Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices

• When working with online pages, conversion rates are the most important aspect as they represent how many people complete the desired action on your website page.
• There are several strategies that can encourage conversions which will, in turn, increase the success of your business.
• The way a website looks can also affect conversion rates because you want to drive attention towards the conversion, not create a distraction.

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How do you ensure online business success? You may focus on attracting visitors to the website, promote products through live streaming, or regularly send email newsletters with new arrivals and deals. But the hunt for customers may go in vain if they land on the page and don’t take further action. This phenomenon will appear as the conversion rate in your Google Analytics account.

Conversion is an action on the website you expect visitors to perform. It may be signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or scheduling a call. The conversion rate illustrates the percentage of people who did it. And conversion rate optimization is a set of actions to improve this metric. Let’s see some best tricks to encourage people to convert.

5 Powerful Ways to Increase Website Conversions

1. Work with Abandoned Carts

Sometimes things can go wrong during shopping. Potential customers add items to the cart and leave without completing the transaction. What does this mean?

Maybe you don’t have a wish list section, and they just don’t want to lose the item? Or a discount code has expired, or delivery costs are just too high? Whatever the reason, you should always try to make up for missed sales by all means and implement shopping cart UX best practices.

You can also recover abandoned carts by using the following methods:

• on-site push notifications;
• automatic emails;
• advertising following clients across the web;
• social media outreach.

A successful abandoned cart recovery strategy should include:

• automation tools, sending notifications after some time a cart or checkout is abandoned;
• personalized heading, address, and other content;
• pictures of what users have left in the cart;
• product ratings/reviews from other customers;
• information on the return/exchange policy;
• total price, including shipping costs;
• a prominent call-to-action button linked to the shopping cart;
• AI-powered product recommendations based on user preferences and behavior. 

Some of the above tips have found their place in the Threadless email. The online store promotes the offer by sending a unique discount code on the added goods. It also leverages a sense of urgency, telling customers that the discount is time-sensitive.

2. Remove Unnecessary Fields

Complicated checkout or too many fields to complete may divert visitors from conversion at the final stage. They’ve performed the desired action by adding the product to their cart. How do you ensure they’ll become buyers in the end?

First, don’t ask too many questions. Minimize the form to complete the most needed information and make it mandatory. Leave other fields optional. Save everything you can to auto-fill the info for regular purchasers: name, email, phone number, address.

Hiding additional costs is another way to lose clients. If you want to surprise customers, let it be free samples rather than taxes or shipping costs right before the checkout. Display fees in the order summary.

As you can see, the Kérastase website suggests purchasers three checkout methods:

1. to sign in (if you’re a registered user) and use the saved customer data;
2. to log in with Facebook without having to come up with a password;
3. to proceed as a guest and insert all the necessary information.

To the right is the order summary with all the details. You observe the total sum, items in the cart, and contact details to resolve possible issues.

3. Set up Convenient Site Navigation

After loading the main page, the users face the task of finding the product that interests them. The unpleasant consequence of complicated navigation can be a lot of lost customers. So the witty decision would be to put the website usability in the first place.

From your side, make sure that your online store is fitted with:

• a proper menu area with a logical breakdown;
• a good search bar with adequate results listing;
• advanced filters in the catalog since it reduces the time spent searching for the desired product (filtration of goods by properties, brands, and other characteristics will help simplify the life of visitors and, at the same time, increase the site’s conversion).

The online eyewear store Oliver Peoples leverages an interesting trick. Their entire assortment is divided into two large groups: eyeglasses and sunglasses, which appear on the main page. Selecting a group will open a product catalog where you can filter your glasses by gender, frame color and shape, lens material, and so on.

4. Boosting Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting is the process of showing ads to users who browsed your site. You may launch it for two types of visitors:

• email subscribers;
• any user if they enable cookies.

Prospects leave data about viewed categories or products. You can show these or similar goods in the ads on other websites, social media, or apps. This strategy increases your brand awareness, persuades prospects to return to the store, and aids in customer retention.

Do you want to get even more return on investment (ROI)? Personalize ads to make them more relevant to customers’ needs. Generic ads cost you more and don’t guarantee viewers find anything to their interest. It means fewer clicks compared to targeted ads.

Personalization helps you drive more targeted traffic to the store and increases the chances of conversion. Let’s take email subscribers as an example. Prospects who leave email addresses or phone numbers on the store show a higher intention to buy. So you need to nudge them to make an order. At the same time, retargeting unknown visitors lets you reach wider audiences. Combine both types of prospects to maximize retargeting campaigns.

I opened the Vans store and searched for shoes. When I appear on another website, I see ads for the viewed products.

5. Adapting to Geographical Parameters

Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, eCommerce can identify visitors even on the first visit. It happens thanks to cookies. When people arrive at your “door”, meet them with the relevant content they expect to see. For example, will they buy snow jackets if it’s sunny and hot in their area? Probably not. So a product selection on the home page featuring winter garments will hardly hit the mark.

Customize website content based on customer location. It’s not about frightening prospects and showing their most visited places. It sounds creepy when a store knows where you spend your days. Geo-targeting is about directing customers automatically to their store, localizing the content, or displaying the nearest point of sales (POS). 

Geolocation tracking detects a site visitor’s approximate location using the closest cell towers and WiFi nodes. It reduces the number of clicks and elevates the customer experience. Besides, a geo-specific store demonstrates prices in the local currency to reduce the effort of converting them from the default option.

That’s what happens on the Surfdome online store when changing the location. A British version is in English with prices in pound sterling. If you switch to a Swedish version, the language, banners, product selections, and currency adapt to the chosen location.

A British store:

A Swedish store:

To Sum Up

Even if you’ve put effort and money into customer acquisition strategies, you can’t neglect conversions. Conversion rate optimization is necessary if you want your website traffic to bring revenue. The bottom line is improving the user experience. Creating convenient site navigation, tracking geolocation, retargeting prospects who viewed your products, and other steps significantly influence the conversion rate and ensure long-term success.

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About the Author

Alex Husar