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20 eCommerce Store Optimization Ideas for 2020

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20 eCommerce Store Optimization Ideas for 2020

With the explosion of online stores, business owners have to deal with a new term: conversion. What does conversion mean and why is it important for your online business? The term refers to the number of actual sales compared to the number of unique people visiting your eCommerce store. A high conversion rate means that even a casual visitor is being persuaded to make a purchase.

For any business to be successful, it needs to have a good rate of sales. Many eCommerce businesses sink a lot of money into marketing which gets the potential customer to visit their store. However, they tend to neglect the fact that many visitors do not equal a high number of sales. In order to shorten the gap between visitors and sales, business owners must optimize their store. Having a store that is geared towards converting visits into sales will help you establish a business that hits its targets.

High conversion rates depend on several factors and not just the appeal of the products you sell. It depends on the efficiency of all your web pages including the homepage. Here are 20 effective ways in which you too can ensure the eCommerce conversion rate optimization of your online store.

Homepage Optimization Ideas

Your homepage is one of the most important ecommerce tools you have to draw in potential customers. Think of it as your storefront. It has to be just as vitalising and inviting as any traditional storefront. The homepage not just has to provide a visually pleasing experience but also has to be consistent.

1. Simplify the Experience

Customers are quickly making judgements about the stores they visit. It is imperative that you keep your homepage simple and clean without inundating visitors with too many images or text. Visitors should be able to quickly identify what your store is all about and get an impression of the store’s aesthetics.

2. Coupon Codes

The homepage is the perfect place to start drumming up excitement and pushing visitors to make a purchase. You have several tools at your disposal and you should utilise them based on your unique needs. A welcome bar that invites customers while also providing a coupon code is a great way to entice customers. Other tools that you can employ are tickets to show real-time purchases and pop-ups to collect leads for future campaigns.

3. Add Testimonials to Build Trust

The eCommerce world is densely populated and customers are growing more educated. New businesses might find that their products are selling well on third-party stores, but are not finding the same level of success on their own store. One of the main reasons for this is that potential customers are not in a position to blindly trust new online stores. Adding testimonials from other customers can go a long way in allaying these fears. Feature the testimonials prominently and keep them updated.

Product Discovery page optimization Ideas

Once a visitor lands on your homepage, the search for the product they are looking for should be easy to find. They should also be able to discover other products they might be interested in. a customer is not going to scroll through endless pages of products in order to find the one that they visited your store in the first place.

4. Use Intelligent Search

Online stores that have a large catalogue of products should employ a visible and well-placed internal search bar that helps visitors find the product they are looking for. Many retailers like Topshop have reported a significant increase in conversions after providing customers with a search bar. Shopify has several apps that will help you display a well-designed search bar.

5. Organize Your Categories Effectively

You might be tempted to provide a diverse range of categories but a big list is only going to confuse visitors. Streamline your products into no more than four to six categories with more detailed sub-categories in the form of a dropdown menu. Overwhelming a potential customer is a good way to get your conversion rate to drop.

6. Take Advantage of Your 404 Pages

404 pages need not be dead-end pages. You can use them to redirect visitors to your most popular products or ones that are closest to the search. You can customise 404 pages exactly the way you want to ensure that visitors find other products they might be interested in.

7. Add a Shoppable Instagram Feed

84% of millennials report that they are highly influenced by user-generated content. Tap into this vast pool by embedding a shoppable Instagram feed into your store. Not only does it redirect visitors to the products but they also provide a consumer-derived source of the usage of your products. Apparel retailers will benefit greatly from a dedicated Instagram feed.

Product Pages Optimization Ideas

The product pages on your store have to be constructed in a manner such that they communicate the value of the product in a clear manner. Having engaging and immersive experiences allows you to cover all aspects of your products succinctly. These pages have to provide accurate information on the product. This includes ingredients, material, size, etc.

8. Use High-Quality Product Images

Your potential customers do not have the opportunity to look at the product in person where they can touch and feel and even try it on. This is why it is important that you provide high-quality images of the product in various angles. About 2/3 of consumers say that good images are imperative to their shopping experience. In addition to good images, a video of the product also boosts conversion rates.

9. Be Upfront About Price, Delivery Time, and Out of Stock Products

There is nothing more frustrating than having made a purchase only to have the business contact you to let you know that the product you’ve ordered is out of stock. Fashion Nova has been guilty of this practice and has faced the ire of several vocal critics. Keeping your inventory updated in real-time which is then communicated to the customer is key to avoid such a bad experience. Other factors that you must be clear about is the estimated delivery time and the price of the product. No one wants to be surprised by hidden taxes or fees at the time of check-out.

10. Showcase Your Product Reviews

Showcasing product reviews not only gives the final push to customers to take the plunge but also shows visitors that your business is confident about the quality of its products. Product reviews give customers vital information on quality, colour, sizing, and more.

11. Add a Curated Instagram Feed

A curated Instagram feed is a great way to establish social proof. Customers are looking to find proof that others have also bought and are enjoying the products they are interested in. a curated Instagram feed showcases your products in the best light. It is particularly important for stores that sell beauty products or apparel.

Checkout Experience Optimization Ideas

No one likes to stand in long lines at a retail store. The same is true for online stores. The checkout experience should be optimized to be simple and efficient. These are the final steps, and they must be smooth.

12. Prefill Your Customer’s Information

Creating a customer account allows you to prefill their information at checkout, making the process easier and faster. The less time a customer spends filling in information, the higher the chances of them making the purchase. Setting up customer accounts is an in-built option with Shopify. Customers can sign in as guests or can create an account.

13. Send Abandoned Cart Emails

You might find that there are customers who fill up their cart only to abandon it and never come back. A well-timed abandoned cart email will nudge these customers into taking the plunge and complete the purchase. The email serves as a reminder to the customer of the products they were interested in. This type of email can be set up with the Shopify architecture.

14. Optimize Your Thank You Emails

Ensuring repeat customers is a very important aspect of eCommerce. Sending out a personalised thank you email after a customer makes a purchase helps establish a relationship with the customer. You can use this opportunity to get customers to sign up for a newsletter or visit your store’s blog. You can also give a coupon code to ensure that they shop with you again.

Shipping and Returns Optimization Ideas

The check-out is not the end of the line when it comes to eCommerce businesses. Shipping and returns can be another opportunity you can use to delight your customers.

15. Offer Free Shipping

One of the biggest deterrents for online shoppers is having to pay for shipping. With big businesses like Amazon offering free shipping as a part of their model, customers are used to not paying for shipping. Offering free shipping will go a long way in helping boost your conversion rate.

16. Have a Clear Refund Policy

A good refund policy is one that is stated clearly to the customer so that they are not faced with any unpleasant surprises if they are unhappy with the product for whatever reason. Have the policy on several pages including the product, checkout and FAQ pages.

Additional Pieces of information

Apart from the homepage, checkout, and product pages, you must also ensure that other pages provide additional information like a contact page and an about page.

17. Tell a Story with Your About Page

Customers care about the story behind a brand and the people involved in the business. Use the about page to establish a narrative that aligns with your business. A story that resonates with customers will make sure that the brand stands out from the sea of online retailers.

18. Create a Comprehensive Contact Page

A contact page can play many roles for customers at different levels of their interaction with your business. From customers who have queries about the products to others who want to provide feedback, contacting the business sets up a ‘real’ interface to interact with. Provide a physical address, customer care number, social media hands, and customer care email address. You can also have a form which customers can fill out.

Speed and Performance Optimization

One of the biggest roadblocks online stores face is less than impressive website speed. Customers will get frustrated if your website takes long to load or if the pages are bogged down by multiple features. In fact, around 40% of visitors will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load entirely.

19. Make Sure Your Site is Responsive

More and more customers are choosing to shop using a mobile device. These customers want to shop at stores that are responsive to their devices. Shopify stores and themes automatically configure to mobile devices.

20. Optimize Your Website’s Loading Times

You can check the speed of your online store using Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool. Pagespeed Insights gives you a detailed report on the speed of your website while highlighting any issues. You can then work towards resolving these issues to improve the load times.

There are a few ways in which you can ensure that your load times are kept to a minimum. The size of the images on your website will impact the speed of the website. You will have to walk a fine line between providing high-quality images and keeping your website light enough to load fast. Fortunately, there exist many tools that will compress the images while ensuring that the quality is not compromised.

Shopify store owners can uninstall apps that aren’t being used. Even disables apps can put additional load on your website, making it slow.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website is just as crucial as marketing your online store. A good conversion rate is something you should aim for right from day one. With simple but effective steps, you can build a store that is poised for great success. Shopify has several features and apps that are aligned towards increasing your conversion rate, and you should explore them until you hit a combination that works for your store. However, as the online retail world continues to develop and evolve, you will have to stay on top of trends in consumer behaviour in order to continue delivering a website that has good eCommerce conversion.

Additional resources on Shopify Success

  1. Ultimate Guide to Selling on Shopify
  2. How to create your first Shopify Store?
  3. How to get more traffic to your Shopify store?
  4. How to get more loyal customers to your Shopify store?
  5. How to do Conversion Rate Optimization to your shopify store?

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