Is your online store performing as well as it could? Unless every single person who visits your store makes a purchase, there’s always room for improvement. But here’s some good news: eCommerce optimization may not be as much work as you think. The ultimate goal of Ecommerce website optimization is increasing revenue.
Luckily, there are many paths to revenue, from high-quality traffic and conversion rate optimization (CRO) to average order value (AOV).
If you know where to look, then just a few small tweaks can skyrocket your sales.
But changing the wrong things could just be a waste of your time. Or worse, it could even have the opposite effect and hurt your conversions. It’s tough to know where to start when there are so many possible aspects to optimize.
Ecommerce Conversions—What’s a Good Rate?
Before we talk about optimizing eCommerce conversions, let’s define what a conversion looks like and discuss what’s a good eCommerce conversion rate.
Typically, a conversion means someone has saved an item to buy later, added an item to their shopping cart, or made a purchase. The conversion rate is the number of people who take action, as a percentage of the number of people who see your page.
In this guide, we’ll explore 7 strategies for optimizing your site to grow your ecommerce business. Combined, these strategies will help you generate more traffic, conversions, revenue, and profit.
Ready? Let’s get started…
1. Conduct Keyword Research & Develop a Keyword Strategy
Keyword research is the process of uncovering how people search online for the products you offer.
Using this information, you can optimize your website to rank higher in search engines and generate more traffic. (This is called “search engine optimization” or SEO.)
Whether you’ve just set up your online shop or you’ve been at it for a few years, understanding how to optimize ecommerce website SEO should be taken priority.
However, before you can optimize your website for SEO, you need to determine which keywords (search terms and queries) you should target. Then, you can apply best practices to rank higher for those terms.
For example, let’s say you run an ecommerce store that sells tennis rackets. People might search for all kinds of variations of the term, including “tennis rackets,” “kids tennis rackets,” “left-handed tennis rackets for kids,” etc.
But how do you know which keywords people use most and which ones to target?
Enter: Keyword research tools.
These are specialized tools used in the SEO process to uncover keyword suggestions and information about potential keywords that allow you to evaluate them.
You can begin the process using a tool like Google Keyword Planner.
It’s free and fairly simple to use.
2. Optimize Product Page Layout
Increasing conversion rates will drive additional revenue from customers visiting your website. One critical way to increase conversion rates is to optimize your individual product pages.
Let’s say your product pages currently convert at 10% and receive 1,000 visitors per week. If you’re able to increase that conversion rate to 12%, that’s 20 additional sales every week. Impressive, right?
3. Create interesting product listings
Optimizing your ecommerce website with keywords is one thing, but creating enticing product listings is an entirely different animal. Every product on your ecommerce website should have a unique and polished listing. A product listing mockup with sparkles fading in and outList all of your products’ features, so people know what they’ll get from their purchase. Don’t be afraid to use descriptive words like comfy, sturdy, or anything else that accurately describes what you sell. But don’t stop at the text. People can’t see and feel the product for themselves when shopping online, so you need to create an experience on your site that’s just as good as seeing the real thing. Include high-quality photos of all angles of your product, maybe even a 360 view if you have the capability. Show your product in action, as well. Use a photo of someone wearing your scarves in a stylish way, or add a video of one of your car accessories in action. I’m stressing the phrase, “high-quality” here.
Try to avoid using shaky videos or blurry photos.
4. Allow product reviews on your website
When you last shopped online, did you read people’s reviews before making your purchase? If you didn’t, consider me shocked. Product reviews help create trust between your company and a potential customer. You can say as many positive things about your products as you want, but it’s easier to trust a product if it has rave reviews from people who don’t profit from its sales. I’ll go back to the boot example from earlier. If you and a competitor sell similar boots, but your boots have positive reviews, and your competitors’ boots don’t have any reviews, who do you think will fare better? Product review examples with stars for a pair of bootsSure, this opens up your business to negative reviews, but you shouldn’t be too worried if you sell good products and have a great customer service team to respond to negative reviews professionally.
5. Overcome Other Specific Objections
Occasionally, it can take a while for your customers to decide to buy. Sometimes that’s because of a long sales cycle. At other times it might be because of three common objections to buying:
- Price
- Product fit
- Competition
Price can be a sticking point for many buyers. However, you can overcome that objection with flash sales, as described earlier, or discount offers.
Product fit is all about buyers determining if the product is right for them. One way to do that is to make that process easier. For example, Kennedy Blue lets customers offer free color swatches so they can choose their colors before selecting wedding and bridesmaid dresses.
6. Create Urgency
An easy way to supercharge ecommerce website optimization is through urgency.
One case study found a 400% increase in conversion rate with a single email meant to induce urgency. It coincided with a Black Friday sale and reminded the shopper the deal would expire in four hours.
So, how can you use this tactic to your advantage?
Add messages that communicate urgency to pages throughout your website. This can include the homepage, product pages, and even your checkout or cart pages.
Urgency can take many forms:
- Limited-time offers
- Flash sales
- Expiring coupons
- Countdown timers
- Low-stock indicators
An example of creating urgency from "yankee candle" website
There are a few tools you can implement, depending on the platform you use:
Shopify: Urgency Pack Ultimate, Stock Sheep, Urgency
WordPress: OptinMonster, Thrive Ultimatum, Countdown Timer Widget
WooCommerce: Sales Countdown Timer, Product Availability Slots
You can also add urgency to your other digital marketing efforts—like emails, ads, or retargeting campaigns.
7. A/B Test Product Pages
A/B testing lets you test two different versions of the same page to see which one performs better.
Implement an A/B testing strategy to improve your product pages' flow and conversion rate by testing different text, layouts, and colors.
While there are clear page layout best practices for product pages, which we discussed above, each business is unique. Even small tweaks can have a huge impact on sales, which is where an A/B test can help.
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