If you own an online business, a platform like Shopify is a great place to set up your store and put your products out in the market.
So once you’ve set up your online store, how exactly do you get sales and boost your conversion rates?
The answer lies in prioritizing your consumers’ demands while designing your store so that not only you can attract more visitors to your site, but also ensure that more of the incoming people make purchases.
Running a Shopify store allows you to control every aspect of your business, from deciding on your store design, choosing which audience you want to target, to mapping out your customers’ entire experience.
The increased control gives you more of an opportunity to experiment with techniques that focus on maximizing sales and conversion rates.
This entire process of implementing different sales tactics to increase the number of your paying customers is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO).
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What are conversion rates?
Before proceeding to discuss conversion rate optimization strategies, let’s define what conversion rates are.
Conversion rates are essentially the number of people who purchase at your store out of its entire traffic. So, what we’re trying to find out is, from the people who visit your store, how many of them will actually buy something?
Conversion rates can be simply explained through the following example if a store has 20 sales and 500 visitors in a month, the conversion rate would be 20 divided by 500 and then multiplied by 100, which gives 4%.
The paying customers used in conversion sale calculations include the number of online sales, customers who add products to a cart or wishlist, and customers who joined email signups. So, conversion rate optimization would focus on increasing this percentage.
With this clear, let’s discuss the 10 major strategies employed to get sales and boost conversion rates on a Shopify store.
1. Upgrade your store’s homepage
Your homepage is the face of your online store and plays a very important part in creating a strong impression on your customers.
The homepage needs to be simple and comprehensive but also appealing enough to get visitors invested in learning more about your store. It is also an opportunity to establish the underlying theme of your store.
Here are some elements that need to be incorporated into creating an effective homepage:
- Add pop-ups so that the user’s attention is captured. Pop-ups can offer deals like signing up to your store’s newsletter in exchange for getting coupons and discounts
- Create sidebars that notify users of real-time sales. This feature inculcates a sense of urgency for customers and they are also presented with evidence of people buying from your store in real-time. Both of these factors have been proven to spur decision-making, making it more likely for your visitors to buy
- Add in testimonials and customer reviews about your products, site, and services to generate trust. This is an instrumentally important factor in attracting loyal customers
2. Organize your website
To make your visitors’ experience as stress-free as possible, your website needs to be well organized so that it is easy to navigate.
One of the key features that help the organization is creating an efficient search bar that takes customers directly to the products they are looking for.
It is ideal if your search bar is placed on your homepage to increase accessibility and directly take customers to their area of interest.
Another element that can be added to aid customer navigation is increased search bar intelligence.
This will ensure that when your user looks something up on your site, spelling mistakes, similar items, and alternate products are all taken into account to maximize the chances of your customer finding products they are interested in.
Making accurate product categories is also an essential part of organizing your site.
3. Plan your product pages
Product pages are the web pages created for each item that your store is selling. Organizing product pages effectively can direct your customer towards more items they may be interested in. This increases sales chances.
One way to direct customers to their area of interest is by having similar products show up on a certain product’s page.
Product pages are your opportunity to sell your content to the customer. You need to convince them of the value of what they are looking at so that they can consider purchasing it. To do this, your product page needs to have all relevant details available so that your customer is not doubtful.
Here are some of the details your product page should include:
- High-quality photos of the product from multiple angles
- Videos/gifs of your product
- An option for viewers to zoom in and out on and to rotate the item’s photo so that it can be viewed in detail
- Include the product in different colors
- Mention the item’s price and include all costs so that at check out there is no unexpected cost that discourages the customer from going on with the purchase
- Display authentic reviews for each product. These create a sense of trust in the users and are evidence of your content’s value.
- Directly label an out-of-stock item and give users the option of leaving their contact information on the site so that they can be notified when the product comes back in stock
4. Make the checkout experience as stress-free as possible
Your visitor will not be considered a paying customer until their payment order is complete and the product is in their hands. Creating a hassle-free check-out is vital in ensuring that this entire procedure proceeds smoothly.
To simplify your check-out experience, give your store an auto-fill/pre-fill option for customer information. Customers fill out auto-fill forms faster and this helps boost conversion rates.
Another important feature to add is sending your customers thank you/confirmation emails when an order has been placed. This will let you stay in touch with your paying customers and make it easier for them to link back to your site.
5. Offer a user-friendly shipping and returns policy
Free shipping is one of the most effective ways to attract to your store and ensure that they complete their purchase.
Apps like Dynamics Shopify Integration connector are a great way of keeping track of customer orders and all relevant shipping details. Dynamics Shopify Integration in particular is guaranteed to deliver orders accurately and on time while offering support for different currencies, order cancellations, refunds, and chargebacks.
One of the best features of this app is that it has an installation fee that you have to pay once. After that, the only payment required is a small amount of yearly licensing fee. The app allows you to place any number of orders and does not charge you based on order frequency.
Having a clear refund policy is also an important feature that boosts sales. Refund availability makes customers less hesitant to place orders which leads to increased conversion rates as well.
6. Create a contact page
Creating a comprehensive contact page that includes mobile information and email address allows customers to easily communicate with you and your store’s team.
This is extremely important in helping your relationship develop with your customers because it provides a channel for them to be heard and convey any feedback or concerns.
These are key features your contact page should include:
- An email address
- Your phone number
- Your store or headquarter’s physical location
- Your work hours
- Links to your social media accounts
7. Maintain the speed of your website
The speed and performance of your website directly affect the incoming traffic and the number of paying customers present.
According to Google surveys, 53% of mobile visitors will stop using your store’s site if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
8. Make your site available on mobile devices
Ensuring that your store functions well on mobiles is essential in increasing incoming traffic, making customer experience smooth, and in turn, increasing conversion rates.
More than 54% of total online customers use mobile devices as recorded by Statista – that means more than half of your incoming traffic is using mobile. This is why it is crucial to develop a mobile-responsive site so that you can cater to the needs of all your customers.
9. Use customer history to make personalized product recommendations
By keeping track of your customers history, you are better equipped to know what products they are interested in. This will ensure that they filter their feed to promote products that are more specific to their tastes.
Providing items that cater to your customers means that they are more likely to make purchases, thus increasing sales and conversion rates.
10. Invest in a social media marketing strategy
A good social media marketing strategy will incorporate establishing and promoting your products on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Setting up direct check-out links on your Instagram and Facebook accounts will also ensure that your customers can instantly purchase through any platform. This accessibility will encourage buying customers and help bring up sales.
A social media marketing strategy also includes investing in paid social media advertising. This includes sponsoring influencers and Youtubers so that they can help promote your products. Through these channels, you can increase your reach and expand your target audience. Fans of social media celebrities are also more likely to purchase items that have been approved by these influencers, guaranteeing you an increase in conversion rates.
Conclusion
Shopify is a great platform to build an online business and if used correctly, you are sure to maximize sales and conversion rates. Conversion rate optimization strategies aim to do exactly that.
With our carefully compiled list of sales and conversion rate increasing strategies we hope you can be one step closer to achieving an efficient and profitable business.
Guest author: Danish Saud, is a market research analyst and writer specializing in performance marketing and E-business. He is particularly proud of his ability to learn from past mistakes. When he isn’t helping firms create more profitable sale strategies you can find him going through modern art museums, walking his dog or scuba-diving.
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