Conversion rate describes the percentage of visitors who buy from your Shopify store. When a company's conversion rate drops, a small wave of panic usually breaks out and the first impulse is: We have to create more traffic on our website! If sales are too low, attempts are usually made to increase the traffic of visitors to the store. However, the problem is often not too few store visitors - the goal is to convert the site's traffic into buyers, because high traffic unfortunately does not mean high sales figures.
The fact that a visitor leaves the store without placing an order is often due to the fact that he has not found the right product or that there are open questions and uncertainties. In order to keep the conversion rate as high as possible or to increase it constantly, not only your products and the respective price have to convince. The design, communication and additional services are also crucial for a purchase decision.
We show you which points you should pay attention to in order to increase your conversion rate.
Basic principles
In general, always pay attention to cleanliness and clarity in your store. Even small errors in spelling, poor quality of images or little meaningful information do not look very professional. So pay attention to a chosen tone in the language, to a correct spelling and a consistent and appealing design. Especially in text translations, linguistic errors are easy to overlook. Pay special attention to a clean and error-free translation of the languages. Your product images should depict the products in the store in detail and replace the advantages of haptics in stationary trade. Otherwise, the following applies to products, services and benefits: provide as much information as possible, but as little as necessary. The store visitor should be well informed about the store, the product, the shipping and the costs, but it is still important to present the information as clearly as possible.
Individual product descriptions as a seller
Not all customers buy in the same way. Therefore, your product descriptions should contain all the necessary information in a summary as well as in a detailed body text. While some customers already know what they are looking for and are satisfied with an overview of the main features, others appreciate a detailed description of the product and its benefits. You should not only highlight special features of the products, but also go into general information.
In addition, individually designed product descriptions are important for SEO purposes, since Google does not take into account product descriptions copied from the manufacturer in its ranking. What you should also consider in the product descriptions and what makes a perfect product page, we have summarized in another blog post.
Optimize your performance speed
A page of your Shopify store takes 30 seconds to load completely? Then it is difficult to convince the customer with your products and services. Because before he can inform himself about the assortment and your store, he may already be at another store of the competition.
One of the most important optimization factors when it comes to the conversion rate is therefore the page speed of the store. According to studies, about 57% of consumers abandon the purchase if the loading of the website takes longer than 3 seconds. It is high time to optimize your store and keep the loading time accordingly low. You can test the page speed of your store using various tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Best of all, you'll not only see a scale as a performance score, but also optimization options to boost performance on mobile or desktop.
Offer services that convince
Products and price are not always the decisive purchasing criteria. For many customers, the right services are the decisive factor in whether or not they buy from a store. If, for example, the customer sees in the checkout that his preferred payment method is not accepted, the probability is high that he will cancel the purchase at the checkout. The same often applies to return options or shipping costs. The more options you offer your customers in the store, the more customers you will satisfy - the purchase rate and thus the conversion rate will increase! In the best case, you also offer your customers free shipping. The possibility of free shipping influences many buyers positively in their purchase decision. It is certainly no secret that the costs incurred are already taken into account and included in the purchase price of the individual items. For you, there are no financial differences at this point, but for the customer it makes a big difference psychologically.
Tip: To increase the average cart value in your Shopify store at the same time, offer free shipping only after a certain order value.
Do not leave any uncertainties open and create trust
In order to really buy from your store, you need to create a certain level of trust. For example, you can use an "About Us" page to show who is behind the company. You can also go into shipping and return details and answer frequently asked questions (FAQ's). This way, you give the customer the feeling that they are buying from a trusted source. Uncertainties about product quality or fit can also be clarified through customer reviews. Customers buy from customers - if your previous customers are satisfied and convinced, this often seems more credible than promises from the store itself. Word of mouth is still one of the most efficient and cost-effective forms of marketing. In the world of e-commerce, it is particularly characterized by product reviews from customers. A study by Dimensional Research shows that 90% of all customer purchase decisions are influenced by reading positive online reviews. Moreover, reviews from customers can improve your SEO ranking result immensely.
Integrate an intelligent search into the structure of your website
E-commerce scores particularly well with its convenient shopping experience. Hundreds of thousands of products are just a few clicks away for the customer and can be reached from anywhere. But with a high variety of products, the site can quickly become confusing for the customer and the desired product is not found. Make it easier for him to search and shop with an intelligent search in the navigation. This way you make the customer's shopping experience even easier. As soon as the customer enters something in the search field, relevant and similar products are displayed in the smart search app. This not only makes shopping easier for the customer, but at the same time brings fewer steps to the checkout and thus a higher conversion in your Shopify store.
There are still questions? - Offer contact points
In general: Guide the visitor through the navigation and an intelligent search through your Shopify store. In order to answer open questions that are not apparent to him even through the FAQ's, offer different contact points such as a live chat. This way, questions and uncertainties can be clarified quickly and in a simple way. If this is not the case, the customer is likely to buy from another store even before the customer service team answers his questions.