How to increase your conversion rate on Shopify with these 5 easy-to-implement tweaks
We know it's not easy being a Shopify retailer. There are a ton of things that retailers have to do in order to create a great shopping experience for their customers from product range, user engagement to advertising and conversions! It's time-consuming and its complicated!
Whether your Shopify store is new or whether you have been selling for a few years, you should always have a strategy to attract, convert and retain customers. Today we are going to focus on conversions. Conversions are critical to all online businesses. The more conversion opportunities a website provides, the higher the probability of an end sale.
While there is no magic bullet for increasing conversions, there are a number of easy tweaks you can implement into your Shopify store today that will increase conversions on your Shopify store
These 5 simple changes will help increase the number of customers buying from you and instantly grow your business. Now there is no more reason for leaving visitors hanging or unsure about making a purchase or signing up for something - it's time to make that sale.
Why is your Shopify conversion rate low?
The first step to solving a problem is working out what the problem actually is. Your store might have a low conversion rate for a number of reasons, here are a few. We will explore these further in a different post
So here are some questions to ask yourself:
What do you sell?
How much do your products cost?
How often do you advertise?
Is your website up to scratch?
Are there any issues with search engine optimisation (SEO)?
Has Google decided to ban (or penalise) your site in its rankings for any reason?
Are you being endorsed by any top-level influencers (bloggers, social media power users etc.)?
Has a competitor been taking market share recently?
What is your conversion rate?
Have you mapped out your acquisition and conversion funnel to find out where the leakage or bottleneck is?
If you can answer these questions, you'll have a better idea of what's happening to your Shopify conversion rate, and what you need to do about it.
In spite of addressing the above issues, if you are still seeing low Shopify conversion rates, here are some of the most common reasons:
You don't have enough traffic
Your customers aren't ready to buy yet
You're not showing up in search results for key words and phrases that people are searching on when they want to buy what you sell
Your website is difficult to navigate, or it's slow, or both.
You're charging too much for something that your customers can get through a competitor for less.
How do you know if your Shopify conversion rate is good?
For ecommerce stores, the conversion rate basically means how many of the people who visit your store actually complete a purchase. It also measures how many ecommerce goals are completed e.g. successfully adding to cart, successfully checking out or successfully purchasing a product.
What is a good Shopify conversion rate?
Online retail conversion rates vary from industry to industry and the average ecommerce conversion rate is somewhere around 2-3%.
Here are some industry specific conversion rates from
Is my store doomed if my conversion rate is below 2-3%?
Not at all! With our ecommerce expertise and the Convert Dial app, we can help you make your eCommerce store more profitable with higher conversion rates and lower conversion costs. Check out Convert Dial here and sign up for a free trial.
What are the factors that affect ecommerce conversion rates?
According to Shopify there are 5 ecommerce conversion factors:
Website design
Product presentation
Pricing strategies
Shipping and returns policies
Customer service
Click here to read a post on What do shoppers want to see before they purchase from your online store?
So now that we have gone through what ecommerce conversion is, let's look at 10 easy to implement tweaks that can increase your Shopify conversion rate
1. Customise the checkout experience to increase conversions
There are many key elements to increase your Shopify store sales. One of them is to optimise the checkout experience. Why? Because if your checkout process is not optimised, your potential customers might abandon their shopping carts and leave the website without any purchase which leads to low conversion rates.
Here are three tips to create a great checkout experience that will increase your Shopify conversion rate
Provide a simple and intuitive checkout experience for customers. You must highlight all the relevant information that needs to be added in each step of the process, like billing address, shipping address, payment method, etc.
Consider using a shopping cart that allows customers to save all their checkout information and come back at any time
Increase your Shopify conversions by asking for only mandatory information. This way, your customers will not have to provide any unnecessary data and increase their checkout speed.
2. Highlight a clear call to action
A call to action (CTA) is any button or text on your site meant to get a visitor to do something.
It could be as simple as clicking on an email opt-in form or placing an item in the cart and checking out. Or it might be as complex as subscribing to a service or buying a product.
Why are CTA's important? It's easy for visitors to forget what they're supposed to do when you want them to do something on your site. Even the most motivated shoppers can get distracted and lose their way through your site.
Visitors can be in different stages from awareness, consideration, and decision when they visit you site which means you need multiple CTAs throughout the site.
There are two types of calls to action you need to know about: primary and secondary CTAs .
The primary CTA is one that brings visitors through all three stages of the sales funnel and increase conversions.
Secondary CTAs increase the desire for shoppers to do something on your site.They draw people in through the first two stages of the sales funnel, but they don't increase conversions. Good secondary calls to action include things like: free resources, blog signups, social media follows and email subscriptions.
A good rule of thumb is to have a primary CTA on the homepage and at least one secondary call to action on every page to increase the conversion rate
3. Activate live chat to increase conversions
If you have a Shopify store there is no reason not to take advantage of the increase in conversions that live chat can bring. Live chat is a great way to increase customer satisfaction when they are shopping on your ecommerce site.
By keeping your customer service levels high on your Shopify store, you can increase the customer satisfaction and in turn increase your conversion rate.
You can enhance the chat experience by preparing a list of commonly asked and automating the answers in the chat system. For example,
What sizes are available?
Do you deliver to my city?
How long will delivery take?
You can direct your customers to the relevant pages on your site that answer these questions and if they still wish to, then connect them with a live operator. If a live operator is not available, prompt them to submit a question via a simple form embedded in the chat
Getting started with live chat is incredibly simple. You can get a free trial from many of the services available before you commit to buying.
4. Showcase reviews and personal testimonials to generate more sales
Almost every person who is looking to purchase a product will depend on reviews as an important factor in their purchasing decision.
In fact, according to a recent study by Bright Local, 88% of consumers say they trust online testimonials as much as personal recommendations. And 94% of customers cite positive customer service experiences as the most influential driver of whether or not they buy from a business again.
The more positive reviews you have, the more likely you are to increase your conversion rate. Manually asking for reviews or incentivising customers to leave reviews can increase the number of reviews you receive on your Shopify store. If you're looking to increase user engagement with your product, then adding review functionality is one way to go about it.
Customers are more likely to purchase a product after reading through other customer's reviews for that same product. This is why reviews and testimonials are so crucial to increase sales on your Shopify store or increase the chances of a conversion from visitor to paying customer.
5. Increase conversions on Shopify with social proof
What is social proof?
Social proof is a psychological principle that suggests people will copy the behavior of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior. It works because people like to appear consistent with what others are doing.
We have already talked about reviews and testimonials in the previous section, here we will focus on how you can leverage your happy customers to increase Shopify conversions
By asking your customers to share photos and videos of them using your product, you will encourage other customers to purchase as well. You can incentivise your customers to share their positive experiences. Just remember to get permission before re-sharing or reposting anything across other channels or on your website.
For example if you sell pet accessories, ask your customers to share photos and videos of their pets on Instagram via a common hashtag and give a prize to one of them! Your customers love the thrill of getting a freebie and your future customers can see just how many happy shoppers you have! This way your customer becomes a strong and free marketing channel and you will increase traffic and increase conversions on Shopify.
\Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned Shopify veteran, it never hurts to learn how to increase your conversion rates. As we wrap up this blog post on 10 tips for increasing conversions, we want to leave you with one final takeaway—if you need help in the future, don’t hesitate to reach out! Our team is here and ready to chat about what could be holding back sales in your store.
We have plenty of tricks up our sleeve that can drive more traffic and conversions without lifting a finger. For example, did you know that Convert dial predicts customer behaviors so you can create an automated and personalised marketing campaigns?
Try it out if you want to convert more customers and increase revenue with less time and cost