eCommerce Optimizations You Should Do To Improve Your Check Out Rates

Ecommerce optimization is a methodical strategy that can be implemented on your website to increase the number of customers who successfully complete their buying journey - all the way to the payment processing. The goal should be to streamline the overall experience, from the layout to the navigation to the design elements that are used and the checkout process. 

Optimizing your store will make the overall experience holistically better for the customer, increasing the chance of them successfully completing their purchases. And here are nine of the best methods you can implement in your eCommerce store to do just that and boost your conversion rate.

Reduce page load speed

A quick-loading website is critical to the success of your business. Numerous studies have found that page speed affects the bounce rate. Ideally, your website should load in a couple of seconds. Because it makes no difference how interesting your site is if customers leave before it loads. That is how important speed is to your conversion. Consider it a critical component of a conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy.

How to improve site speed

• Optimize your images. Resize your image if its file size is too big.  Either scale its resolution down or through image optimization (adjusting its quality without affecting its resolution) using free cloudbased tools such as picresize.com. Keep your images at100kb or below!
• Examine potential areas for improvement. Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix are both excellent resources for determining how well your website is performing. They also tell you where you can make changes, assisting you in identifying key areas for improvement.
• Change to a faster host. Avoid using shared hosting. Your store requires quick, scalable eCommerce hosting.
• Change to a faster theme. The theme you select can also have an impact on the performance of your website. To improve your store's performance, you should consider switching to one of the many fast WordPress themes.

Consistent updates and improvements

The trends in web design are constantly evolving and moving at a breakneck pace. It’s a norm for Google to constantly improve its algorithm, which can cover all of a website’s elements, not just the content. 

If you do not routinely update your product pages or landing pages, it will be gradually affected by the relentless changes in the algorithm, and over time it will accumulate those tiny impacts on your site and feel significant enough to affect your conversion rates.

It's easy to be blinded by how good your landing page or website already looks, so in case you fallen for this trap below are some of our suggestions of where you can begin.

What elements you can update

• Include special offers. You can include special offers to pique customers' interests.
• Curate your best-selling items. Another great idea is to curate your best-selling products on your website so that customers can see them right away.
• Make use of product reviews. Including reviews on your website is a great way to boost your eCommerce conversion rate. People value other people's opinions more than brands. They'll be more likely to buy if they see that other people have purchased and enjoyed your product.
• Make use of high-quality images. Display your product using high-quality images. This is necessary to assist buyers in making an informed purchase. Display the product from various perspectives. Allow them to focus on the specifics.
• A/B testing should be used. A/B testing compares different versions of your on-page elements to see which one converts the most visitors into buyers. For this, you can use various A/B testing plugins.

Customize your content

Modern-day customers expect a highly personalized shopping experience. They prefer the "red carpet treatment," which is a key differentiator for the majority of prominent online shopping portals or brands online.

If you cannot provide that, you will not leave a lasting impression on the customers, be easily forgotten, and could lose sales from potential long-term customers. Personalizing the buyer's journey your customers go through on your site based on their buyer personas can make them feel more understood and see that your website as a whole is relevant to their needs.

There are various methods to go about customizing your content, and they're mostly technical - but nothing that a good old WordPress or Shopify plug-in cannot do.

How to personalize your content

• Relevant product suggestions. As intrusive as it may sound in the perspective of data security, the fact remains that ustomers will appreciate related products and recommendations. Product recommendations significantly increase purchases.
• Make use of geolocation. If you sell products all over the world or in different regions, you can use geo-targeting to sell them in the same currency or to make regional recommendations.
• Customize based on the type of device. Customizing the shopping experience based on the type of device your customers are using is an important part of ecommerce optimization.

Be mobile-friendly

Sales done through mobile phones are expected to reach $3.56 trillion in 2022, up 22.3 percent from $2.91 trillion in 2021. It should give you an idea of how critical mobile readiness is for optimizing your eCommerce website. As you can see, the rate of change has continued to accelerate, and it's safe to say that mobile ecommerce is on the rise.

You're missing out if your e-commerce store isn't mobile-ready yet, you’re missing out on its huge potential if you haven’t tweaked your website to become mobile-friendly yet.  This may all seem very technical but it doesn't really have to, at its core you can start from the basics!

Don’t know where and how to do it? We got you.

How to make your site mobile-friendly

• Verify mobile compatibility. Test the mobile compatibility of your site's content and graphics using tools like Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Check to see if your product descriptions are legible. Make sure your site is responsive and easy to use on mobile devices.
• Choose a minimalistic design. Avoid using too many elements on your site, leaving enough space for CTAs and product categories.
• Text-heavy content should be reduced. Make an effort to be as articulate as possible in your writing.
• Images should be compressed. It goes without saying that you should always compress images before uploading them to your website.

Track your web performance

Analytics tools enable you to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to determine what is and isn't working for your eCommerce store. You'll also be able to see which areas of your website caused users to leave, as well as which pages or elements on your pages led to more purchases.

With this information, you can optimize your conversions by improving underperforming elements. Any eCommerce optimization decision you make should be data-driven. If you're serious about your data, you should be aware of your metrics to gauge success, you can start by analyzing the following:

• Your main source of traffic
• Conversion rate
• Customer avatar

Ideally, you can integrate tools like Howuku and Google Analytics into your website to track your store's user journeys and performance.

Offer relevant upsells

This is one of the most common upselling techniques employed by many eCommerce stores, which is by offering upsells upon checkout. Big brands do this and only do so by soft-selling other products— those that can complement the purchased product really well.

Upsells can be offered in a variety of places, including your checkout pages, product pages, and even after checkout. It is an excellent way to provide more value to your customers while charging a higher fee for it.

Pro tip!

Offering your upsells the right way is the key to better conversion.

Minimize distracting elements

A critical component of eCommerce optimization is identifying and removing unnecessary elements from your site. For example, do you really need a sidebar on every page to encourage users to join your email list?

Including too many distractions or moving elements on your site is a bad idea that will harm your store's performance. Not only will it reduce your site speed, but it can also tune out your customers.

A thorough site audit may be exactly what you require to get started. CRO conversion tools like Howuku provides a heatmap of your website pages for you to understand which part of your page is working and which isn't.

Aside from this, there are numerous other SEO audit tools available to help you analyze your website's performance and remove elements or objects that are no longer required for proper eCommerce website optimization. Make use of them! They'll help you understand your customers better.

Obtain live feedback by a/b testing

A/B testing is a great way for customers to give you more feedback. You can use A/B testing to find out what works and what doesn't when you have an idea for a new color scheme, a new idea for a UX redesign, or even the subject lines of your email campaigns.

It's simply running two versions of your page's content and seeing which one turns more visitors into buyers. For example, you can test the conversion rates of two headlines for your eCommerce conversion rate optimization: one that is short and to the point, and one that is longer and gives more information. 

Low effort high engagement a/b testing ideas

• Headline or subject line copy (wording)
• CTA - phrasing, button color or size, placement, etc.
• Landing page length
• Text placement
• Body text length
• Designs or visual - images or videos
• Promotions and offers

Simplify check-out process

Optimizing your checkout process is crucial to your conversion; making it as seamless as possible is not even an option. You must ensure that there is no friction between the time a user places an order and the time they check out. 

Try to keep things simple and provide more options one of which is a guest checkout. Most customers don’t like the hassle of registering for a new account, especially if they’re new to your website or store. Guest checkout can also reduce cart abandonment, you’re missing out on conversions by not implementing it on your site. 

Just think of it this way - no new customers would want to get to the checkout page only to discover that they need an account before they can complete their purchase. If you want to make more money, don’t make it difficult for your customers to pay.