8 ways to increase your conversion rate

Customer reassurance throughout the purchasing process

Even if nowadays buying on the internet is commonplace, visitors to your site still need to be reassured from the moment they arrive on the website to the moment they receive their order at home.

A customer may hesitate for a long time before placing an order. It is however possible to convince the customer to make the purchase by accompanying and reassuring him or her about your offers.

In order to do this, consider these following course of actions:

• Setting up a chatbot
• Highlighting a customer service number or email on all of the pages of the website in the header or the footer
• Adding expertise, reassurance and label icons such as: delivery in 48 hours, 24/24 customer service, vegan/organic products, made in France, etc… choose 3-4 icons that highlight your added value

The customer needs to feel that he or she is being accompanied in the purchasing process and that you have what is needed to make the right choice.

Incentivising the purchase: gift cards, discounts, etc. 

Dealing with a hesitant customer?

Incentivise your potential customer by: 

• Offering a discount for subscribing to your newsletter
• Offering a gift a card included in his or her order
• Creating a points-based scheme for each order allowing the customer to benefit from a number of perks

Automation

Do not lose contact with your potential customers!

Set up automatic scenarios to follow up with your customers or qualified leads. Send a call-to-action email for each scenario:

• Abandoned cart
• Birthday: discount or gift offered
• Book download or product information requested

Use emailing as a highly personalised communication tool with your customers.

There exists a multitude of different scenarios to follow up with your customer. Each customer is unique and you need to take them into account individually.

Use a maximum of personalisation in your email campaigns and always include a call-to-action.

However, be careful not to become excessively intrusive.

UX - UI design

Work in particular on the visual aspect of your website. Think about the UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) to optimise the website experience. The first impression that your website makes during the first few seconds of navigation is essential as it has a direct effect on the degree of trust that visitors will place in you.

Perform A/B testing to optimise the interface of your website according to your customers’ expectations.

Which tools to use for A/B testing?

• Google Optimize: freemium service for comparing the performance of several different web pages
• Hotjar: use heatmaps, recordings, surveys and feedback to empathise with and better understand your customers and their behaviour
• PrestaShop plugin: ask your PrestaShop web agency for advice

Website performance

The performance of your website has a direct impact on the conversion rate. Numerous studies have shown that the speed at which a website loads influences the conversion rate. The faster your website loads, the better your conversion rate will be.

On average, for every second of improvement in page load time, the conversion rate increases by 2%.

How to improve the performance of your website?

• Be careful with the size of the images you add to your website. High definition images greatly increase the loading time of your pages. Overall, pay attention to the size of any file on your website
• Remove extensions or plugins you don’t use
• Compress Java and CSS files

The right tools to measure and improve your conversion rate

To ensure a good monitoring of your website’s performance KPIs and in particular the conversion rate, use statistical tools.

The best tracking tools

Free tracking tools are essential to monitor the health of your e-commerce:

• Google Analytics: allows you to have a complete overview of your visitors’ actions on your website, define your objectives and adapt your strategies according to the results of your initiatives
• Google Search Console: allows you to measure and optimise the performance of your website, as well as identify and solve on-site problems. Google Search Console also provides invaluable SEO data
• Google Tag Manager: a tag management tool. It allows you to easily deploy and manage tags on your website from an easy to use web-based user interface

All you need is a Google account to access all of these great tools for free.

Shipping and fees

Choosing the right shipping and delivery price is essential! This is the second to last step to consider before the prospect makes the purchase. This step should not be neglected.

A customer will always prefer to pay more for an item with a 0€ shipping cost than to purchase an inexpensive item with a high shipping fee. Customers want to pay for their product, not delivery. High shipping fees lead to an increase in the number of abandoned baskets. 

If your margin does not allow you to offer free shipping, you can always offer it for orders over a certain amount or weight.

It is always possible to negotiate with your carrier to get the best possible rates.

Finally, over your customers a choice of at least 2 types of shipping. Offering different rates (with different carriers, locations or delivery times) allows your customers to choose the rate that is most appropriate for him or her. A customer will always prefer to have several options suggested to him/her rather than having one imposed with a single rate.

Payment methods

And now we're at the last step of the purchasing process: the payment. 

Same idea as for the shipping options, customers like to have the choice!

Offer your customers different payment options so that they are not stuck in case of a payment error or if they only have access to one particular payment method.

Consider offering instalment payments in 3-4x without fees, “try now and pay later”, or any other payment method that can help to accommodate your customers’ needs.

For most content management systems, many payment methods can be included very easily with plugins that are often free to use.

Choose plugins with a payment form that is integrated to your website and mobile compatible.

Also consider adding crypto-based payment methods. Many plugins have been created to offer your customers the possibility to pay with cryptocurrency.

And lastly, consider adding a second payment provider to your existing one to retry and save transactions that have failed due to technical or 3DS authentication issues.

What to bear in mind when improving your conversion rate

There are many ways to improve the conversion rate of your site and make use of your traffic wisely to get as many possible conversions as possible.

A digital marketing agency can help you manage all of the tools and campaigns necessary to optimise your online business.

Do not hesitate to contact them for help!

This article was written in collaboration with Johan Mizrahi, Director of the web agency Ecomiz certified PrestaShop Platinum.

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