If you want your eCommerce business to grow then you have to be familiar with conversion rate optimization. Conversion rate optimization is the process of making users who visit your website guided to take a desired action. The efficient flow of events which leads to the result is considered a well optimized website. The desired actions can be anything from signing up for a newsletter, downloading a product or even making a purchase.
With the help of data generated by conversion rate optimization, you will have a better understanding of where your business is lacking and focus on improving those elements. These improvements will in turn generate more sales, more customer visits and the overall success of the venture. For eCommerce stores, conversion rate optimization is a good ROI since it will generate a higher sales volume once the optimization is complete.
Before your business begins the optimization process, you need to create a strategy first. Having a strategy will help you focus on your end goal and end up making you spiral around fixing everything. In the competitive online business world there are various do’s and don’ts to encourage your customers to purchase what you have to offer. Besides just working on conversion rate optimization, you have to be aware about the economy as a whole. There will be times when a fully optimized website might not bring in a lot of sales due to the bad economy.
As we can understand that conversion optimization is important for the long run of your eCommerce store. Optimization is not a one-time work, you have to keep monitoring your customer interactions to see if there are any significant areas that receive more interaction than the other element. This will help you find what makes customers interact on a certain element and apply the same principle across your website.
According to a recent study the global eCommerce spending will rise to $7.3 trillion in the year 2025. If these numbers leave you wonderstruck, then you will realize why conversion rate optimization is at the forefront of our discussion. Here are some things you can do to grow your eCommerce business with conversion rate optimization.
Identifying Conversion Goals
As an eCommerce business owner, you are constantly in search of different ways to grow your business and conversion rate optimization might be the end result of your search. In simple words, you want customers who visit your online store to make a purchase and optimization helps you do just that. The same principle applies to anything that you want your customers to do and that includes signing up for a newsletter or even playing a video.
Having a clear goal and target about what your desired action for the customers visiting your website is important in order to craft an optimization to drive the results. The key metrics that you have to work for the desired outcome are the number of visitors who convert, total number of conversions and the conversion rates. You can find the conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors.
Now that you have set target and key metrics, you can start analyzing your user behavior. This will help you in figuring out the elements that work well and those that do not work. The context of your conversion goal is something you should keep in mind. For example, you have to be aware of the average order value, cost of acquiring a customer and other factors if your goal is to increase the number of visitors making purchases on your website.
It’s only with the metrics and analytics that you can reach your realistic target for your website. Hence setting a target is not just something you do for a namesake, but it is an important building block for the success of your website. As mentioned before, setting a target and fixing all the necessary elements is not a one-time job. The analytics have to be monitored on regular intervals to make adjustments and changes because of the changing customer interactions.
Conversion rate optimization may or may not be a costly venture depending on how realistic a goal you have for your website. And in order not to end up spending more than your ROI is worth, you have to have a solid and realistic target.
Conversion Rate Optimization of Website
Now that you have your goal and targets in place, let’s move on to conversion rate optimization for your website. How you decide to optimize and improve your website determines your customer’s journey when they visit your online store. There are plenty of elements and ways that you can improve on your website to get the desired action from the customers.
- Call to Action: A clear call to action button should be established on your website in a way that it doesn’t hide behind all your content. The button should emphasize customers to take a desired action. ‘But Now’, ‘Sign Up’, ‘Subscribe’ etc. are some of the most common CTA buttons.
- Mobile-friendly: There are still plenty of websites out there that are just disastrous to access via a smartphone. Too bad for them, because the majority of online purchases are done via smartphones. Optimize your website for mobile-friendly user experience.
- A/B Testing: No one has ever regretted doing an A/B testing before they finalize on a marketing decision. With A/B testing you can create two versions of an element and test it to understand which element works better. With this test you will have a refined element as the final product.
- Website Security: Ensure that you host your website through a secure server. Cyber crime is a rampant cause and you don’t want your customers to feel unsafe while trying to make purchases on your online store.
Use conversion rates to optimize your website to the best and user friendly version. A recent survey conducted shows that the ROI with at least 90% of content personalization on websites has resulted in a profit. Businesses like yours need to focus on their respective websites in order to reach target sales rather than just overcrowding the marketplace. It’s never too late to start optimizing your website for better results.
With a website that is optimized, you will be able to retain more customers and simultaneously market for more customers. You can also create more optimized landing pages as an additional source for new customers visiting your website.
Test Your Strategies
Conversion rate optimization is a process that has to be checked on regular intervals to make sure that your strategy to gain desired action from customers is going in the right direction. If you find that a certain aspect or element of your strategy is hindering customers from taking a desired action, it has to be changed or improved based on the analysis. There are multiple ways to keep an eye on your conversion rate optimization strategy.
One of the common versions of testing is the A/B testing method mentioned in the earlier section. Another test method is to ask for feedback from the customers on how to make their experience better or run a survey with multiple choice questions for the customers to interact with. Heat maps is also popular if you want to know which parts of the webpage gets the most interaction. Heat maps show a temperature variation pattern based on user interaction point on the screen.
If you have a lengthy web page that requires a lot of scrolling then scroll maps might come in handy. These help you analyze how many people scroll all the way to the end of the webpage or if they just end it halfway through. With these analytics, you can review your strategy and decide to continue the same or if you need a new one to make progress. Some other metrics that come in handy include pageviews (Number of people viewing a certain page), time on page (Average time a user spends on the page), bounce rate (number of viewers who leave your page without taking any desired actions).
Always calculate your conversion rate while you regularly monitor your strategy and if the numbers fluctuate a lot then you will know that your website needs some optimization to do. Most conversion rate optimization softwares will provide you the conversion rate numbers without you having to calculate them manually. Be wary of sudden drastic changes to your website, this might make regular/existing customers lose interest with your website.
Analyze Results
Now that you have finished your conversion rate optimization, regularly monitored for any changes in strategy, the final part is to see if you have the desired results. With all the data collected, you have a clear idea on what works and what did not work. Now you can make informed decisions on how to steer your business to profit. Start with the overall performance of your website as it is.
Check the number of visitors, page views and the conversion rates to determine your next course of strategy or action. In case of a complete website, check which web pages perform more. See what your customers are mostly interacting with and why. Is it a homepage they explore more or is it a specific product page? Do they scroll all the way to the very end of the page or are they checking all the links?
If you are running marketing campaigns in conjunction with your website optimization, see which type of marketing drives more customers to the website. Does social media campaign garner higher conversion? Does email marketing make more people visit your store? Based on the result you can increase or decrease the budget on the desired marketing.
The final optimization will be a cakewalk now that you have the date that is required to craft your website and make higher conversions. This could be changing your existing headline or trying a different CTA or even changing the graphics. You can even run another A/B testing to super fine tune the final version.
By investing the time and resources to spotlight your website, you will have a long term benefit for your business. Research your competitor websites and see how they have crafted their content. Ask yourself, why any customer who visits your competitor’s website should choose yours. Find what is missing on the competitor website and add that to yours. Now the customer has a reason to visit your store over the competitor’s store.
Conclusion
Conversion rate optimization is an essential step to grow your eCommerce business. It helps you to understand your website’s performance by analyzing various aspects that increase customer engagement and conversion. With a clear understanding of your website strengths and weaknesses, you will be better equipped to improve on elements of your websites in order to maximize your conversion.
Keep trying different combinations of styles, texts, CTAs with the help of A/B testing to find the perfect one for your website. Optimizing for mobile viewing should be the highest priority, since that is how our future customers are and will likely discover your online store. Implement security features like a secure connection while making transactions to prevent unwanted fraud or hacking.
Now that you have optimized your website, what you need next is a reliable payment solution to process all your payments. RapidCents is your go to payment solution for your business needs. We provide tailor made payment solutions for your business so that you don’t have to worry about a thing when it comes to processing transactions. We offer the most competitive pricing for businesses of all sizes.
The best past is RapidCents grows with your business. If you are a small business or a large enterprise, we have payment solutions for both. Our in-built chargeback and fraud prevention software ensures that your business does not run into any illegitimate transactions.
It is easy to start processing with RapidCents. All you have to do is Sign Up with us. Once you are signed up we will help you set up your merchant account and you can start processing transactions. We provide virtual terminals for those who are tech savvy and want to turn their PC into powerful payment processing devices.
Learn more on how RapidCents help other businesses like yours grow.
