How to increase trust, boost conversions, and make more money on your eCommerce store
Almost all marketers get THIS wrong. We build great products, buy tons of traffic, make some money, and we are happy…
So what is this problem?
Many business owners are blind to the fact that they’re leaving so much money on the table. Let’s not let that happen to you!
Think about it for a second… “we”, as an industry, accept that 2% is a “good” conversion rate. But what about the other 98% of people who just leave?
Where did they go? What went wrong? Why didn’t we get the sale?
If you could increase your conversion rate from 2% to 4%, your business would essentially double. This is where conversion optimization comes into play. In this article, we will share ten tips that will help more of that 98% to stay on your website, take out their credit cards, and provide you with more business.
Tip 1: Segment Your Traffic And Send Them To Landing Pages
The concepts of landing pages are simple but is far too often overlooked. Especially for those just starting out. The purpose of using a landing page is to be able to focus on having your visitor take one clearly defined action.
Here is an example of a solid landing page:
Landing pages are extremely effective and are still underused.
As you can see, this page has one purpose, and one purpose only: to collect an email address from people who are interested in the offer (watching the free video).
That is the beauty of creating landing pages. We do not let our visitors get lost with information overload. There aren’t sidebars and widgets with blog posts, videos, and testimonials. Instead, it’s one simple landing page with one simple offer.
This is especially important when running paid traffic to your site. Think about it – if someone goes to that landing page, they know exactly what they are getting from you. Simple is better.
Alternatively, if you send them to a traditional website homepage, they can quickly become overwhelmed and leave your site before taking the desired action.
Tip 2: Have Clearly Defined Unique Value Proposition
If your UVP is longer than a sentence, you probably need a new one.
Let’s face it… you are not the only one who is offering whatever type of product or service it is that you sell. That’s okay, competition is a part of business. But, what is so special about your offer? What is your unique value proposition (UVP)?
This is one of the most (if not the most) important part of your offer. Your UVP should be a statement that expresses the specific benefits, tells customers why you’re better than your competition, and that explains how it solves the customer’s problems.
This may be starting to become confusing, so let me give you an example of someone who is doing this right:
Notice the simplicity of this page. There’s a ton of open space, yet the text and image is clear and to the point.
This example is from Stripe.com. It is simple, clean, and to the point. This is how to clearly define your UVP. If you’re not sure, look at other websites and businesses for ideas.
Tip 3: Engage Your Visitors
One huge way to increase conversion is to actually find out why visitors are leaving your site without buying…
Obviously, we cannot do this after they leave (okay, I know we can retarget them, but IDEALLY we want to stop them before they leave).
So how do we find out where customers are getting stuck? How do we find out what is causing them to be confused? How do we find out how we can improve on our offer?
It’s simple – we ask them!
We do this with timed Live Chat pop-ups on specific pages. We use zopim.com for this, and we would recommend them as well.
You have probably seen these little overlay pop-up windows many times in the past:
Live chat pop-ups may annoy some people, but it also helps engage with serious buyers.
A lot of businesses use them. However, a lot of businesses use them wrong.
While most people use live chat to try to close a sale, we have found that asking visitors for feedback on our offers provides much more value to us. By asking visitors on your site for feedback, you will can out that:
- a link is broken
- customers cannot find the product they are looking for
- customers cannot find your return policy
- customers are considering buying from your competitors because of x, y, and x…
And that’s just a few examples. By engaging your visitors and by asking for feedback you will be able to improve upon you offer and easily increase your conversion rate. Business is all about serving your customers, and the more easily you can help them, the more they will buy from you.
Tip 4: Track Everyone!
In a dream world, we could talk to every visitor that ever comes to our site, solicit feedback from them, and please everyone. Unfortunately we don’t live in a dream world (sorry, Buzz Lightyear fans). This is reality and there just are not enough hours in the day for us to do everything. This is especially true for high traffic sites.
So how can we get a clear idea of what is going on with our visitors if there are just too many people to talk to?
Heatmaps.
I don’t mean a physical map inside a sauna. Heatmaps aren’t literal, but they can be a great help. We recommend using Crazy Egg to track where people click on your website. This is done via “heatmap”. Here is what it looks like:
Tracking your clicks is a great way to optmize your site.
What you are seeing is an overlay of a webpage (only visible to the website owner), which shows where people are clicking.
Why is this important? Because it allows us to optimize based on upon what our customers are already doing! By tracking our visitors actions, we learn what to improve upon.
This varies from page to page. If people are clicking headlines and links that are taking them away from the site, we can take those links away. If people are clicking on reviews, we can add more product reviews in that section.
For example, on the product page, we want people to be clicking “add to cart”, so if they’re clicking anywhere else, we can change the page in order to get the customer to do what we want.
Tip 5: Use High-Quality Images
Would you buy this product based on such a small image? Didn’t think so…
While this is especially true for eCommerce store owners who sell physical products, it also holds true for information product owners and SaaS companies.
Why is this so important? It’s simple. Shoppers want to know what they are getting.
Do you think someone who buy a $3,000 chandelier online if the vendor was showing one small photo like the one above?
Not a chance… make sure you have high-resolution photos, multiple camera angles, and close up shots of specifics parts of your product. Doing this will have a drastic impact on your conversion as soon as you upload the new photos. Plus, the better your images are, the better your site looks, and the better your business looks.
Tip 6: Clearly State Delivery Times
You may be thinking, “This must only be true for online stores who are selling physical products,” but it actually applies to anyone who is offering any product or service online.
One of the main reason visitors leave sites is due to confusion. Knowing this, it is your job to eliminate the opportunity for confusion as much as possible.
If a customer can't easily find out when their product will be delivered to them, they will not buy. CLICK TO TWEET
It’s that simple. This information needs to be clearly displayed on your product pages.
Including the deliver times makes a big difference to your customers.
When customers know exactly what they are getting, they are more likely to pull the trigger and spend their money with you.
If you offer a physical product you should list a ship date and an estimated delivery date. If you offer a digital product you should let them know when they will receive access. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how many online stores don’t do this.
Tip 7: Use A Simplified Page Checkout
Have you ever heard the saying “less is more”?
We find this to be especially true when it comes to checkout pages.
Look, if a visitor makes it all the way to your checkout page your job is to seal the deal. Let me say that again, your job is to seal the deal. Not to include a bunch of links, a bunch of text, and a few images.
They have the item in their cart, they are almost ready to enter their credit card info, so what should you show them?
A small amount of input fields (only what is necessary) including:
- Name, Email, Address, City, Country, Postal Code, Phone, Credit Card (Step 2 of the Checkout Process)
- The image of the product(s) in their cart, with the price
- Only the basic links: Shipping Policy, Return Policy, Privacy Policy
- Social Proof
- We recommend adding your social proof by associated yourself with other businesses besides your own. This could be done by using a security seal, a partner badge, or even the logos of the payment processors that your business works with.
Here is an example of a simple and clean checkout page that converts (newegg.com):
You want to keep your checkout pages simple yet effective.
Tip 8: Collect Reviews
A survey conducted by Dimensional Research shows that 90% of online buying decisions are influenced by online reviews.
Here is a chart that shows the results:
It’s true, reviews are influential.
The numbers speak for themselves. Online shoppers are almost always influenced by what other people have to say about your company.
What are these online shoppers looking for in a review?
According to this same study, they want to know if you offer excellent customer service:
If people want to know about your customer service, make sure to include a review that highlights your customer service!
Are you starting to understand why collecting reviews is so important when it comes to conversion optimization?
Tip 9: Gain Trust Through Social Proof
We now know that we need reviews from our best customers in order to drastically increase our conversion rates, but how can you display them?
You do this using social proof. For your company, that means linking the reviews (aka testimonials) to REAL online social media profiles.
Why do we do this? Well, another study has shown that people are more likely to buy if product or service is endorsed by a friend:
We put this to work for our businesses by linking all of our reviews so that our reviewers can share them with their friends and family. Which of course, increases our sales.
Using this method also increases our overall conversions because it allows even our “cold” traffic to see that our reviews are left by real people.
Here’s an example of one of our testimonials. Notice how we included a picture and a date to improve credibility.
This is a super simple way to increase your conversions very quickly, and you can get started today by using the Shopify App.
Tip 10: Establish yourself as an authority
The Authority Principle says that we are more likely to take an action when guided by the presence of authority.
When it comes to online business, we can look at titles for authority in two different ways. One would be to be endorsed by a doctor, or a lawyer, or someone respected in your industry.
The other way would be to be endorsed (or, at least appear to be) by a brand.
Here is an example of this in action:
Including logos of popular brands that you have worked with will increase your credibility.
As you can see, the footer is full of trust badges which trigger the authority principle in the website visitors, making them more likely to place an order with our company.
If you’ve worked with a brand or been featured on their site, use their logo to show authority. This will remind your potential customers that you are the real deal.
Ready, Optimize Go!
Small hinges open big doors. When you’re optimizing your site, a lot these things may seem tactical and minuscule. Some of them are, but a slight change can result in a big result.
So now that you’ve got the know how it’s time to get started.
Any questions or tips that we missed? Keep the discussion going in the comments!