Attracting potential customers to your online store is one thing, but convincing them to make a purchase is another.
When a user lands on your website, it’s your opportunity to guide them toward buying a product or booking a service. So, it’s vital that your store is optimized for conversion.
If you’re not satisfied with your store’s conversion rate, here are five ways you can improve it.
Ensure fast page load speeds
Time — nobody has enough of it. Thanks to the internet, same-day delivery, and streaming services, we’ve all become accustomed to getting what we want immediately. Patience is a virtue, but it’s one that we’ve all lost.
The lack of patience among internet users is evidenced by their reluctance to wait for a slow website page to load. Consider this: if your website takes longer than three seconds to load, 53% of consumers will abandon it. Worse, 80% will never come back.
Three seconds doesn’t sound long, but for an impatient user desperate to make a purchase, it feels like a lifetime. And can you really afford to lose up to 53% of potential customers?
It’s possible that the speed of your ecommerce store is not just down to how your website is built, but rather the platform the store is built on. While some platforms are slow and bloated, others, such as Aero, are designed with speed in mind. We built Aero to be fast, really fast. As a result, page load speeds on our stores are generally not much over 1 second and significantly faster than other ecommerce platforms.
There are many tools you can use to measure your store’s page load speed. You can also use Google Lighthouse to get a perspective on your store’s general performance, including its speed. Their measurements are something we believe reflect a high-quality store, and we’re proud that Aero stores achieve 100% Google Lighthouse scores out of the box.
Create a smooth customer journey
This might seem a generic point of improvement, but it’s important, and we’ll explain a few ways to make your customers’ journeys more pleasant.
The first point is to make products easy to find, especially if your store is home to a diverse range of items. Adding search and filter functionalities is a great place to start, giving users the ability to focus their results based on product features such as size, colour, and price. You should also consider the addition of a sorting functionality that means users can better order their search results.
Now that your customer has found the product they want, is it easy for them to checkout? Your ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Checkout’ buttons should be clear and easy to find at all times. Making the purchase should be intuitive for the customer:
Add the item to the cart > Go to checkout > Enter personal information and payment details > Complete the order > Wait for it to be delivered
With the first two steps simplified by highly visible buttons, your next step is to make filling out the forms quick and easy. Here are a couple of things to consider:
Use a form fit for mobile — Remember that a good proportion of your users will be making a purchase through a mobile device, so keep the form short, vertical, simple, and image-free.
Use Google Autofill — If your customers have their details saved on their browser, Google Autofill will make adding personal information fast and simple.
Wait for payment — Don’t make your customers feel uneasy by rushing them into entering their payment details; wait until the end to complete the sale.
Enable guest checkout
Improving your store’s conversion rate means removing as many barriers to purchase as possible. One of the biggest barriers is requiring every user to sign up for an account before checking out.
Not every customer wants to, or is willing to, make a commitment to your brand; sometimes they just want to make a purchase and leave. Others resent giving out their personal details to yet another company, especially when they can purchase a similar product elsewhere.
For these customers, being required to open an account can significantly impact conversion rates with those being forced to register for an account, making up an estimated 35% of all abandonment rates.
By enabling users to checkout with a guest account, you remove an unnecessary obstacle. And, if you’re still determined to turn that customer into an account holder, you can always ask if they’d like to open an account after they’ve converted — whether that’s through an onsite message or the confirmation email.
Make your store mobile-friendly
In 2019, 48% of all UK sales on ecommerce websites were made on mobile devices. That’s already a high figure, but it’s predicted to top 50%, and overtake desktop sales, in 2020. So, it goes without saying that it is essential for your ecommerce store to be mobile friendly.
We’ve all experienced a website that wasn’t optimized for mobile: images are distorted, features don’t work, and the user experience is terrible. If 38% of your users access your store by mobile, and they’re faced with a warped interface, they won’t be users for much longer.
Aero is designed to deliver an equally smooth shopping experience to users no matter if they’re using a desktop computer, tablet or a mobile phone. Our platform ensures high-quality mobile performance by using features designed for on-the-go use and rapidly sending data to the browser for fast processing.
Don’t settle for a store that’s great on desktop and grim on mobile.
Make sure images are suited for all devices
Shopping is a visual experience. When you visit a shop, you’re able to take a closer look at a product and see if it’s what you’re looking for. Online, that’s not possible. That’s why imagery is so important to conversion.
An item that sounds good will never have the same appeal as an item that looks good. Sure, your product descriptions have an impact, but not as much as an appealing, high-quality image.
There’s a balance to be struck, though, between high-resolution and performance. An image that’s been poorly optimized and has a large file size will slow down your site, and we’ve already discussed how important speed is to conversion. Equally, an image that looks good on a mobile screen may not appear so attractive on a large desktop computer.
The solution is to use a platform , like Aero, that can automatically resize images to different sizes: for mobile users, for tablet users, and for desktop users, whilst saving the retailer a lot of time and hassle.
If your store displays images that appeal to all users regardless of the device they’re using, your conversion rate will improve.
Aero: a platform made for conversions
Before designing our own ecommerce platform, the Aero team had grown tired of ineffective platforms that limited retailer profits and made the shopping experience difficult for users. We committed to building something better, and the result was Aero Commerce.
Aero is built with conversion in mind. It’s lightning-fast and facilitates a smooth journey for the user, from finding their product to checking out. We also knew the importance of catering for m-commerce, and giving your store the capability to convert users on all devices.
As a result, many ecommerce stores built on Aero have seen significant uplifts in their conversion rates with a doubling of conversion rates not uncommon.
Start improving your conversion rate today
If twice as many visitors to your online store made a purchase, think how much your revenue could increase by.
In this post, we’ve discussed just a few of the changes you can make to optimize your ecommerce store for conversions. While there are many other areas you can address, you should begin by asking yourself: does my platform boost my conversion rate, or hinder it?
If your ecommerce platform is holding you back, we’d love to give you a demonstration of Aero and discuss how it can help your business improve its conversion rate.
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