How to Get More Sales With Ecommerce Conversion Optimization

In this article, you’ll learn how to get more sales with ecommerce conversion optimization. According to two-time NY Times best selling author,  Jeffrey Eisenberg:

[quote style=”style1″] It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic.[/quote]

By combining different ecommerce conversion optimization techniques, you can double or even triple your sales without new traffic. That calculates to $210K in sales instead of $70K.
To boost ecommerce conversion optimization, we’ll be discussing how to increase sales – by earning people’s trust, removing frictions from your landing page, engaging with potential customers and more. This post is a continuation of the our ecommerce blueprint series on “How to Succeed in ecommerce”.

 

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How to Get Sales: No Trust = No Sales

You wouldn’t buy from someone you don’t trust, right? Most of the visitors will see your website for the first time and hesitate to buy from a brand they’ve never heard of.

So, getting people to trust your store is a crucial step in figuring out how to get more sales. CyberSource reports that 85% of UK online shoppers will look for signs to confirm that the site they are buying from is secure.

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Building a sense of trust is of the utmost importance when it comes to ecommerce conversion optimization, and it’s the very first step if you’re looking to  get more sales.

Before diving into a list of trust building elements, we need to explain how you should interpret them. The right approach is perfectly explained by B. J. Fogg, a persuasion expert who led the Stanford Web Credibility Project:

[quote style=”style1″]To increase the credibility impact of a website, find what elements your target audience interprets most favorably and make those elements most prominent.t B. J. Fogg – Persuasion & Captology Exper[/quote]

How to Get Sales: Show Who’s Behind Your Store

Eventually, people will buy from your brand. Showing who is behind the store will boost your site’s credibility and improve your ecommerce conversion optimization, ultimately allowing you to get more sales.

Share your story on your “About Us” page, even if you’re a family-owned business or a solo-preneur. People like stories. Honest stories build trust. You should also prove that you’re a legitimate business by including your physical address and your phone number.

Use images of yourself, your team or your office. Even better, include videos. Moreover, tell your visitors why they should buy from you.
Note that you never want to over promote, and that the About Us page is not about selling.

At Velasca.com, Italian shoemakers welcome you personally.

How to Get Sales: Make it Easy to Contact You

Among the top factors that enhance customers’ trust is customer support.

The best solution for providing customer support is debatable. Forrester research shows that 63% of online consumers were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat. While a best-selling author on Customer Relationships, Steven Van Belleghem, reports that 40% of consumers said they prefer self-service to human contact.

It’s best to combine both. Ease of use is an important factor in ecommerce conversion optimization. That said, if you don’t have the resources to provide live chat support, include contact information on your site header and set clear expectations about when you’ll respond.
Look at the Zappos example. Instead of hiding their contact information or requiring customers to ask 10 questions before actually submitting their question, they put their phone number on every web page. Not only do they make it easy for customers to contact them, they encourage customers are encouraged to do so.

Dune London makes their Live Chat prominent on all pages.

How to Get Sales: Make Relevant Information Visible to Improve Ecommerce Conversion Optimization

46% of online shoppers said they always check return policies before making a purchase online. Furthermore, another study shows that over 50% of potential customers leave without paying because they are presented with hidden charges, such as delivery price.

Notably, not showing this information will result in fewer sales. Display this and other relevant information where customers are likely to read it: on a product page, on footer pages, and on every page header.

Another  great way to present all information in one place is on the FAQs page. It’s so common that, almost all your visitors will look for their answers there.

Watchshop organizes important information on a product page tabs.

How to Get Sales: Earn Trust with Reviews & Customer Photos

Customer reviews are a sensitive topic. More than 2/3 of customers read online reviews before making a purchase, while 7 out of 10 have questioned their trustworthiness.

We suggest displaying reviews from a neutral and credible 3rd party. Also, integrate your site with platforms like TrustPilot or SiteJabber. This way you can make sure your reviews aren’t censored or fake.

Third party review sites provide an overview of your company in general in addition to providing social proof and feedback on products alongside customer photos. Apps like SocialPhotos make it easy to display user generated content.

Quick tip: As for customer photos, if you don’t have your customer base yet, just showcase the content of users using the product, even if they didn’t buy it from you. Caption the pictures generically: Great Pics of People Using This Product.

Milanoo puts their customers photos next to standard product photos.

How to Get Sales: Earn Trust with Security Badges

Accreditations, certifications, better business bureaus, security badges, and trust marks aren’t just extra bells and whistles. These symbols carry credibility, and you can use them to your benefit.

Obviously, privacy and security will always be a top priority for consumers. Therefore, trust badges increase some companies ecommerce optimization conversion rates by as much as 40%. That’s $11,000 in sales instead of $7,300 just because of the trust badge.

If you’re using Shopify, the solutions I like are McAfee Secure trustmark and eTrusted. They are super easy to use and definitely worth checking.

Choxi includes prominent security badge below their product photos.

How to Get Sales: Optimize Your Product Page

Your “Product Page” is the place where the actual purchase is initiated. Being the most visited page on your store, it can increase your conversion rates significantly.

It should have a very clear focus: sales, as it’s literally one click away from where your customers checkout.

Make sure it has a clear focus, is easy to use, and answers all your customers’ questions. A well-built product page will make your customer stay and buy, while a bad one will cause customers to bounce.

[quote style=”style1″] Ecommerce conversion optimization is about optimizing product pages. One of the largest mistakes that ecommerce optimizers make is trying to tamper with generic elements for more conversions.

[/quote]

How to Get Sales: Use Numerous High Quality Images

An IRCE 2012 report shows that over 60% of consumers state that the quality of images and ability to see products from different angles is the most important feature of an ecommerce website.

Make sure you have high quality images that can be enlarged. Showcase your products from different angles and always display images of each variations of the product. Nobody’s going to buy a yellow t-shirt if they can only see a black one. The final touch is to include photos of people using the product, because people sell.
To dropshippers: I know this is a sensitive subject. The majority of suppliers don’t provide good quality images and you usually can’t take photos yourself, you’re dropshipping! Try search that image on Google and finding the exact same image in high resolution. (This trick usually works for me).

Dropdead engages visitors with multiple large, high quality images.

How to Get Sales: Create an Engaging Description

Compelling product descriptions can transform ecommerce conversion optimization rates — it’s common to see increases of 30%-100%.

A good product description is emotional, descriptive, speaks to the customer, and shows the benefits instead of features. Equally important, use descriptions to give your customers what they want. Remind them that this is the product they’ve been looking for.

Product specifications are equally important. They serve a different purpose, however, meaning that you should separate them. Besides sales, a more informed customer is less likely to return the purchase.

If you are not comfortable with copywriting, look for help from someone else or try apps like Crowd Content.

FaucetFace tells a story about what makes their bottles great and why you need one.

How to Get Sales: Offer Free Shipping

Everyone expects free shipping. Free Shipping is everywhere, and it will dramatically reduce the friction of buying at your store.

According to Accent, 88% of consumers would be more likely to shop at an online site if they were promised free shipping. Another study shows that more than half of your customers will leave your site without paying because they were presented with unexpected costs like delivery charges. Shopify actually names it as one of the top four conversions killers.

If you can’t do free shipping on all of your items, try creating other promotions like free shipping on some specific product category or free shipping on orders over a certain amount.

Another extremely important thing: show the expected date of delivery, even if it is a long time period. People want to know this and if they don’t, 21% will abandon the sale.

BookDepository.com Signature – Free Delivery Worldwide

How to Get Sales: Create Urgency & Scarcity to Improve Ecommerce Conversion Optimization

Urgency and scarcity tactics are as old as the hills and are widely used by giants like Amazon, Alibaba and Flipkart. That’s because they’ve been proven to work.

Furthermore, we’ve all seen when stores show that only three items are left of your favorite product, or when a particular product (which wasn’t ever sold at all) is displayed as sold out to increase sales of other products. Some offer limited time sales with countdown timers, and others organize flash sales. There’s really nothing new about this – these tricks are everywhere, and it’s up to you how to use them in ways that are best for your store.

We can say that a good amount of certainty that urgency and scarcity tactics will increase your sales when applied correctly. That in mind, be sure not to overdo it. Too much scarcity makes you look scammy, and that can obviously work against you.

TideBuy.com uses both urgency and scarcity triggers to persuade customers into buying.

How to Get Sales: Winning Back Existing Customers

According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of converting an existing customer versus a potential one is up to 15 times higher. Referring to our article headline, repeat customers help you figure out how to get more sales, with less visitors and overhead costs with ecommerce conversion optimization.

Further, repeat customers are more likely to buy from you, and they usually spend more than first time buyers. In fact,[quote style=”style1″]61% of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers, rather than new business.

[/quote]

Still, this mentality might not work for you if you’re a smaller seller. You must convert customers early on to ensure you aren’t throwing away money for customer acquisitions when you already have dozens of customers.

How to Get Sales: Retargeting

On average, only 2% of your visitors will purchase something on their first visit. Retargeting is the best method for reaching the other 98%. Of course,  it’s a powerful ecommerce conversion optimization technique as it is used to show ads to people who visited your site with the intent of helping you to get more sales. You can easily set retargeting campaigns on any advertising platform including Facebook marketing, Google, Twitter, or specific apps like Adroll. After browsing hundreds of sites today – my Facebook feed, for instance, is full of new offers.

Retargeting campaigns keep your audience interested by showing your offers to them around the web. It also gives you a second chance to land a sale by targeting precisely the people that were interested in you before.

More than this, retargeting allows you to increase brand awareness and trust. As Ratko Vidakovic from AdProfs notes that, “a lot of people don’t know that you’re running retargeting campaigns, which leads them to believe you’re running huge advertising campaigns when they see your ads on most of the sites they visit.”

To seal the deal, try retargeting visitors with discount offers or upsell them with your best selling products. Make sure your ads are fresh so you don’t annoy them.

Improve Ecommerce Conversion Optimization by Recovering Abandoned Carts

Almost 70% of your customers will abandon their shopping cart. While visitors are interested in your site, people who abandon their shopping cart are specifically interested in purchasing from you.

So, send automated email reminders to customers who have abandoned their carts using either built-in Shopify feature. Notably, if you do this well, you can recover from 5% to 12% of those lost sales. This can also play a huge role in answering remained questions regarding how to get more sales, as they’ve already started the purchasing process.

First, test the waters with friendly email reminder that the product is running low in stock. Include your store reviews or some other relevant information like a security badge or happy customer photos. Second, don’t be afraid to test out more aggressive promotions with multiple emails offering limited time coupons. It’s crucial, however, not to let them slip away by pushing too hard, so use this last chance wisely.

In the above picture, Etsy compliments my taste and invites to complete my purchase.

How to Get More Sales by Sending Win-Back Emails

If you’re trying to figure out how to get more sales, win-back emails allow you to reach out to customers who have created an account on your store or made a purchase in the past

V. Kumar, a marketing professor at Georgia State University who studies “win back” strategies, believes businesses should focus more on lapsed customers. He thinks this for three main reasons: they have already expressed interest in you; they already know your brand; and with the right tools you can send them better offerings than whatever drew them to you in the first place. Directing your focuses towards these potential customers can help you improve your ecommerce conversion optimization, and subsequently allow you to get more sales.

CNET reengaged 8.33% of their inactive customers database just by using simple win-back emails with a subject “We miss you – please come back!”.

Create your own variations of these emails with tools like Receiptful or Remarkety. They will guide you through your campaign creation send automated win-back emails. Set it once and it’s running.

ASOS cares about it’s past customers and offers them a discount.

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