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Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is critical for online businesses. With the ecommerce market growing at a phenomenal rate—to an estimated US$8.1 trillion in sales by 2026—ecommerce CRO tips and strategies have become more crucial than ever to lock down a sale.

There are several simple and useful tactics to help boost conversions for your online store. In this article, I’ll outline some of them to help you generate more sales for your ecommerce business.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the number or percentage of website visitors who engage with a website through certain actions. They are not just visiting the ecommerce site but engaging by clicking on the “subscribe” (for your email list) or “purchase” button.

Ideally, you can convert your visitors into customers or participants using a call to action button (CTA button) or lead capture forms. This is accomplished by understanding your users, what they are looking for, and who they are.

Website optimization is based on this understanding, allowing you to influence the target audience's behavior to obtain a desired action. The conversion rate formula is simple and easy to understand.

Take the number of conversions and divide it by ad interactions tracked to a conversion in the same period. Knowing this helps quantify where improvement needs to happen.

Conversion rate optimization may lead you to change the layout or design of your ecommerce website or choose new fonts and colors for an audience's landing page. It can also mean using solid copywriting and excellent visuals to engage the user, including subtle persuasion tactics for conversion optimization to reduce bounce rate.

Micro-conversion tactics are also useful as they allow visitors to interact even though they may not be ready to fully convert with a purchase or subscription, though conversion is the ultimate goal.

5 Simple Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Tips And How To Use Them

Whether you are working your way up in the ecommerce business world or are a long-term ecommerce pro, keeping up-to-date with conversion rate optimization tactics is critical to staying at the forefront of your field.

Knowing what you are aiming for is important. What is a good conversion rate? The benchmark average conversion rate is between 2-5%. Aim for the higher end of this bracket and above if you hope to make ecommerce gains.

The following are some solid ecommerce conversion rate optimization strategies that can be used to improve your conversion funnel performance.

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1. Personalize the web user experience

Your homepage should stand out—not only to draw people to the site but also to convert your target audience from just visiting. It becomes about a relationship with the buyer and creating a personalized experience.

A personalized website experience is critical to building a relationship with the customer and increasing the conversion rate.

You can segment visitors by location, demographics, browsing history, whether they use a mobile device or a desktop browser, and more.

Knowing these details means you can offer landing pages or pop-ups that target them specifically with offers and incentives, special pricing, and related products they may be interested in.

2. Provide quick and easy answers

People who shop online want it to be quick and easy. Help customers find answers and make purchases without confusion.

Make sure they have convenient answers (via easy-to-find FAQs), so they don’t have to call for support since many won’t. An unanswered question often means a lost conversion or sale.

If you can, add a chatbot feature to provide customers with quick and easy answers.

3. Use user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content is extremely helpful in building trust with site visitors.

People read customer reviews and tend to have faith in them, but go a step further and use visuals such as user-generated product images, product reviews, and customer experience testimonials pulled from social media to help potential customers make quick assessments.

Visually appealing UGC should be a component of your digital marketing efforts, so showcase social proof to increase the effectiveness of your ecommerce marketing strategy.

4. Optimize your checkout process

The checkout process is an integral part of closing a deal and gaining a conversion. The transaction doesn’t end with the “add to cart” button.

Make sure costs aren’t a surprise when online shoppers get to the checkout page. Be clear on shipping costs, return policy, payment options, or alternate payment methods such as credit cards or Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and make sure product descriptions are clear. Use banners and list costs next to products in the shopping cart, or have a shipping calculator handy.

If there are fewer surprises at the time of purchase, there’s a lesser chance shopping cart abandonment will be an issue at the checkout stage.

5. Don't forget about A/B testing

Making changes to your product pages or landing pages? Make sure to run proper A/B testing (aka split testing) to see which variants drive higher conversion rates and are less likely to have the customer bounce.

Use tools like Google Analytics or heatmaps to track your metrics and measure the success of your experiments and convert the highest number of visitors.

Conversion Rate Optimization Tools & Software For Ecommerce Professionals

Some great ecommerce tools in the marketplace can help with conversion rate optimization at the enterprise level. This is a list to get you started on what may work for you and your ecommerce company.

  1. Adobe Analytics – Turning web data into insights
  2. Instapage – Deploying personalized landing pages for higher conversions
  3. Yieldify – Company focused on Customer Journey Optimization (CJO) through website personalization and email remarketing
  4. Heatly Analytics – A tracking tool for insights into website use and possible improvements
  5. Zoho PageSense – Track visitors, analyze online behavior, and increase conversions
  6. VWO Insights – Diagnoses website problems allowing you to fix issues while making good things better
  7. NotifyVisitors – Marketing automation software using CRO and analytics
  8. Predictive Lead Scoring – Assigning scores to inbound leads based on the likelihood they will convert to a buyer
  9. Hey Oliver – Marketing automation software for CRO and running targeted, personalized marketing campaigns
  10. Smartlook – Qualitative analytics for both websites and mobile apps
  11. Justuno – An AI visitor conversion platform with personalized website messaging and audience analytics.
  12. ROUTEE – An intelligent omnichannel communication platform

Convert More Sales With Ecommerce CRO

Conversion rate optimization can be a complex exercise, but even small tweaks to your ecommerce website, landing pages, and marketing communications can make a massive difference. Focus on making all marketing, advertising, and sales function better with CRO.

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By Francois Marchand

Francois Marchand is The Ecomm Manager's content strategist and editor. He is passionate about helping and educating business leaders, ecommerce professionals, and digital marketers grow their skill sets to stay ahead of the competition. Francois holds a BA Specialization in Communication Studies & Journalism from Concordia University (Montreal, QC) and 20+ years of experience in ecommerce, marketing, traditional and digital media, and public relations, including The Vancouver Sun, National Post, CBC/Radio-Canada, Unbounce, and Vancouver Film School. He also hosts The Ecomm Manager Podcast, discussing ecommerce best practices, customer experience, branding, inventory management, shipping and delivery, and analytics with expert guests.