Ecommerce marketing isn't just about bringing in more traffic. 

You also need Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to put your traffic to use and ensure your marketing efforts impact your bottom line. 

In simple terms, CRO refers to strategies that increase the likelihood of users to complete a conversion action. This can be anything — from subscribing to a newsletter or making a purchase.

With CRO, you make sure that all your marketing results contribute to your business goals. 

Whether you plan to build an email list, increase revenue, or drive up user engagement, CRO will help you turn attention into action. 

Understanding Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

In ecommerce, CRO revolves around a specific set of conversion actions, namely:

• Purchases
• Products added to cart
• Newsletter registrations
• Products added to wishlist
• Social media shares
• Product reviews
• Contact form submissions

Sure, not all of these actions directly translate to profits. But all of them are essential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tied to business growth. 

Adding products to cart, for example, unlocks revenue opportunities by identifying customers with high purchase intent as well as highlighting popular products that deserve more exposure.  

Furthermore, tracking different conversion types underlines factors that require optimization — pertaining to anything from your collection pages to your supported payment options.  

The next question is, which conversion rate (CVR) factors should you focus on? 

This is where data comes into play. 

Data can paint you a clear picture of how users behave in your ecommerce store, what products capture the most interest, who your best customers are, and where they are coming from. Following these trails leads to the discovery of improvement opportunities that will enhance the user experience and generate more conversions. 

More importantly, tracking your conversion data also ensures your optimization strategies are producing positive results. 

But that's jumping a couple of steps ahead. For now, let's take a more detailed look at the benefits of ecommerce CRO.

Importance of Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

Here's a quick rundown of the key benefits of CRO for ecommerce businesses:

• Improve the user experience. CRO strategies directly affect customer-facing aspects of your ecommerce website. Not to mention that some CRO strategies prioritize the user experience itself, increasing sales and fostering customer loyalty. 
• Maximize Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). There's a direct relationship between customer loyalty and CLV. Happy, loyal customers tend to return and make repeat purchases — plus, they're more likely to recommend your brand to their peers.
• Bolster your reputation. Getting more conversions helps you shape a more reputable brand image that's trusted in your industry. This is especially true if you focus on conversion goals like getting subscribers or community members — or, if you showcase your results as social proof. 
• Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Improving conversion rate allows you to acquire more leads or generate more sales without spending more on traffic generation strategies. This, in turn, reduces the cost of acquiring new ecommerce customers. 

As a whole, the benefits of CRO all trickle down to your ecommerce business's bottom line. In plenty of cases, conversion rate grows congruently with revenue. 

For example, breathing necklace brand Komuso increased both their conversion rate and revenue by 15% with Nostra through a CRO campaign targeting their website speed. 

You're welcome to check out other case studies that exemplify the value of performance-focused CRO on revenue metrics: 

• Hair removal brand Nood increases CVR by 24% and reduces cost per add-to-cart by 25%
• MìLà boosts revenue per user by 4.65% by increasing website speed 
• Ecommerce brand Beachwaver improves purchase CVR by 210%

Implementing Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

Great — you now know the basics of CRO, so let’s dive into the details. 

The next order of business is to audit your ecommerce store to identify bottlenecks or barriers that negatively affect conversions. 

There are a handful of ways to do this. 

For one, you can use Google Analytics and let data reveal opportunities for improving your ecommerce flow. 

Google Analytics is a free traffic analytics platform that will help you understand how users interact with your website or app. 

It allows you to track user engagement metrics, KPIs, and custom variables like scroll depth. Most of which can impact your website's low conversion rate.

Top-level metrics like bounce rate, for example, can be due to having a slow website or low-quality content that fails to hook customers. You can also use Google Analytics to track user abandonment rates for each stage of the customer journey. 

Google Analytics also reveals page-level user engagement metrics. This can spotlight underperforming pages in terms of engagement time and user actions taken. 

Other than using Google Analytics, you can also use heatmap tools like Hotjar to visualize user behavior. This works by pinpointing areas of your website that get the most attention — along with those that are often ignored. 

Using these performance analysis techniques, you should be able to determine why your ecommerce website is failing to convert users. 

If you need more context, you can supplement the data with user feedback.

Consider displaying a feedback form with apps like UserFeedback or Asklayer for Shopify to learn more about the user experience. This will help you learn about issues that the data doesn't mention, like user preference, unsupported payment methods, and a general lack of trust in your brand. 

In addition to the aforementioned problems, here's a list of the most common ecommerce website factors that hinder conversions:

• Unappealing website design. An outdated, clunky page design or structure can put off customers who are interacting with your brand for the first time. 
• Confusing or cumbersome store experience. Using an unclear navigation system, requiring too many steps, or asking for too many details from customers may cause potential customers to leave before converting. 
• Poor mobile optimization. With 77 percent of ecommerce traffic now coming from mobile, don't be surprised if you struggle with conversions while neglecting the mobile experience.
• General low-quality content. Low-resolution images and poorly written copy both have a profound impact on perceived value and, by extension, conversion rate. 
• Lack of information. An ecommerce store also needs informative content (e.g., guides, FAQs, and data-driven product highlights) to build buyer confidence and secure more conversions. 
• Poor-quality traffic. In some cases, you could be getting low-quality traffic with non-commercial intent from search engines or social media — skewing your CVR and other engagement metrics. 
• Security concerns. As an ecommerce business, you need to address your customers' security concerns by putting forward a privacy policy, presenting trust badges, and using TLS/SSL certification.  
• High pricing and unexpected costs. Your website can do everything right, but you may be losing out on profits due to your high product pricing, unexpected costs, or both.

Of course, you shouldn't forget about your website's loading speed and responsiveness when optimizing CVR. 

Website performance affects conversion rate in many ways. 

For one, 53% of your potential customers leave if your website doesn't finish loading in three seconds. Boosting your loading speed from five seconds to one second can also triple your conversion rate. 

There are dozens of other verifiable studies that tell the same story. 

After all, in the ecommerce space, the next alternative is only a few clicks away. And with people's diminishing attention spans, ignoring the user experience is a surefire way to lose customers to competitors. 

7 Conversion Rate Optimization Ideas for Ecommerce Websites

After identifying the problems that affect your ecommerce website's conversion rate, you're ready to explore tactics that will turn things around:

1. Start With Your Website's Performance

If we're talking about pure conversions, website performance is perhaps the most important factor that every ecommerce website should prioritize. 

Performance optimization alone can result in a 120% boost (or higher) in CVR. 

To get the ball rolling, use a tool like PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website's Core Web Vital. Aside from gauging the user experience, this will also point you to the right strategies that will fix performance-related issues on your ecommerce website. 

You can learn more by reading our Google Core Web Vitals guide.

If you want dependable performance optimization results without the hassle, look into CDNs or edge delivery networks like Nostra to get measurable results effortlessly. 

An edge delivery network works by storing and processing website data — ready for use by browsers in a nearby location. This significantly improves speed and responsiveness while greatly reducing latency. 

2. Improve Landing Page Layouts

When it comes to your landing pages, you need to go through a checklist of priorities to build an experience that's conducive to conversions:

• Focus on readability. Implement a clutter-free, focused website design that highlights essential information as well as your Calls-To-Action (CTAs). Experiment with different fonts and color combinations to keep your page content readable while making CTA buttons and taglines stand out. 
• Keep supplementary information concise. While it's important to discuss the benefits of your product, you shouldn't bury essential conversion elements like "add to cart" and "order now" buttons underneath heaps of text. For a smoother shopping experience, keep your page copy short and make sure your buttons are easy to spot. 
• Use better images. Get rid of generic stock photos and use original, high-definition images that put your products in the best possible light. Consider using lossless compression or next-gen image formats to preserve quality while improving loading speed.  

3. Attract Better-Quality Traffic

Make sure you're pulling in people who are interested in (and capable of) making a purchase from your store. 

Whether you're running ads or generating organic traffic with SEO, be sure to target keywords with commercial or transactional intent. These are keywords that people use when they're checking out brands or looking for products to buy. 

You can use tools like Semrush to analyze keyword intent when planning your SEO or PPC strategy.  

4. A/B Test Your Optimizations

A/B or split testing is the practice of running multiple variations of the same page — allowing you to determine and achieve the best possible version in the shortest amount of time. 

It is a must-have in all ecommerce CRO campaigns, especially in an industry where every minute can lead to a potential sale. You can test different page layouts, product descriptions, CTA buttons, popups, color schemes, and more. 

Some of the tools you can use for A/B testing are:

• Optimizely
• Crazy Egg
• VWO

5. Get Creative with Conversion Elements

Sometimes, customers need a nudge in the right direction in order to complete a conversion action. 

That's where conversion elements like exit-intent popups, floating menus, sidebars, and in-line buttons come into play. 

These elements work as reminders that customers can actually buy the product they were just reading about. And if your customers tend to make repeat purchases, don't be afraid to experiment with "opt-in bribes" like one-time discounts, freebies, and downloadables to sweeten the deal. 

6. Highlight Social Proof

It's much easier for customers to make a purchase decision if they know they can trust your brand. 

In the ecommerce industry, you can earn trust with something called social proof. This can be a positive customer review, star rating, testimonials, and other types of user-generated content.

An easy approach is to implement an in-store review system that automatically displays reviews and ratings on product pages. If you have a custom-built ecommerce website that doesn't natively support this feature, you can plug in social proof by straight-up copy-pasting them into key pages instead. 

7. Recover Shopping Cart Abandoners

Online shopping cart abandonment rate hovers around 70% across the industry. 

If you don't develop a plan to recover abandoned carts, you're basically giving up on a major chunk of your online store's potential revenue. 

One of the go-to strategies to recover abandoned shopping carts is through email automation. 

Don't worry — this is a lot easier than it sounds. 

In fact, email marketing platforms like Mailchimp include reusable automation templates specifically designed for shopping cart abandoners. 

Monitoring Your Results 

Ecommerce CRO has a lot of moving parts.

What works for some may not work for you, and vice versa. The only way to be sure is to track your CRO efforts and see for yourself if they lead to your desired results. 

There are a plethora of tools that can help you with this task — from Google Analytics to Optimizely. Your ecommerce platform's built-in performance reporting tools can also keep you up-to-date on your CVR along with other revenue metrics. 

The takeaway here is to measure your data regularly and adjust your strategy accordingly. 

It can take a long time to achieve the optimal CVR for your ecommerce website, especially without A/B testing. But as long as you're steadily making progress, you can rest easy knowing that your business is built to last. 

How Nostra can Help Improve Conversion Rates for Ecommerce Brands

In this day and age, there's simply no excuse for an ecommerce website to be slow and unresponsive. 

The entire ecommerce industry recognizes the importance of speed and user experience in general. 

That's why a lot of ecommerce platforms are built to optimize performance right out of the box with clean code, performance-focused themes, and extensions that can improve or track performance. These are all the tools a budding ecommerce brand needs to create a great, conversion-friendly virtual storefront. 

However, not all business owners know how to take advantage of these tools. 

The good news is, they don't really have to. 

There are a number of website performance optimization services that can do all the heavy lifting. And, if you want to take CRO to the next level, use Nostra's Edge Delivery Network to achieve noticeable performance improvements in as little as 30 minutes. 

Click here to book a demo today.