How to Increase Conversion Rate

Are you struggling to get new adopters for your product or service? Do you want to increase conversion rate or click-thru rates on your ecommerce website? Recent studies from Statista found that only one-third of shoppers return to purchase once they leave an item in their cart. What’s worse is statistics show that a quarter of them buy an identical product from a competitor.

In this article, we’ll dive into how to increase your conversion rate, with a particular focus on consumers that place items in their cart and never purchase. 

1. Create an Intuitive UI Web Design

According to Shopify, 93% of consumers consider visual appearance the critical deciding factor in their purchasing decision. That means 93% of customers will buy something based on looks alone.

When you create an intuitive UI design, you anticipate what and where your consumer will want to go and what they want to do on the page. Have you ever wondered why it’s annoying when a web page is poorly made? It’s because we’re accustomed to a UI design that anticipates our needs.

This is especially crucial during checkout when bad UI design can cause customers to put in more effort than they would have liked. We suggest making the checkout process as straightforward as possible with button colors that complement each other. For instance, you could make the “Continue to Checkout” button teal and the “Go Back” button orange.

2. UI Design: Create Complementing Color Schemes

Choosing colors that will accurately portray your brand and speak to your consumers is incredibly important. Although this may sound daunting, many tools and color charts are available online that further detail how colors impact consumer behavior.

Understanding how colors communicate with consumers can help you convert more effectively. For example, many companies that choose the color green want to portray freshness, growth, health, peacefulness, or wealth. Some examples include Whole Foods, Shopify, and Animal Planet. Blue can induce a sense of calm, trust, strength, and reliability. Brand examples include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, IBM, Dell, and Oreo.

3. Run A/B Testing

Modern companies use data to support their goals and vision and drive decisions. By running A/B tests of similar email blasts and social posts, you can determine which performs the best and revise your marketing activities to boost traffic to your page. A/B tests can be a quick and easy way to increase conversion rate(s) success.

Other benefits of A/B testing include:

• Higher user engagement

• Improved overall content quality

• Higher conversion rates

• Easier data analysis

Running A/B tests can increase conversion rate(s) overall and should be utilized regularly to see adequate results. For larger projects, we’d recommend running smaller test groups for A/B testing or running promos on different social channels to see how consumers respond.

4. Allow Your Customers to Auto-Fill at Checkout

Did you know that, on average, companies earn 30% more conversions with autofill (according to Google)? These higher conversion rates can mean more sales and stronger ROI for your business. By allowing your customers to pre-fill information, you make it easy for customers to head to the next step.

This intuitive and easy-to-use UI design lets consumers do less while accomplishing more, which is critical to increasing your conversion rate!

5. Calculate Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

In September of 2021, IRP Commerce recorded an average conversion rate of 1.74%. Without the data from previous months, a forecaster would struggle to see any emerging trends. Yet, with adequate data, we can see that there’s been much more ebb and flow between conversion rate percentages due to the pandemic — they vary between 1.5% and 2.6%.

To truly understand your customers and what they want requires the ability to understand your data. By analyzing your ecommerce data, you can see which areas need improvement and which aspects of your strategy are working well. The conversion rate will provide insight into how well your site and sales experience are performing. To calculate your ecommerce conversion rate, follow this step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Find the total number of visitors to your site within a specific time frame.

Step 2: Find the total number of sales in the same time frame.

Step 3: Use this formula to get your conversion rate:
(# of sales / # site visitors) x 100 = conversion rate

For example, if you had 200 sales after 5,000 shoppers visited your website, the equation would be: (200 / 5000) x 100 = 4% conversion rate.

6. Offer Perks During Checkout (Promos, Free Shipping, Bundles)

Everyone loves free things. Before users hit the back button or exit your site during the checkout process, let them know that their items ship free. Alternatively, if it’s too costly to offer free shipping to everyone, set free shipping for purchases over a certain amount. This will provide shoppers with what they want while potentially increasing your revenue per sale.

You can also offer credits toward future purchases, buy-one-get-one (BOGO) specials, or bundles for a set percentage off.  Offers for future purchases can encourage return customers. After purchase, consider adding a referral program offer that gives your new customer money for each referral and gives the people they refer a discount as well. This tactic is an excellent way to encourage subsequent purchases while reaching new customers. 

7. Retarget Shoppers With Abandoned Carts via Emails and Ads

According to the Baymard Institute, around 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Diving deeper into the data, we can see that the numbers change based on the device the customer uses. The abandon cart rate was around 70% for desktop users, yet the percentage grew to approximately 80% for tablets and mobile users.

Similar to offering popup perks during the checkout process, you can send an “abandoned cart” email that can help guide customers back to your site and complete the checkout process. Life is busy, and more often than not, customers are trying to multi-task when shopping, often taking multiple breaks before making a purchase. Giving your customers a little reminder that they’ve left a few items in their cart can make the difference between a sale and a miss. Don’t miss this crucial step to increase success with your conversion rates. 

With the Shopify platform and app, like AdRoll, you have multiple weapons in your arsenal to combat abandoned carts. Even better, you can run retargeting ads and emails together using AdRoll’s Marketing Recipe to maximize your chance of reaching the shoppers who left your site and bring them back to complete the purchase.

Last updated on March 22nd, 2022.