In the previous article, we explained what conversion rate is and focused on the first two stages of the process – analyzing your website’s data and understanding visitor behavior, and implementing tools to make improvements to your site’s conversion rate. In this article, we will focus on improving an e-commerce site’s conversion rate and building a loyalty program for returning customers. You must understand – more conversions = more money. Therefore, we have gathered a variety of excellent tools for you that can work wonders on your site and improve the conversion rate of your store.
What is a conversion rate on an e-commerce website?
Most people think of an e-commerce website conversion rate as being related solely to purchases, but that is a mistake. When we measure conversions on an e-commerce site, we look at several things:
1. What percentage of visitors add products to the cart
2. What percentage of visitors proceed to the cart page
3. What percentage of visitors reach the payment details page
4. What percentage of visitors purchase on the site
5. What percentage of visitors sign up for the newsletter
Therefore, we need to improve the conversion rate at each step on the way to the purchase and not just look at the final results. When we measure the entire process, we need to find tools that will improve each step along the way, and together they will help us improve the end result – the purchase. In this post, I will review a list of tools that will help you improve the entire purchasing process.
Remember, a good conversion rate for an e-commerce site should be 2-3%, and if you’re not there, you need to work on your site.
So how do you improve the conversion rate on an e-commerce website?
We define conversion rate optimization as a four-step process:
- Analyzing your site’s data and understanding visitor behavior
- Implementing tools to make improvements to your site’s conversion rate
- Implementing tools to increase sales on your site
- Building a loyalty program for returning customers
Analyzing your site's data and understanding visitor behavior
In the previous article, we talked in this section about the issues on your website that lead visitors to abandon it or decide not to perform the desired conversion action. We reviewed several tools that can help at this stage. Now, we will focus specifically on one tool we mentioned, which is especially relevant to e-commerce sites and data analysis on your site – Google Analytics.
Just before we detail what reports you get from Google Analytics, make sure you have enabled the Enhanced Ecommerce feature. It is very important that you do this because enabling standard ecommerce will only provide you with data on completed purchases on the site, and not on other actions that ended at earlier stages of the customer journey.
Enhanced Ecommerce is different because it allows you to see a large part of the process the visitor goes through before making a purchase on the site. This is a significant advantage as you can analyze more aspects of the customer journey and optimize visitor behavior accordingly.
You can find all the reports relevant to your site under the “Conversions” category. Through them, you can measure how many sales occurred, what the average order value was, how much time the visitor spent on the site before purchasing a particular product, which products were sold, and more.
Implementing tools to make improvements to your site's conversion rate
As we mentioned in the previous article, after understanding what the gaps are on your site, you need to implement tools that can improve the customer experience on your site and consequently improve the conversion rate. In the previous article, we reviewed several tools that can help you, including A/B testing tools like Google Optimize or VWO, tools to help you interact with site users like implementing popups via Poptin, and adding live chat to the site via Tawk.to or Zendesk. All of these are also relevant to an e-commerce site, so we recommend returning to the previous article and reading more in detail.
Step Three - Implementing tools to increase sales on your site
At this stage, we will talk specifically about tools that can help you increase conversions on an e-commerce website. There are several tools you can implement on your site to strengthen this part:
1. Tools for building trust between you and the customer – The goal is to build trust between you and the customer regarding the product you sell and become a reliable and secure brand for your potential customers. There are plenty of ways to generate trust that will ultimately increase conversion rates on the site, including:
- You can add reviews accompanied by photos from customers who purchased the product – For this purpose, you can use the product from Yotpo, which allows your customers to leave a review easily.
- Adding pop-ups alerting the customer about a purchase of the product they are interested in by another customer – You have probably encountered this feature when visiting Booking.com and received an alert that another customer is currently interested in the accommodation you are looking at. The idea behind this is to show site users that there is activity by other users, as well as create a sense of urgency for a faster purchase out of fear that “stock will run out”, “dates will be taken”, and more. You can use NotificationX designed for WordPress sites to implement this, or Proof.
- Adding social media icons that automatically count the number of followers on each platform – You can use the product from ProveSource to do this.
2. Guiding the customer toward searching for a specific product – One of the mistakes e-commerce stores make is having a cluttered site where the user feels they have to make an effort to find their way around, which can affect the actual purchase. There are several things you can do to strengthen this part:
- Implementing a mega menu on the site – This refers to a menu where the customer is presented with sub-categories that can help them reach the specific product they are looking for, instead of scrolling endlessly and trying to find it on their own. You can use the Max Mega Menu plugin for WordPress for this.
- Implementing filtering options – This will help the user filter the products relevant to them within the sub-category, for example by size, fabric type, etc.
You can use JetSmartFilters to implement both of these options on your site.
- Consolidating checkout pages into a single page – The goal is to make the purchasing process very fast, without the need to navigate to additional pages so the user does not decide to abandon midway. You can use several products to achieve this, such as WooCommerce One Page Checkout
- Improving the checkout process – You can improve the purchase process on a WooCommerce site using various plugins like Jetwoobuilder or Woolementor
- Option to save credit card details for the next purchase – To make the process faster and simpler and encourage impulse purchases. This option is implemented by your payment gateway company, so you need to make sure they offer this solution.
- Newsletter signup in exchange for a discount – This option is critical for your site, since this way you can encourage more purchases and also obtain details about who is using your site. Beyond that, you can build a relationship and promote future sales by offering additional deals sent by email. To do this, you need to use popups (via Poptin, for example) and then connect it to email marketing software, such as Activetrail or Klaviyo.
5. Increasing the shopping cart size – One of the things we want to do in an e-commerce store is to increase the customer’s cart value; this allows us to spend more to acquire a customer and also makes us more profitable with every purchase.
- Adding additional products that might interest the customer based on the purchase – Many times, your customer arrives looking for one thing and leaves with other items they didn’t intend to buy. How do you drive them to do this? By serving the items they might be interested in on a silver platter. You essentially do the “hard work” for them, and all they have to do is pay.
- Last-minute upsells at checkout – Your customer is already just a moment away from clicking the purchase button. Why not use this moment to leverage the transaction and make it bigger? Offer your customers additional products that can increase their shopping cart value. In the image below, you can see how Mexicana uses Upsells and gives its customers the option to enjoy additional items at a lower cost to increase the cart size.
You can do this manually via WooCommerce without installing a dedicated plugin, but rather by placing specific products into the Upsells category. If you want to install a plugin that will do this automatically for you, you can use Product Recommendations.
6. Turning buyers into repeat customers – Our most important goal on an e-commerce site is to make customers come back and buy again and again, which is why we need to think of ideas that will get them to return to the site and make another purchase
- Back in stock notification option – This option has several advantages. First, you get information from the customer about what product they like, which can help you in the future with product recommendations based on this item. Second, you increase the likelihood that the customer will return for the product via reminders you send them. You can implement this using this tool. In the example below, you can see how TerminalX does this.
- Using coupons – Coupons are a great way to offer discounts and rewards to your customers, and can help promote future sales. For example, Shein provides discount coupons to users who register for a new account. That is, the conversion rate on the site increases as a result of offering a coupon for a future purchase, and the likelihood that the purchase will take place increases as well, since the customer received a discount on items they were interested in. To activate such an option on your WordPress site, you can use this tool.
- Increasing customer lifetime value through automation – Using email marketing software to keep in touch with your customers is critical to success. Whether it’s new promotions, specific discounts for visitors who haven’t visited in a long time, or updates on new products that have arrived on your site – you need email marketing software to help you do this automatically and correctly. Email marketing tools allow you to automatically and efficiently manage mailing lists, create styled emails that match your brand and stand out, schedule automated emails at specific times or based on triggers you choose, and gain insights that can help you moving forward. For this, you can use email marketing software like MailChimp, or ActiveTrail, or use e-commerce automation platforms, among which the most recommended are Klaviyo or Flashy.
Step Four - Building a loyalty program for returning customers
You need to create a loyalty program for returning customers. The people who buy from you need to feel that you are grateful and reward them for repeat purchases. You can see an example of such a move at McDonald’s.
- Building a loyalty program – The idea behind a loyalty program for returning customers is, on one hand, to make them feel special and consequently continue purchasing from you, and on the other hand – to turn them into brand ambassadors who will recommend you to other people.
One of the tools for building a loyalty program is smile.io, whose product focuses on 3 categories:
Referrals which focuses on acquiring new customers through users who already use your product, thereby allowing you to grow your community at no extra cost.
Points which focuses on rewarding a user who buys from you in order to bring them back for another purchase.
VIP which focuses on strengthening the relationship with your top customers by granting statuses and perks (for example, Waze does this on a large scale by giving you a higher status the more engaged you are in the app).
Another tool you can use to build a customer loyalty program is Yotpo, which provides a wide range of options to engage your users. For example, you can give them points toward their next purchase (to be deducted from the item price) if they leave a review on a product they bought, follow you on Instagram, and more. This is a great way to retain them.
Summary
Improving the conversion rate on your e-commerce website is critical to growing your sales. The more you invest in the small details and ensure an excellent shopping experience for your customers, the more it will pay off! Remember, building trust, helping visitors find their product, improving the checkout process, increasing cart value, bringing customers back to the site for additional purchases, and building a loyalty program will increase customer lifetime value and make you profitable. Additionally, you will be able to spend more money on acquiring each new customer and invest more money in advertising. We recommend trying the tips mentioned above and seeing if they affect your customers too.
About the Author
Rotem Blum, 26, Project Manager at Fialkov Digital. Holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Tel Aviv University.
