast platform, with maximum uptime and good security. 

There is also the option of building a store on an SaaS solution like Shopfiy.

Using such a complete solution has the benefit of bundling features you will need. 

Mobile Page Optimization

Mobile devices are rapidly becoming the preferred choice for accessing the internet, with studies showing that people now spend more time on their phones than they do on desktop computers. 

As a result, it is essential for website owners to focus on ecommerce optimization for mobile devices.

Mobile-friendly features such as a responsive design, large font sizes, and easy-to-click buttons can make a big difference in the user experience.

Speed is crucial here.

Inventory Management

This is another critical aspect of boosting your conversion rate.

By keeping track of stock levels and customer demand, businesses can ensure that they always have the right products in stock. 

It will not only improve customer satisfaction, but will also prevent employees from wasting time searching for products that are out of stock, or doing stock management manually.

This way your employers can focus on customer service and sales.

Checkout Process

A smooth checkout process is important for a good ecommerce conversion rate because it helps to ensure that customers complete their purchases. 

Customers who are presented with a long, complicated checkout process are more likely to abandon their shopping carts before completing the purchase. 

Shopping cart software can help an easy checkout, and optimized payment gateways can reassure customers that their financial information can be shared securely. 

A Note On Headless eCommerce

eCommerce is growing at a rapid pace.

New technology comes out on a monthly basis, and if you want to stay on top of the latest developments to improve ecommerce conversion rates, it’d be worth considering a “headless ecommerce” model. 

This style of ecommerce makes for a modular website, which in turn allows you to tweak individual aspects without interfering with other parts.

If you want to constantly optimize, this style of ecommerce can help.

Marketing Aspects

Next, we’ll cover some marketing aspects important to ecommerce conversion rate optimization.

Remember, it’s not just about having a great site and offers, you have to make sure users know about and are directed towards them. 

eCommerce Images

First up commerce images. It’s important to have high-quality and accurate images so that customers can see what they’ll be buying.

Attractive images will entice customers, and also make them trust your brand more. 

Depending on how your site is built, you’ll also have to consider the size of your images, in order to make sure they load quickly. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing has a consistently high conversion rate of around 5%, and so a well-executed email marketing campaign can be a powerful tool for ecommerce conversion optimization.

By building relationships with subscribers and delivering relevant, targeted content, businesses can encourage subscribers to take action. 

When created and managed through email autoresponders, they also offer fantastic analytics which can further help you adjust your strategy at large. 

Landing Pages

Landing pages are a relatively new marketing tool, that offers quickfire and highly specific calls to action. 

By design, they put the call-to-action directly in front of the user and encourage them to answer it.

They’re aggressive but also easy for the visitor to follow through with.

There is an abundance of landing page builders that make creating them easy. 

Sales Funnels

Sales funnels are tools that incorporate the above methods into a wider strategy focused on conversion rate optimization for ecommerce.

With a sales funnel, you can link multiple steps together to create a journey for visitors to follow. 

Besides being effective at converting, the various funnels that exist can be monitored for “drop off”. This can indicate where most visitors are losing interest, which then shows you where to invest more attention. 

Social eCommerce

In the age of social media, you can’t ignore its marketing potential.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great for marketing. 

The new kid on the block TikTok eCommerce has also come out swinging and is a new favorite of brands everywhere for its ability to reach many views quickly, leveraging its algorithm to take your adverts to the customers they’re most likely to convert.

A power tool for improving ecommerce conversion rates.

Drip Marketing Campaigns

Finally, drip marketing campaigns are indispensable to building long-term relationships with customers.

A visitor who has converted is more likely to buy from you a second time, and they’re more likely to spread the word about your business.

That’s why drip marketing is a fundamental part of any long-term conversion rate optimization strategy.

Keeping an Eye on The Future

There you have some areas to focus on in both the technical and marketing aspects of your store, but don’t be content with that.

The final conversion rate optimization tips we have focus on always keeping an eye on the future.

Trending Products

When researching products, make sure to see what’s trending, what’s hot, and prioritize them if possible.

Naturally, you’re more likely to get conversions when you are offering an item that’s in high demand. 

You may even be able to notice a growing trend and get ideas about what to stock in the future.

The Future of eCommerce

Of course, ecommerce conversion optimization means you should also keep an eye on the future of the industry at large.

Get an idea of what may be possible in the future and plan accordingly. Who knows when AR marketing campaigns will take off, or if some new platform may come along and change the landscape completely. 

Thinking about the future of ecommerce will allow you to plan for further conversion rate optimization in the future.

Conclusion

There you have some ideas for what to focus on when it comes to ecommerce conversion rate optimization. 

You have to work on both the technical aspects of your business, as well as the marketing side.

It may not be easy, but each success will put you in a position to do better and better in the future.