Ecommerce stores are probably one of the easiest ways to dip your feet into the entrepreneurial world. However, it isn’t any that much easier than running and maintaining a regular business. You still have to take care of marketing, customer service, shipping, employee management…etc.
The key to success for any e-commerce business lay in its conversion rates- the percentage of people, out of all those visiting your store, that actually purchases your products. The average conversion rate for an e-commerce store is a horrifying 1.4%, which means that you’d need to get a 1000 people to visit your store before you get 14 purchases. Stores that can boast 3% conversion rates are considered quite successful.
However, don’t be disheartened because there are ways to go higher than 3%. In this article, we’re going to look at some ways to achieve just that:
Offer Free Shipping
Don’t ever underestimate the power of free shipping. Shipping costs, even if they’re reasonably priced, can be a deal breaker for a lot of clients who about to go through checkout. Suddenly their total is more than expected and now they’re having second thoughts about completing the transaction. Furthermore, if your competitors are offering it, then you have even less of a choice.
Understandably, you can’t offer free shipping for certain types of products that are very costly to deliver. In that case, we recommend that you be upfront about the charges so that it doesn’t come as a surprise later.
Retarget
You may often notice that a lot of customers add items to their carts but aren’t proceeding to checkout. There could be many reasons for this. Perhaps, they’re waiting until they can afford it or they may have just forgotten about it. In case, the smart thing to do is follow up with these customers.
Thanks to analytical software like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, you can keep track of these customers and do things like sending them reminder emails about the items that are in their cart. You could also offer them a discount or a free item and see if that helps.
Improve Your Website
If customers are having trouble with the ordering process or just feel that your site doesn’t look legitimate, then your conversion rates are going to suffer. If you aren’t so sure about the user experience of your ecommerce store, we highly recommend that you conduct website usability audits to find out what you can do better.
The ultimate point is to streamline the experience for all users. They should be able to find what they want very fast and have a smooth checkout process. Even the tiniest kink can discourage a customer because they know that they could get a better experience from one of your competitors.
Offer Multiple Payment Getaways
It’s easy enough to just offer PayPal but you’re going to lose all of the customers that prefer other payment methods. Hence, we recommend at least setting up three to four different options, just to be safe.
It’s not easy to bring up your conversion rates and it doesn’t happen overnight. We recommend trying out all of the tips in this article. You’ll find that at least some works for you.
