Proven Techniques To Boost Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

There was a time when the internet was purely used for work. But in just a few decades, the internet has taken over the world. It would be fair to say that we can do almost everything on the internet nowadays, including buying and selling online. Yes, we can make commercial actions online, and this activity even has a term called E-commerce. Naturally, e-commerce is done through websites and mobile applications, as with everything on the internet. You probably are involved with e-commerce, given that you are in this article.

Now the thing with e-commerce is that, just like the physical market, everything depends on the customer's purchase. Sure, the e-commerce website/application may have thousands of visitors per day, but if they leave without purchasing anything, the company will still lose revenue. The question is, "How can you convert your visitors into potential customers as an E-commerce platform?"

The best answer is to optimize and prepare your E-commerce store for the best conversion. However, before we get into the specifics of conversion and all the other stuff related to e-commerce conversion, let's clear out some basics first.
 

What is the e-commerce conversion rate?

E-commerce conversion is simply the rate of people visiting people purchasing from your website. That said, the ratio of people visiting purchasing is not the only conversion. Besides purchases, activities such as the ones below are also counted as conversions:

• Products added to the cart
• Product added to wishlist
• Social Media Shares
• Email Signups

Although the priority for conversion will always be in the ratio of visitors to sales, the rest of the activities indicate that the visitors have a high probability of purchasing from E-commerce. The actual conversion is a bit more complicated with a few additional metrics.
 

How is the Conversion Rate calculated?

Calculating the conversion rate is as simple as dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of visitors and multiplying them by 100. Depending on the platform, conversion activity can vary. However, if you want to calculate the conversion rate, you must take the two numbers and divide them.

Example for calculating Conversion Rate:

E-commerce platform ABC gets 10000 visitors per month, an average of 120 purchases, and 300 add-to carts per month. This company only considers purchases as conversions.

The conversion rate of this platform will be the total number of purchases divided by the total number of visitors and then multiplying them by 1000, which is:

120/10,000 x 100
or 0.012x100
or 1.2%

Therefore the conversion rate of the E-commerce platform is 1.2%.

You should note that if the conversion factor of an e-commerce platform only takes purchase as its conversion, then the baseline for a good conversion rate starts at 3%. Along with this, the baseline for a good conversion rate increases with the increase in conversion factors.

The question now is -
 

How do you improve conversion rates on an e-commerce platform?

The most obvious answer to this question naturally, is to have products your target audience wants. Let's be honest: if your target audience is fashion-savvy and your primary product is all about gadgets, you will naturally not have any conversions.

But besides this, there are many ways to improve the e-commerce conversion rate. Some of the best ones are:

1) High-Quality Images

People will not know what you sell unless they see the product. This is a natural thing, given that seeing is believing these days. You can use this to increase your conversion rate simply by uploading high-quality images of the actual product.

High-quality images let your visitors see what they are getting.

2) Free Shipping

Let's be honest here, who does not love getting things freely? Although your visitors will still need to pay for the products, they will not need to pay the delivery charges. That said, as a business, you will still need to cover delivery charges somehow, so raising the prices of your products by a small margin might do the trick.

This will not work if your customers are tech-savvy since they will see inflated prices. If you inflate the prices by a small margin, you will still have higher conversion rates. This is a delicate game of raising the product prices to provide free delivery but still low enough to not be obvious.

3) Limited Time discount and coupon codes

Besides free shipping, another thing that potential customers love is discounts. Therefore, if you are an e-commerce business, releasing temporary discount offers is a must. These can be festive discounts or discount offers as per your business plan. At the same time, if you are a wholesaler, you can also let your potential customers get discounts on bulk purchases.

Besides the discount on bulk purchases, the rest of the discount will naturally need to be for a limited time, or you will go into loss. Regardless, discount offers and coupon codes are great for a short quick burst in the conversion rate for your e-commerce platform. If you do this well, you can convert these quick conversions into long-term customers.

4) Competitive pricing

Pricing can be a rather delicate thing since if you price your products too low, customers will lose trust in their quality, and you might face losses even if you do get conversions. At the same time, if your price is too high, then you may not get any conversions. Find the perfect balance between these two and fix the price according to your competition's pricing.

This is one of the best ways to increase the conversion rate for your e-commerce platform.

5) Smooth Ecommerce Checkout Process

A bad checkout process is one of the worst things a customer at an e-commerce platform can face. It does not matter if your platform has great products at a great price and features; if your e-commerce checkout process is bad, you will lose conversions.

Keep the e-commerce checkout process simple and let your visitors check out easily. If you have the right products with the right price and a smooth e-commerce checkout process, then there is a good chance for your visitors to convert slowly eventually, even without the offers.

6) Chatbot and live chat features

When your potential customers get confused, they will require help. Not everybody is tech-savvy; sometimes, some people may find even the simplest task challenging. During such times a chatbot or live chat system will be a boon for the said visitors.

With a chatbot, visitors can go to the chatbot and ask for help or even chat with customer support. If visitors get help, they are likely to purchase your products, which will aid you in conversion rate optimization.

7) Platform Safety

By this point, just about everybody knows that although the internet is generally safe, it is not the safest of places. So, if your visitors find any sign that your platform is not safe, then making a purchase will be the last thing on their minds.

Keep your website secure and ensure your visitors feel their data is secured. You can install SSL E-commerce checkout during website development and display credentials from trusted security organizations for this.

Nothing feels better than security, and having a secure E-commerce platform can and often does boost conversions.

8) Mobile Optimization

Considering that more than half of the internet users are mobile users, it is a given that your E-commerce website should be mobile optimized. A mobile-optimized e-commerce platform increases the reach, enabling your customers to browse and purchase on the go.

The Internet is cheap these days, and purchasing data while on the go is slowly becoming the norm.

9) Easy and efficient sorting System

Nothing is worse than knowing that the e-commerce platform has the product of your desire yet not finding it easily. People have niche needs, and one of the best ways to keep them interested is to add an easy way to sort through the products.

An easy and efficient sorting system allows your customers to easily find what they need and add to your conversion rate.

10) Customer Review

One of the best ways to gain conversion is to display product reviews. Regardless if how your e-commerce platform deals with products or services, if people see good reviews, interested ones are more than likely to give it a try. If your product/service is good, then there is a good chance for the converted ones to write a review which then starts a positive loop.
 

Conclusion,

In the end, the best way to increase the conversion rate to your e-commerce is to have genuine products and convenient features for your visitors. You could always enlist the services of an IT company for digital marketing and optimizing your platform. If your platform is easy to use and has the products for your target customers, your conversion rate will increase. At the same time, you should not forget the price and portrayal of your product.

It's not that hard to increase the conversion rate of your E-commerce platform; it's just a lot of work and trial and error before you get the conversion rate right.

We hope you found this interesting and helpful. If you want further insights on aspects of website development, do check out some of our other blogs. And as always, thank you for reading till the end.
 

FAQ

How do you increase the conversion rate in E-commerce sales?

Some of the best ways to increase conversion rate in e-commerce sales are:

• Using High-Quality Images
• Having an easy sorting system
• Limited time discount
• Cheap/free shipping 
• Add to cart
• Competitive price
• Shopping cart abandonment software
• Safety

What is a good conversion rate in e-commerce?

A good conversion rate with a single conversion factor is around 2.5% to 3%.

How is e-commerce conversion calculated?

E-commerce conversion is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions by total visitors and multiplying them by a hundred.

What are the factors that affect E-commerce conversions?

Some of the factors that affect E-commerce conversions are:

• Product
• Bounce rate
• Customer support
• Payment Methods
• Trust Badges