The COVID-19 pandemic brought a cascade of rapid, large-scale changes—including mask mandates, business closures, and an ecommerce boom.
According to UNCTAD, the global ecommerce sector saw a dramatic rise in its share of all retail sales, from 16% to 19% last year. However, the current average conversion rate for an ecommerce website is just below 5%.
Not a rate you’re willing to settle for? Then you’ve come to the right post. Here are 6 surefire ways to increase your ecommerce conversion rates.
How to increase your ecommerce conversion rate
Currently, the average conversion for organic search is around 16%, with the lowest average going to social media at 0.71%.
An ideal conversion rate would be about 10 to 11% of unique visitors, depending on your channel. These are the proven techniques to achieving averages of this benchmark.
Create multiple landing pages
Landing pages are an excellent way to get new visitors to your site. They’re short, to the point, and easy to optimize for SEO. However, most ecommerce startups only build one landing page and leave it up until their next campaign.
Instead, try creating multiple landing pages for different audience segments. Every ad you create needs to link to a personalized landing page that is message-matched, has a good user experience and is optimized for the unique conversion factors of each audience.
Optimize for mobile
As of the latest statistics, there are currently more than 10 billion mobile devices in use, and more than 80% of consumers are using them to shop. That’s why there’s been such a rise in popularity among mobile banking and payment apps. This is a clear reason for why you need to consider your on-the-go customers with your ecommerce experiences.
Make sure your mobile invoicing apps come with crucial features like instant notifications and automatic payment reminders to give users an efficient and streamlined payment experience.
Optimize for mobile so your pages look and perform better on mobile devices. Make it possible for visitors to browse and check out right on your mobile-compatible online shop.
Use video marketing
Consumers are used to product galleries and online product catalogs. Why not take it one step further and use video content to dazzle your visitors? Moving images are more captivating, can help you double-dip SEO, and improve user experience.
Use video in conjunction with images to supplement your content with how-to demos that show your product in action. You could also link to your YouTube channel and invite viewers to send in their original video content as part of your social media marketing.
Deploy targeted emails
Directly addressing your audience and what matters to them is one of the optimal ways to increase conversion rates. First, ensure your subscriber base or email list consists of qualified leads. Next, segment those leads according to personas or where they are in their buyer journey, and send emails with personalized messages by audience segment.
Another highly successful way to use email marketing for conversions is to tackle the problem of shopping cart abandonment. You can do this in conjunction with a plugin or service like MailChimp that’s specifically for ecommerce. Configure your email platform to generate an automated offer as soon as someone abandons your cart before completing a purchase.
Improve page load times
Page speeds relate to how long it takes a website to load once a user arrives on it. Improving page speed is one of the fastest and simplest ways to improve your website and increase conversion rates—speed often has more impact on your campaign’s conversions than any other factor.
Page speeds are one of the primary causes for a high bounce rate. Even a one-second delay in page load time can cause a drop in your conversions. If you think you have a page speed problem, you should prioritize diagnosing and fixing it.
Improving page load speed starts with choosing the right hosting platform and web developer, but you can go beyond that to optimize your page, such as enabling caching so not all parts of the site have to load each time.
And of course, this is not the only type of optimization you should be focusing on for your site. It doesn’t matter how good your site looks or how fast it loads if no one is seeing it. You should focus on proven SEO strategies such as keyword investigations and website crawling to get more visitors and start converting.
Test, test, test
Too many businesses think launching a site and marketing campaign is all it takes to generate leads and sales. But each element of your site design, outreach strategy, and campaign can affect your conversions, and you should be consistently monitoring their effectiveness. A/B testing your campaigns helps you increase conversion rates.
Make sure to create a proper hypothesis, test one element at a time, use a large enough sample segment, and run each test for at least two weeks to get an accurate evaluation or until you reach statistical significance.
Always be optimizing for advertising conversions
It isn’t enough to ride a thriving economy into prosperity—you have to weather challenges. Though ecommerce accounts for more than half of retail growth, the current average conversion rate for an ecommerce website is just below 5%.
Want to strive for higher advertising conversions? Start with Instapage. Instapage takes the stress out of building, optimizing, and converting. With three plans, each priced accordingly, you’ll be one step closer to achieving your landing page goals. Schedule an Instapage demo here.
