For an online business looking to stand out in an increasingly competitive industry, especially now that the novel global pandemic has forced many companies into the eCommerce realm in order to survive, it becomes more important than ever to optimize their conversion rate and improve sales for the long term. Focusing too much on other processes right now instead of doubling down on sales and conversion rate optimization is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, simply because your customers have plenty of brands to choose from – and they need an incentive to choose you and keep coming back to your store.
Now, there are numerous ways in which you can optimize your conversion rate and improve your sales, both immediately and in the long run, but assuming that you have already leveraged content marketing and that you have built an amazing customer support system to push leads through the sales funnel, it’s time to start implementing more advanced solutions. With that in mind, here are the five effective ways to improve conversion rate optimization (CRO) for your online business.
Start by Analyzing Your CRO
First things first, you can’t hope to make many smart long-term decisions or optimize your conversion rate quickly if you don’t track the most relevant metrics that you can transform into actionable reports. After all, good business decisions are based on relevant, timely, and verifiable data, otherwise, you’ll just be shooting in the dark. And as any experienced business leader will tell you, you should act on data first, and your gut feeling second. To that end, start by delving deep into your key metrics, including:
- Total conversions.
- Channel-specific conversions.
- Cart abandonment rate.
- Purchase completion rate.
- Number of engaged users.
- Number of sign-ups and registrations.
- Number of people who entered the checkout stage.
- Traffic sources.
- New visitor conversion rate.
- Repeat customer conversion rate.
- Cost per conversion.
- Value per visit.
- Bounce rate.
- Interactions per visit.
These are the most important conversion KPIs that, when collated and organized into a comprehensive reporting dashboard, can give you invaluable insights into the state of your overarching sales approach. With this information in mind, you can find out what’s working and what you need to improve in order to boost your conversions.
Leverage Personalization for Conversions
Personalization is one of the foundational elements of modern marketing, sales, PR and HR, and the modern business world as a whole. Nowadays, you can’t hope to get very far if you don’t personalize your products, services, brand, and every other process in your company to the unique likes of your target demographic. Needless to say, marketing personalization should be one of your top priorities if you are to incentivize potential customers to buy from you and inspire existing ones to come back for a repeat purchase.
Otherwise, the customer will have no problem venturing to your competitor’s site in search of a more personalized offering. Aside from personalizing your emails, you should also personalize the entire brand-consumer communication strategy, and ensure that every customer feels valued and appreciated no matter if they are communicating with you on social media, especially if they reach out to you on Twitter, or your site’s chat. Make sure to personalize your content according to your customer data and analytics, and optimize your product descriptions to fit your ideal customer personas.
Focus on Building Social Proof
One of the most important elements of any successful brand nowadays is their social proof. This is the not-so-simple act of building trust around your brand and incentivizing new visitors to repeat the actions of your existing customers. For example, displaying notifications whenever someone interacts with your website (like making a purchase or downloading your eBook) will show newcomers that people trust you and are buying from you regularly, which will inspire them to buy as well.
To achieve this, eCommerce leaders will implement a feature-rich conversion rate optimization tool that they can optimize to their liking to display pop-up notifications when they make a sale or when a customer interacts with the brand in any way. The tool you choose should ideally have the capacity to completely automate this process and build social proof for you while you focus on other CRO tactics in your strategy.
Build an Omnichannel Conversion Approach
The modern online world is full of sales opportunities, so you really shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket – your website. Sure, your site should still be your primary sales channel, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to capitalize on numerous other sales platforms. Be sure to create an omnichannel marketing strategy and an omnichannel sales approach by selling on social media, via SMS and phone, through product-based emails, via affiliates and influencers, and more. To do this efficiently, though, be sure to integrate a comprehensive inventory management tool as well that will help you manage numerous sales channels while eliminating the risk of human error.
Optimize Your Website
On a final note, be sure to optimize your biggest sales channel as much as possible. Follow these key steps to improve your website’s chances of converting:
- Start by simplifying your website structure to include main sections and subcategories, with neat and tidy URLs for easy navigation and indexing.
- Implement handy navigation tools such as a search function and quick sidebar filters.
- Add pop-up help buttons in key areas that the user can hover over to reveal more information or get an explanation of something that might be too confusing at first glance.
- Make sure that your website is fully optimized for all handheld devices using accelerated mobile pages – this will help with UX and SEO while boosting mobile sales.
- Integrate a 24/7 chat function in various languages to boost conversions through stellar customer support.
- Display all relevant information about a product or service on a single page, and provide on-page currency conversion so that the customer doesn’t have to venture to another site at any moment.
- Highlight your CTAs and make them as engaging and intriguing as possible, while making sure that the surrounding copy is focused on user intent.
Wrapping up
Conversion rate optimization should be your top priority nowadays because the online world is becoming more competitive as companies are increasingly integrating eCommerce into their business models. Let these solutions help you improve conversions in the short, mid, and long term, and help you pave the road to success.
Featured image credit: Unsplash.com
Sophia Smith is beauty and lifestyle blogger, an eco-lifestyle lover, graphic designer and a DIY enthusiast. Design plays a huge role in her personal expression. Sophia loves sharing meaningful content that educates and inspires people. She has contributed to a number of publications including: Women Love Tech, Cause Artist, Carousel and Viva Glam Magazine.
