Ecommerce CRO: 10 Actionable Tips to Boost Sales

Ecommerce conversion rate optimization involves taking action or making changes to certain areas of your store to encourage more sales. You can also target other store-related goals, such as reducing the number of abandoned carts or increasing email newsletter signups.

You’re not necessarily looking to increase overall traffic to your site in order to boost the conversion rate. Instead, you want to secure higher-quality leads and more valuable visitors who are ready to checkout or commit to an action.

To measure your store’s ecommerce conversion rate, you want to divide the number of conversions (e.g. sales) by total visitors, and then multiple that figure by 100. This will then give you a percentage conversion rate. You can see the formula below:

Conversion rate = (Total conversions / total visitors) x 100

For example, let’s say you have a website that gets 1,000 visitors per day, and 10 of those visitors make a purchase. Your conversion rate would be as follows:

(10/1000) x 100 = 1%

Author's Notes

Your conversion rate is an important metric to track because it offers valuable insight into the performance of your site and marketing strategies. For example, if your conversion rate suddenly dropped from 1% to 0.2%, this would be a clear sign that something has happened that needs investigating and fixing.

I recommend conducting a CRO audit to help you identify which changes could have the biggest impact. With this data in hand, you may decide to test a new product page layout and find your conversion rate increases to 3% as a result, highlighting that the new layout is better than the old one.

Emma Ryan Lead Writer

What Is a Good Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

One of the benefits of conversion rate optimization is, of course, more conversions. But, what’s a good conversion rate to aim for?

In reality, there’s no “gold standard” conversion rate because a lot of factors come into play. The average ecommerce conversion rate is between 2% and 4%. However, it can be worthwhile to use industry-specific averages to measure how well you’re performing compared to others.

➡️ You can find average website conversion rates for key industries in our full report.

So, now you know why optimizing your online store to increase conversion rates is important. But, what are the best ways to do this?

In this section, I’ll show you 10 of the best actionable tips for ecommerce conversion rate optimization, from improving your site’s performance to A/B testing.

1. Enhance Website Speed and Performance

Website load time matters – the less time your website takes to load, the less likely your visitor is going to get frustrated and navigate away. In fact, one test by Walmart found that for every one second of improvement in website load time, the company saw a 2% increase in conversions!

To improve website speed, I recommend you:

• Optimize your images (compress and resize them) to avoid slowing down your pages
• Use browser caching
• Minify CSS and JavaScript
• Reduce server response time
• Limit third-party scripts

2. Optimize Website Design and User Experience

Visitor frustration can lead to lower conversion rates. By making your website simple to navigate, you make it easier for visitors to find the content they’re looking for. In turn, this streamlines the buying process and increases conversion rates.

Carefully consider your website design and user journey. Cut out unnecessary steps and remove elements such as images and text that don’t add value.

3. Implement Clear CTAs

No matter how great your website is, if you don’t have a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA), it’s unlikely you’ll make many (if any) conversions.

Place your CTA in a clear location, tell visitors what value they gain from taking the action, and show them exactly where to go next. With a CTA, you can guide your customers toward the end goal.

4. Create High-Quality Product Pages

Optimizing your product pages is crucial to showing off your products in the best light and enticing customers to hit that “Add to Cart” button.

Use high-quality images and videos to give visitors insight into the visual aspects of the product. Then create a detailed and persuasive product description that provides essential information while compelling the customer to take action. Thankfully, website builders like Shopify offer AI-powered tools (Shopify Magic) to help you in this department.

5. Utilize Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Many online stores have countless competitors around the world. Using social proof, such as reviews and testimonials, can help your store stand out and increase trust in your brand so potential customers feel confident shopping with you.

Automated email marketing can be a great way to encourage reviews. For example, you could send a friendly email requesting a review several days after the product has been delivered.

➡️ If you’re daunted by the idea of asking for reviews, check out our guide on how to ask customers for reviews for some handy tips and tricks.

6. Offer a Seamless Checkout Process

Brands such as Amazon, with its one-click purchasing process, understand the power of a seamless checkout experience.

More steps mean more friction and more opportunity for a potential customer to “give up” on checking out. So, it’s important to review and optimize your checkout process regularly, removing any unnecessary steps where possible.

I suggest aiming to have your complete checkout on one page – our top-rated ecommerce website builder Shopify offers this to its merchants. This can limit the potential for problems and increase conversions.

7. Implement Live Chat Support

Live chat is an innovative solution for an online store, allowing you to quickly and easily answer potential questions and queries from customers. This helps remove blockers to purchase and can drastically increase your conversion rate.

If you built your site with Wix, it’s worth knowing that this builder recently introduced an AI Site-Chat tool to support businesses when it comes to responding to customers. The AI-powered feature adapts to your brand’s tone of voice and can offer help on all matters 24/7, from general questions to assisting with purchases.

8. Personalization and Recommendations

Adapting the sales funnel to match a customer’s personal preferences helps you build a personalized shopping experience. This makes their time with your business more enjoyable and it’s easier for them to find the products that suit their needs.

For example, you might integrate a recommendation engine into your store which offers personalized product recommendations based on previous purchases or information they’ve provided you with.

9. Leverage Email Marketing for Abandoned Carts

Abandoned carts offer a perfect opportunity for improving your conversions. After all, the shopper has effectively told you what they’re interested in buying.

You can use automated abandoned cart emails to reach out to those who have abandoned their carts and remind them of the benefits of the products they’ve chosen. You might also offer compelling offers such as a discount in order to give them that extra push to buy.

10. A/B Testing and Experimentation

A/B testing is all about testing two variations on your website to see which option offers the best conversion rate. When A/B testing, it’s important to only select one element to change each time, otherwise you can get confused over which change has actually impacted the results.

Using this approach is a smart way to collect data that can be used to drive better conversion rates. For ecommerce stores, you could test your landing page layout, product images, product descriptions, and CTAs to see which variation performs best.

I’ve shared some of the best ways to improve your conversion rates, but what about the common pitfalls you should avoid? Take a look at some frequent errors to sidestep below:

• Don’t overload your page with pop-ups and ads (in fact, avoid them altogether if you can) – this can be incredibly off-putting to customers and you risk pushing them away to competitors
• Don’t ignore mobile users – remember to make your store mobile-friendly, since more people place orders on their phones now as opposed to other devices
• Don’t provide minimal product information – customers want to know the details of what they’re buying, and a lack of information could turn them away before checkout
• Don’t use complex checkout procedures – it’s best to keep things simple, offer a variety of payment options, and help customers complete their purchase quickly

➡️ Check out our separate guide on strategies to increase online sales for your store, including tips on using influencers and cross selling.

In this guide, I’ve walked you through 10 of the very best ways to increase your ecommerce conversion rates, including creating high-quality product pages and adding customer reviews to your site.

As the ecommerce space is fast-paced and always changing, it’s crucial to continually monitor your conversion rates, test other options, and make updates over time to ensure that every element of your online store is working at its very best to score those all-important conversions.