How You Can Boost Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate This Year

New year, new goals. This is going to be the year you boost your e-commerce!

The bane of all e-commerce is conversion. You see the numbers. People are actually visiting your site. But nobody is buying anything. Your e-commerce conversion rate is a sad dilemma. But there is hope.

This year is just one more year toward rounding out this decade. Soon we’ll be entering the roaring twenties of this century. And hopefully, it will be a roaring decade for all of us.

So where does this leave us? We have to try and figure out how to boost our e-commerce conversion rate and enter the next decade with some momentum. Today we’re going to help you realize that dream.

1. Proof Is In The Social

Have you ever gone to Amazon.com looking for a product and then looked at the reviews to decide whether to buy or not? People trust what other people say about a product. We seem to have this inherent need to find out if it worked for someone else before we purchase it.

And research confirms this. 90% of people find positive reviews impact their buying decisions.

So, if you are seeing a low e-commerce conversion rate, try and reach out to your customers. Get some reviews. Hopefully, these are mostly positive. And then attach them to your product listing. You’ll quickly see more buys to match your traffic numbers.

2. Urgent Business To Boost Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate

A sense of urgency makes us impulsive. At least, according to psychologists it does. And of course, you should always listen to your psychologist.

And this is why you need to instill a sense of urgency in your customers. You need to make them feel as if they have a very limited amount of time to “get the deal” or buy the thing.

Did you ever notice how Amazon runs their sales? They throw up a listing. They slash the price. They then paste a time clock on the listing and call it a lightning deal.

Notice the psychology behind this? You are suddenly given a choice. Pay the slashed price within this time-frame or pay the “full price” later. Are you suddenly more impulsive?

This probably depends on how much you truly wanted the item in the first place. But it might make you less likely to do your research and find someplace cheaper.

Stick a time clock on your listing. Or possibly just as effective in boosting your e-commerce conversion rate, place a “Low Stock” tag on the listing.

Even an “on sale” item might create a sense of urgency. Most likely because we’ve been conditioned to think that “sales” are temporary.

3. Make It Personal

This year is going to be the biggest e-commerce year of them all. More than fifty percent of surveyed shoppers are going to the Internet for their holiday gifts. That’s a lot of potential for high e-commerce conversion rates.

Now, you need to take advantage. When you go into a department store, what happens almost as soon as you pass an associate. They size you up and ask you whether they can help you. If you give in, they seem to know exactly what you need.

For these people, their entire work training dedicated to making the shopping experience personal for customers. And recent converts to the e-commerce revolution are going to be looking for a similar experience online.

The amount of data you get about a customer might be overwhelming. Instead of looking at all the data, target specificities.

Pay attention more to online habits. What did they look at the most on your site?

If you have the capital, an app where you can save your preferences is a great way to personalize the shopping experience and boost your e-commerce conversion rates.

4. Make The Homepage A Home Run

Your homepage may not be the landing page for most of your ads. But if people come back to your site, your homepage is where they will likely go first.

If your landing page is unappealing, you’re going to lose people. If they can’t get to the product they were looking for, they certainly aren’t going to buy what they were looking for. You will never see a boost to your e-commerce conversion rate if you leave your homepage looking bland or jumbled.

And if you are looking for a way to update your page this holiday season, make it festive.

Make your page fit the season. Especially if what you are selling fits the season. The more people feel festive, the more they will buy.

5. Keep It Simple, Stupid

Have you ever been to a website, bought something, and then had to jump through a bunch of hoops just to get your product ordered? Is your ordering process long and boring?

This could be a way in which you are killing your e-commerce conversion rate. Streamline your user shopping experience all the way down to the sale itself. You don’t want people giving up halfway.

And since even Google is forging the way for everything to be mobile friendly, don’t forget to make your site mobile friendly too. Especially the purchasing process.

It’s much harder to navigate a desktop site on your smartphone. And if people are having a hard time purchasing things on your site, they will go elsewhere. Somewhere they can buy things quickly and without hassle.

6. Free Shipping

Are you charging for shipping on everything? Stop. Stop it right now. If you’re wondering why your e-commerce conversion rates are low, look no further than shipping.

Why do you think that half of all online orders now include free shipping? This is the horrendous truth. Services like Amazon.com have created a norm where people just don’t pay for shipping anymore. They’ve created things like Prime to lure people into paying for services they don’t need while getting “free shipping.”

Here’s the secret on how to not charge for shipping and still make a profit: Build shipping costs into the price.

That’s exactly right. And really, you’re going to find that people value a product more if it includes free shipping. Why? Because we’ve been conditioned to think that certain orders, primarily orders of $25-50 or more get free shipping. Psychologically we now value these things more.

Take advantage of this. Stop charging for shipping.

The boost in your e-commerce conversion rate is here. Jump on it. Take advantage. You won’t regret it.