How To Optimize Your Shopify Store To Increase Conversion Rates
There is no denying that an increase in conversion rate leads to higher revenue and profits for your e-commerce store, but getting there takes time and patience.
You’ll also need to build a comprehensive strategy that includes excellence in design, user experience, and selling strategies.
I bring you some of the leading, tried-and-tested approaches to enhancing your conversion rates. But first, let’s explore the basics.
What Do I Mean When I Talk About The Conversion Rate Of A Shopify Store?
The conversion rate of a Shopify store is the number of purchases divided by the number of visitors in all the sessions. To convert the value into a percentage, multiply the resulting number by 100.
You can calculate the conversion rate yourself if you know the number of visitors and conversions the store received. Shopify can do it for you automatically. The rate is clearly displayed on your store’s Analytics dashboard.
Conversion rate optimization involves making improvements to your Shopify store to get prospective buyers, i.e., the site’s visitors, to take actions that you define as a conversion. For most store owners, conversion equals completing a purchase, but it could also mean signing up for a newsletter, sharing a page on social media, signing up for your loyalty program, etc.
A research suggests that 4.29% conversion rate was observed with emails while Search offered 3.04%, Direct showed 2.93% and social offered 1.81%.
6 Tips For Increasing The Conversion Rate For Your Shopify Store
Driving traffic to your online store is certainly advantageous, but converting that traffic into customers is the ultimate dream. Here are several ways to do just that:
#1 Simplify The User Experience
Your online storefront is solely responsible for creating the best shopping experience for your prospective customers. This is why you must optimize your Shopify store to improve the shopping journey, making it as convenient as possible.
This includes enhancing the site speed that makes your site worth browsing through while also increasing your Google rankings. Moreover, your Shopify store’s navigation optimization makes it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for.
Also, try integrating a live chat and other customer support tools that enable the customers to get in touch with you. Moreover, since a lot of traffic comes to online stores from mobile devices, you need to make your store mobile responsive.
#2 Personalize The Store
Google tells us that personalization is key to improving profitability, according to 90% of marketers. That’s because personalization can improve customer retention, loyalty, and therefore chances of conversion.
As long as you have insights into important customer information, you can easily customize your e-commerce store for each buyer to provide them with a highly-personalized shopping experience.
Personalization is like offering a dedicated sales associate to each visitor at your online store. Your website can read their buying and browsing history, and an algorithm can predict what they buy next. So now, you’ve reduced the number of choices shown to them, making it easier for them to make a purchase decision.
You could also send personalized emails and segmented push notifications targeted for the right customer to exponentially boost conversion rates.
#3 Simplify Product Discovery
Easy product discovery is crucial if you want your visitors to have an exceptional shopping experience at your Shopify store. After all, your customers should be able to navigate your site well. Provide them with an AI-powered search function and smart category design that makes it easy to find desired products.
Keep things simple and organize products into fewer categories to avoid overwhelming the customer as they search. More specifically, avoid long drop-down menus as it can confuse and possibly irritate the visitors causing them to leave the store without buying.
#4 Optimize Product Pages
Product pages form the core of your E-commerce store. This makes it imperative that they are easy to navigate and offer an immersive experience to the buyer.
Use high-quality images offering several angles of the product, and give your store’s visitors all the reasons they need to hit the buy button.
Be upfront and clear about all information on a specific product, such as shipping charges, delivery time, and out of stock products. Moreover, you can display customer reviews on each product to instill trust and show the value you offer.
You can also enable small notification pop-ups that display your social media feed as proof of your online store’s validity.
#5 Improve Checkout Experience
If you are experiencing a high number of abandoned carts, it may be time to streamline the checkout experience. According to a survey by Baymard Institute, 28% of customers abandon their carts during checkout when the site asked them to create an account. Another 21% opted out because of a long and complicated checkout process.
If you want to offer a more relaxed and customer-friendly checkout experience, allow your buyers to auto-fill their information from their social media accounts.
Also, send out personalized emails when customers abandon their cart and target them during the holiday season or the weekends to make them come back. Or make them feel like a part of your family by sending “thank you” emails or coupon codes for first-time customers.
#6 Clarify Shipping And Refund Policies
Now that most of the hard work is done, you must ensure that the last step is just as compelling in converting them.
Most customers are wary of paying the shipping fees, which with tax payments can annoy customers and lead to cart abandonment. You need to find that find a sweet spot that makes your products a good deal for them.
Try to offer free shipping to encourage your customers to finalize their orders.
Moreover, list down all the refund policies clearly on the product page and the checkout page. This increases transparency and builds trust for your customer leading to a positive shopping experience.
In Conclusion
Conversion rates are important numbers for an e-commerce store as they define its performance and the kind of shopping experience it offers the customers.
Follow this quick and easy guide to optimize your Shopify store for increased conversions. However, it is important to note that the results will take their sweet time showing up, and conversions won’t improve right away. But rest assured that they will eventually.
Lastly, don’t forget to A/B test your Shopify store’s elements that can contribute to an increase in its conversion rates.
