How To Turn Visitors Into Customers And Increase Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

As an ecommerce store owner, you’re doing well. You’ve created your store, have a generous amount of products and/or services and are starting to see visitors flowing in from your various marketing efforts. 

However, something’s not right. Visitors aren’t turning into paying customers and your ecommerce conversion rate is low. 

This low conversion rate is probably the reason you clicked on this article. So here we’ll discuss a few simple yet effective changes you can make to your website to start turning those valuable visitors, into even more valuable customers.

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What is ecommerce conversion rate?

Your ecommerce conversion rate is the percentage of users visiting your website who have purchased something from your online store (in a set period of time). The average conversion rate of an online store is around 1-2%.

How to calculate your ecommerce conversion rate

The simplest way to calculate your ecommerce conversion rate is to take the number of sales you’ve received in a set period of time, then divide it by the number of visitors to your site in that same period (this can be done with Google Analytics) and times it by 100.

So: (conversions / total visitors) * 100

So, if your site has sold 2 items and is getting 2000 visitors a month, then your conversion rate is 1%.

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According to Econsultancy’s Performance Benchmarks tool, average conversion rates of food and drink stores are at 2.4% but technology and computing, for example, are at 1.10%. So depending on your industry, the average fluctuates. 

Your conversion rate may also differ from another store due to the type of products you’re selling. If you’re selling $10 t-shirts and another store is selling similar ones for $30, then your conversion rates may be different.

How to increase your ecommerce conversion rate

Okay, let’s get to the good stuff. We all know that slight changes to your online store can have an incredible impact on your sales. So here are a few of our favourite online store tweaks you can implement to make a real difference.

Use your customer’s pain points

The point of any product or service is either to solve a problem or meet a need. Somebody needs something and they buy a product to meet that need.

Pain points are the needs, wishes, or worries (real or perceived) that customers have and could be solved by buying your product/service.

For example, a customer is frustrated with the lack of options for displaying product images on their WooCommerce store. They want something which allows them to have greater control. 

On our product page for WooThumbs, we have done a few things:

• Recognised the customer’s pain points (lack of WooCommerce functionality)
• Explained simply how we’ve solved this problem
• Listed additional problems the plugin solves

So, when writing your sales pages or product descriptions, make sure to focus on how your product/service will solve your customer’s problem, or meet their needs in the simplest way possible.

Relieve doubts about your product with images and video

When purchasing products online, customers don’t have the ability to touch and feel your product. They don’t even have the ability to properly see if its colour matches the one presented to them on screen.

To alleviate these concerns, make sure to provide clear, high quality and accurate images that represent what you’re selling. Add in lifestyle shots, shots to indicate the size and make sure your customer can zoom in on an image to see the detail.

69% of consumers believe a product demo best assists them when making a purchase decision – Wyzowl

Online stores are now starting to fully embrace the impact of video on their ecommerce sales. Even a simple video showcasing the product from different angles could be the difference between a sale, and an abandoned cart. 

Get both of these up and running quickly with our plugin WooThumbs for WooCommerce.

Give them the answers

When visiting your site for the first or even second time, most potential customers know nothing about you or your online store. If they purchase anything, they’re essentially placing their trust in you to deliver what you say you’re going to.

At the same time, the customer may instantly have a bunch of questions on their mind about your product that you need to answer before you lose them. Things like:

• Is there a warranty?
• How long will shipping take?
• Is shipping free?
• Can I pay with PayPal?
• How easy is it to cancel or return?

All of these questions can be pre-answered by you in a FAQ right on the product page. Make sure the answers to these questions are obvious, honest and simple to understand. 

Another way to showcase the answers to some of these questions is to have the answers as prompts throughout the buyer’s journey or on the product page. Here’s an example of that in action on one of our product pages:

Include live chat

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t know all the questions a potential customer might have. 

If your product is more of an investment, i.e it will take a little more time or money from your customer, then it might be worth adding chat functionality to your site. 

With this in place, customers can alleviate their concerns quickly and easily, instead of having to wait for an email in reply. 

Optimise your checkout process

If you’ve done everything right, your product images are top-notch, you’ve answered all possible questions and are still not making sales, then your checkout may be at fault.

I’ve mentioned previously that customers need to trust you when purchasing a product. Well, it’s at the checkout where this trust needs to really ramp up.

By creating a simple checkout with payment logos, testimonials and trust seals, you can make sure that your site is seen as trustworthy. We’ve already broken down our favourite sales optimising checkout techniques which you can read in another post. 

There are many techniques you can use to increase your ecommerce conversion rate and we’ve shared some of our favourites here. But one thing’s for certain, to get the most out of your ecommerce store, you need to be paying close attention to what people are doing in your store and perhaps more importantly, why on earth they’re leaving.