Bertha's Blog: 5 Changes That Can Increase Your Website Visitor Conversions

You have your e-commerce website up and running, with all of the products you want to sell ready. Now you’re just waiting for the visitors to your site to make the final step and convert into a sale. It’s very important to maximize the amount of people who purchase as getting people to merely view your products can be a very expensive process. With the costs of Google AdWords, social media marketing, and other online advertising avenues can all add up to a large sum of cash, you want to ensure you make the most of the customers you do draw to your site.

The best ways you can do this is to ensure that the pages and products are optimized to meet your goal(s). How you optimize each page can be tricky however as there are quite a few options to try out. This blog post is going to discuss a 5 different changes that you can make to your products, order process and website that you can try out to increase the amount of people purchasing from you.

Inclusive wording

The way you word certain things dealing with your products and ordering process can have a surprising impact on your sales. Specifically, if you write to the client like you’re working with them, it gives a sense of teamwork and that it is a combined effort, not just them working by themselves. For example if you say “we‘re almost there” in place of “You’re almost there” when they’re in the check out. It also gives the impression that you are there to help them and it’s not just them and the company doing separate things. “We” also helps take off pressure off the client as the word gives the impression that responsibility doesn’t solely rest on them. Using the word “get” increased Encyclopedia Britannica’s Conversion rate by 103%!

Simplicity

Simplicity can include a wide variety of different aspects of your site. Things like the payment and order process, the layout of the website, keeping as many fields as you can optional and the products available should all be kept simple and easy to understand. Whenever things get complex and a little too tricky to understand, people start to see that the effort is not worth the outcome, and may abandon the process. For example, making the order process take as few steps as possible and give clear instructions on what the client should do next makes them more likely to see the process to the end. Websites that are more simple and easier to understand have been shown to have a 86% increased conversion rate than those that were seen as more complex. Although giving more choice is usually seen as a positive, you don’t want to overwhelm the customer with choices as well as if you do it will make them unsure of what they really and may not purchase anything.

Customers also abandon carts when they are forced to give information they don’t want to give and can’t make a purchase just as a guest. If a customer is forced to give their phone number in order to make a purchase they may think twice and change their mind, so as to avoid getting phone calls in the future. Another issue that customers have with e-commerce sites is when you have to make an account to purchase and can’t purchase as a guest. This is because if a client may not want to go through the process of creating an account when it takes a long time and only want to buy the products. Keeping things simple also helps reduce distractions. You don’t want to draw the user’s attention to something else when they are purchasing an item. It may lead to them abandoning the cart. It is advisable to remove anything unnecessary from the payment and ordering process screens as if they leave the process because their attention has been grabbed by something else, they may not come back to finish the order.

Looking official and trustworthy

When people are purchasing products online there is a hefty amount of trust involved. You are sending a company the information to take money out of your bank account and you need to trust they won’t take more than they specify or won’t take out more after the order is complete. This is why you need to show that your company is trusted and official. You can do this by ensuring that your website has a strong design, is up-to-date, being active on social media and being easily contactable. These all help prove to the customer that you are a legitimate business and trustworthy.

Being trustworthy extends further than how legit your business is as it customers want to be sure that the service or product you provide is worth the price paid, and that you get what you want to get. This is important to customers as they want to know whether the company they are purchasing from can provide what they state or they are being a little hyperbolic with their description. The most common way to do this is to show reviews on your site for the products and your service. studies have shown that 74% of customers will trust a business more after they have seen that they have positive reviews. However you can increase your trustworthiness even further by using a third party review service like Trustpilot. This can help even further as your clients will know that you haven’t tampered with the reviews or are only showing positive reviews.

Discounts and timed offers

People love the idea of getting things cheaper that their original price. That’s why when people see that something is on sale they are likely to purchase it straight away without even looking at the competition. This is mainly due to the mind assuming that it is cheapest you can get it because it is on sale. Something that makes this even more effective is when you put a deadline on the offer. Saying that the offer is valid for a month, a week, a day or even just for a few hours adds a bit of urgency to the customer as they will want to take advantage of the offer before it becomes too late and they will have to buy it at the regular price. The company DaFlores increased their conversions by 27% when they added the deadline to an offer. People may click onto your site just to browse and see what is available when they see that an offer is available but expires soon. This could be the very thing that pushes them to make a purchase.

One phrase that every customer loves to hear is “Free Delivery”. Making your way through the purchase process can be halted immediately if the client doesn’t realize that there is additional costs for delivery. A lot of people only purchase products that have free delivery as, linking back to our previous point, it makes things simpler and easier. In fact customers are 4 to 5 times more likely to purchase if delivery is reduced completely. Even if free delivery is only on shipping that take more time than paid delivery, customers are still willing to wait the extra days to get the service for free.

Offering something extra

If a customer sees that purchasing a product will not only get them that product but something else for free, they see their value for money increase as well, making them more likely to purchase. They are getting more for their money even if the extra item is not actually worth that much. Studies have shown that people are 4 to 5 times more likely to purchase a product if they get something for free with that order. Doing this also makes your company stand out in front of the competition. If you sell the same item as another provider but you provide a freebie alongside the product, they are more likely to purchase from you. For example, getting a free promotional product with an imprint of your logo alongside the actual product can be a very good incentive to purchase. The extra can also work as marketing in the future as well.

Every successful online business understands the importance of optimizing your website for conversions as they are what allows a company to survive and expand. Hopefully you will try some of these out to increase your own conversion rate and help drive your business sales. Do you have any other tips? Let us know below.