Improving E-Commerce Conversion Rates: A Guide to Building a Better Online Business

Ever wondered why your e-commerce conversions aren't where you want them to be? What if we told you that with just a few tweaks to your website and marketing strategy, you could see noticeable improvement?

In this episode, we address the variable nature of e-commerce conversions and the importance of tracking them using tools like Google Analytics. We stress the need for continuous website improvement and staying abreast with the enduring trends rather than getting swept away by ephemeral fads.

Imagine having an e-commerce website that not only looks attractive but also works to convert your visitors into customers? We guide you on the path to achieving this by discussing the importance of compelling product descriptions and the use of high-resolution images and videos. We cover the nuances of web design, emphasizing on clear calls to action, readable fonts, and visible product reviews and testimonials. But we don't stop there - we go a step further to discuss how to connect with customers on a deeper level. By identifying your top items to convert and regularly revising your content, you can establish meaningful relationships with your customers while improving your conversion rates.

Join us as we break down the tech for your online business, one episode at a time.

Mentioned Resources: 

eCommerce Conversions – The Art of setting effective conversion goals
Content Creation – Harnessing the power of blogging

Implementing New Features – Launch Checklist

ADA Compliance – Creating Accessible websites

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Chapters

• 0:00 Improving E-Commerce Conversion Rates
• 7:20 Improving Website Conversion Rates
• 19:08 Improving Conversion Rates and Customer Connections

Transcript

Carrie: 0:00

A good e-commerce conversion rate can vary depending on various factors, such as industry, product type, target audience and marketing efforts. However, as a general benchmark, a conversion rate of 2-5% is typical for most e-commerce websites. Today, we're going to be exploring what influences conversion rate, whether you sell products or services, and how you can improve yours. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech and to easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to this week's episode of e-commerce made easy podcast. Today, we're diving into e-commerce conversion rates. So, really, what is considered an e-commerce conversion? Because this can really vary depending upon your industry and your goals. We can apply this to both physical and digital services. For example, e-commerce conversions could be based upon purchases of your products or services could be subscribing to your newsletter, could be downloading a resource that you have on your website, or watching a video on how far and how long they watch that video, and it could be just, generally, the next step you really want your potential customer to make with you. It's important to set yourself up to track your most important conversion rates. What are the top three to five actions you want consumers to take on your website that will get them closer to purchasing from you or really generally get them closer to even connecting with you? Well, you need to consider both. So make a list of all the actions you want them to take and rank them for most importantly or least important, and then I want you to dig through that list and come up to your top three to five tasks that you want potential consumers to do. That would be most important to get them the closest to getting to know you and your company better and to purchasing. Once you know what your conversion rates are for these most important tasks that you want consumers to be doing, you can use that to figure out if your efforts to increase the conversion is working. So you can't improve something you can't measure, as I'm sure you know, and it depends upon how fast your business grows and moves as to how often you want to monitor these conversions, but I would say anywhere from once a week to once a month would be ideal.

Carrie: 2:45

So, now that you know what items you want to be tracking, how do you figure out what your conversion rates are for those items? We're going to be needing to use a tool such as Google Analytics to track how many people are going to that target thing that you're wanting them to do. So maybe the landing page for signing up your newsletter, and then you need to figure out who actually go forward through it and actually do sign up, or how many people are landing on that specific product page and are actually going through and purchasing it. So that can get a good bit technical right there and something that would be hard to describe and teach you how to do on a podcast. So if you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, be sure to go to ecommercemadeeasypodcast. com and scroll to the bottom and sign up for a newsletter. Be sure to subscribe there, because we give out lots of tips in our newsletter and our other marketing efforts on how to do ecommerce conversions and understand tools like Google Analytics. So once you know what your conversion rates are, you can use that to figure out if your efforts to increase the conversion is working.

Carrie: 3:55

You can't improve something you don't measure right. So it depends upon how fast your business is growing and how fast it moves as to how often you want to monitor your conversions, but I would say anywhere from once a week to once a month would be ideal. You really don't want to take it out much farther than once a month because then you're going to probably lose the ability to correlate data and make changes if something's going the wrong way. First off, I find conversion rates really depend upon how much you put into your website effort-wise not necessarily monetarily wise as far as the effort you're putting in your website, but you really just want to be looking at and continually improving your website. So, just like you would tidy up your shelves and racks at a retail store, you really should be tidying up your website regularly. I mentioned before in previous episodes is not really a set it and forget a type of task. Now, obviously, when you do get a new website built for you, it's probably good for a little bit, but you really should be continually reviewing and improving your website, no matter how old or new your website is, so you want to be regularly going through your pages, updating content that's no longer relevant.

Carrie: 5:11

Keeping up with new technologies and tried and true trends, not just current fads, is one way to keeping up and keeping your website thriving. Our most successful clients are always reviewing, revising and having us build new features out, improve old features and really listening to customer feedback. It's so easy to fall in a rut and just keep on going without updating much on your website. Honestly, we've fallen into that trap as well, especially with the past three years of the pandemic and situations before that in our business, causing us to be too busy to even look at our own website. So it can happen. It can happen to the best of us. It's definitely happened to us. So this is the year of rebuilding for us our content on our website. So if you're like us and have fallen behind, now's the time to get started. So don't let that get you unmotivated. Now's better than no time. So go ahead and start reviewing your website. I give you full permission to not put it off any further and just start doing it. As of today.

Carrie: 6:18

I will say one thing I think we've done pretty well the past year and a half is getting back into the habit of creating blog posts regularly. So in episode 9 we talk about how you can harness the power of blogging to really propel your business forward. So be sure to check out that episode. If you haven't yet. We'll link to it in the show notes as well. But I do want to mention it briefly here, because having new and fresh content on your site is really helps with your conversion rates and really is important for search engine optimization. Even if you blog only once a month or create new content some other way once a month, it is very important to do and it's just really great to show your potential new customer that you are still alive in a thriving business. So when you see new content like that, I'm sure as you as a consumer, you realize that that company's still in business and still going along. If you haven't seen content for six months, a year or more, you're going to probably start wondering about that business. Right?

Carrie: 7:20

And then, as you add these new features and content, also review your site to make sure it's still easy to navigate and find important things. Double check any new pages or features and make sure they work on multiple devices, and this is something so easy to forget if you're in a hurry especially. So make sure it's on your checklist as you're creating new content or having new features added to your website. We have a good tool for this as well. It's a ecommercemadeeasypodcast. com launch checklist all one word. That again, that's ecommercemadeeasypodcastcom launch checklist, and we will also be linking to it in the show notes. So be sure to check that out, because it's going to help you test any new features you're adding.

Carrie: 8:06

So another tactic increasing website conversions besides keeping your website updated with new and fresh content and revising old is making sure you stay up to date on new trends. Now I'm not talking here, though, about fleeting trends. I'm talking about solid new directions for websites and marketing. For example, it was pretty much unheard of about 10 years ago to consider using your cell phone to browse the web, search for products or even shop, right, I mean, it was just completely unheard of and completely inefficient. Back then you could have looked at the new bubble trend and decided not to go there, but once you see a trend like that sticking or growing, you should really evaluate it to see if you think it's here to stay and if it's relevant to your business. We saw a lot of clients fall behind on technical trends and innovations over the years, including being ready for mobile commerce, which hurt their business. So be sure to stay up to date on this and we will be obviously helping you out with staying up to date on our podcast too.

Carrie: 9:12

So some other ways that you can really improve your e-commerce conversion rate is your product or service descriptions and images. So here we need to really make sure that we have easy to read descriptions that really talk to the consumers wants and desires or their pain points that your product or service solves. We want to talk about the features of the products or services. Second, first we need to draw our consumer in to our story and be talking about what the product does for them, like really start talking to their emotions, and this isn't like shady marketing. This is just helping them bring them in to the story and really kind of picture themselves with your product or service. That helps them determine if it is a good fit for them. Just reading features and descriptions and things like that can be sometimes a technical wall or maybe a jargon wall for them and they really just want to get a good idea to whether it's going to help them or not. We're all designed to want things that help us survive or make things fun for us. So when you're doing these product or service descriptions and images, also make sure that the images are very high resolution and at multiple photo views too.

Carrie: 10:34

If you're selling products Now, if you're doing a services say, you're doing coaching or course creation or things like that then we're going to want to see some photos of you, because people are really buying into you and you as a brand and wanting to really connect with you and really gives a personal touch, even if you do sell products. You might also want to consider having a few photos on your website of you and the business owner. Also, if possible, you should do some short videos of the products or maybe a short message from you if it's you're selling more of services that you do, so really, these short videos are great. It's also something we can look at for conversions rates, especially if you have things set ups properly and say Google Analytics or whatever analytics software you're using, you can see how well these videos are performing for you and how long people are watching them.

Carrie: 11:30

So next we're going to talk about website design and navigation. As far as conversion rates go, we really want here clear call to actions. You don't want click here for more info that's not very specific as to what they're going to get. You could do instead click here for a free quote or click here to subscribe to our newsletter. You really want to be specific in your call to actions, not vague and not clever. You also really want your web design and web navigation to be very easy to read.

Carrie: 12:08

Make sure you're not using too fancy of a font. Make sure the font is easy to read, no matter what sort of level of eyesight somebody might have or maybe reading disability, because I know some fonts are much easier, for example, for dyslexics to read, then the not some of them are really hard for dyslexics to read. So we really want to be making sure we're using some of the standard fonts that are just really standards based and meant that way, because they're just easier for people with potential low visibility on the eyesight or reading I motor skill issues. So we want to make sure we pick those fonts that are really easy to read. You also want to be layering your navigation in a way that completely makes sense. So again, clear, not clever here, and use the words that just really resonate with your audience. You can do some keyword research and some terminology research to make sure that the words you use on your website are not too much into your jargon as far as your business, but more towards the jargon of the consumer.

Carrie: 13:20

We also want to make sure that if you have product reviews, they are very easy to find and very visible. Same for testimonials. If you do testimonials instead of product reviews, maybe you just do services and do self coaching and things like that, so testimonials might be a little bit more appropriate than product reviews. Make sure those are really easy to find. You and also you need to get a routine, a system in place that encourages new reviews or testimonials, and there's ways to automate this to help save you time and efforts. But you really want to be making sure that you are requesting new reviews and testimonials on a regular basis and, if you can, real life success stories with either your products or your services goes a really long way to helping a consumer understand how you work, how your, how your services are, if you're selling products and things like that, so that they can really get that confidence. They need to see whether you're a good fit for them. And you may not be a good fit for them, and that's fine, but these real life success stories can really help them determine and really make the sale a lot easier for those that you are a great fit for.

Carrie: 14:37

Next, let's go over check out processes and payment options. So we all need a minimal amount of information when we process payments. So we want to make sure that you don't over ask on checkout for information that's not necessary and helpful for you to service the customer in an efficient way. So make sure you're not asking for a lot of extra information on checkout. That's just one more barrier for them to completing the transaction. Also, if you're able to create one-click payment options on checkout, that's very helpful as well. So if you have some sort of service like Apple or Google Pay or Venmo things like that that are really easy, you know one-click payments. That is really helpful for creating that smooth checkout process that you really want to have in there and also having a nice way to do cart abandonment, because many times we get busy. We may have started a checkout and then we got distracted. The dog's barking at the front door a kid is crying something like that. Somebody gives you a call on the phone and you get distracted. So having a good cart abandonment module is also great. Whether you're sell products or services, that can really help you convert a large number of abandonments and get those transactions going for you. Also, for some of you it would be appropriate to do retargeting ads too, on Google, youtube, facebook etc. So look into that if you are advanced enough in your business that you want to do retargeting ads, because that can really help that cart abandonment or people who were browsing and who were considering your product or services but really hadn't committed yet, and then tied to similarly into checkout and just general great customer services.

Carrie: 16:33

If you can have a live chat and if not, have well, either way, really you need to also have easy to find contact information. So live chat is a great bonus for people who are on the fence. Have a few more questions. I would highly recommend either way you evaluate the questions you're getting in, via live chat or any other way that you receive questions, because if you get consistent questions over time, then you know something's not clear on your website and you need to fix that, because not everybody's going to reach out and ask you questions. So having a live chat and easy to way to get a hold of you when they do have questions is super vital to customer conversions and you want to make this as easy as possible and you want to have fast response time. So if you have a live chat, make sure that you have people available to answer that. If you don't have live chat, make sure you have it easy, for example, to do a phone call or an email and make sure the response times to those are quick. People expect same-day business response if at all possible unless, of course, it's really late in the day and make sure that you if you only have certain business hours or people do respond. Make that really clear on your contact information page. That really just sets up the expectation and people won't be upset when they wait for you to the next day because they realize you're in a different time zone than them or something similar.

Carrie: 18:05

And we've touched on this a little bit already. But we want to evaluate and re-evaluate. This needs to be on your priority list. Make it a habit. Pick a frequency on how often you want to do this. Once a month would be great, but you really want to evaluate and reevaluate things on your list. You want to be evaluating your customer conversion rates. You want to be requesting feedback of your consumers, as we talked about. You want to be reviewing those chat notes and or email or phone call notes to make sure that everything on your website is nice and clear and there isn't something that you're missing because you're used to seeing it the way it is on the website. That's one thing that's really easy to do is we can get consumed on our website. We know where everything is and we don't realize what's hard for a new person to the website to either understand or navigate to. So make sure you're evaluating and reevaluating and getting customer feedback Very frequently.

Carrie: 19:05

Let's do a quick recap of this week's episode.

Carrie: 19:08

First, conversion rates vary a lot between industries and depending upon what you're trying to get converted. So the key here is to pick your top three to five items you want to convert better and keep track of those and be reviewing and revising and improving your content continually. We want to be sure that we make this a habit. Get it on your schedule, always be asking your consumers what some feedback they have on your website and features and how things are going and you want to make sure your conversions are improving and you want to be sure you are fostering connections with your customers through your website and your marketing efforts. You really want to make sure you're fostering that connection with them.

Carrie: 19:54

All right, so that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to subscribe to our eCommerce Made Easy podcast and your favorite podcast app so you don't miss out on any upcoming episodes designed to help you break down the tech for your online business. For our show notes, visit us at eCommerceMadeEasyPodcast. com and drop us an email at podcast at bcsin ineering. com, with any questions or any other topics you would like us to discuss. We want to help you and your business thrive and we love doing this, and we hope to see you in our email and we will see you next week on the next podcast episode. Bye for now.