20 Ways to Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Internet Retailers are spending a lot of money on Advertisements on  Electronic and Print media to get more and more customers. Many of them are successful in getting traffic to their websites, but eventually not turning them into buyers. Typically, Industry average for conversion is close to 1-2 % of the total traffic. Can we make it to 4-5%?  How can you convert first time visitor to your customer? What are the best practices for any online retailer to get more conversion?

Below is the check list:

1. Free shipping is a boon : Homeshop18, Yebhi and few others have zero shipping charges while firstcry, zivame, cilory etc. have a minimum purchase amount to avail free shipping. This is fascinating for the buyers who are cost-sensitive.
2. Sales and special offer: The prospective buyer should be made aware  of the any special discount or festive offer running across any product. A buyer is price sensitive. He will browse through various online portals before buying  a product. If the section for sales and offers is prominent on the site, he would surely look into it.
3. Pushing the prospective buyer from shopping cart page to payment page: At times, it happens that the buyer would add products in  his cart but that would not result into sales. This could happen due to various reasons such as price-difference on other portals, fear of returns, exchange or refunds especially for first time buyers or may be due to heavy load on the site. This could be tackled by sending emails to registered users about their incomplete order status or popping the cart contents once the user has logged into her account. Tier 1 portals such as Yebhi.com and couple of others are sending emails to users to propel them into buying.
4. Alive your shopping cart: On various portals the shopping cart contents vanish once the user has logged out from his account or remain for a period of say 15 days. If the user wants to buy the selected product after a period of time, it would be cumbersome to again collect the same items and would not thus buy it.
5. Contact Us or Talk to Us: The customer care number and mail id should be prominent on portals. Especially for a first time user, who is apprehensive of buying from a new portal, the phone no should come handy. Buyer should be able to clear his/her doubts regarding returns, cancellations etc.
6. Offer multiple payment options: It is always good to have multiple payments options such as debit card, credit card, net banking, PayPal and last but not the least Cash on Delivery. Generally, many payment gateways offers all the options but you have to negotiate with them on setup cost and commission on transaction value.
7. Unique selling point: Always communicate why you are different or what is unique about your portal. If you are selling something that nobody is selling. Highlight even in the Home page itself. It may not be a product, it can be express delivery, packaging or freebees, it is better to tell upfront. It will increase customer retention time to your portal
8. How good is Your search:  Typically, people find product while browsing through your website, but sometime people are very specific to a particular product that they might have seen to your competitor. Search button very much comes into the picture, people would like to type the item or similar items. It is always good to have an automated drop-down menu of textual results. It will give the buyer exact product without wasting much time. It can lead to a conversion.
9. Top Class Product Images: What you will show on your site, is what people will buy. Unlike in a brick and mortar store where customers get an actual feel of the product they are buying, in an online store it is very important to use good quality images of the products. Additional features such as zooming or 360 degree view of the product would be quite appealing for buyers, who in turn can get a feel of the product they intend to buy.
10. Product Description: A product image would be incomplete without any description, whether it is an electronic good or a non-branded appear. People would like know its features , specifications before they buy it. The product information should be such as to remove all doubts from the prospective buyers minds.
11. Product videos: Video of the product adds value in understanding it better. For e.g.  In case of a jewellery set, a good quality video of the model wearing the set will let the buyer know as to how the particular necklace set would look from different angles. In a still photo it would not be possible. Homeshop18 uses videos for few of its jewellery collection
12. Sub Categories for Products: If you are selling many things it is better to create sub categories . It will help buyers to navigate through your website smoothly. It is difficult sometimes when you present many choices to customers, he may lost between many clicks.
13. Show shopping cart while customers are picking more items: it is advisable to show the shopping cart items while customers are browsing and picking more items. If a customer is buying 10-12 item, typically in case of grocery item, it is better to show him what price and what all items he/she has added to the shopping cart. It will reduce the effort of the buyers to go back and forth.
14. Checkout as a guest:  Shoppers are very smart. They know once they register to your website, you may start sending promotional material to them or share their data. It is good to provide them easy options such as “Checkout as a guest” or “ Login with Facebook” etc. Don’t force people to register or even login to facebook account. However what can be done, once a shopper buys from your portal , you can send login and  auto-generated password for his further purchases.
15. Testimonials: Product Reviews or testimonials are very important. People believe in other people. It gives them the true picture about the product, their experience. Most of the buyers read the product reviews before buying any product. It helps a lot in conversion.  Get as many as testimonial to your websites.
16. Cross-sell and Upsell with a bigger discounts: People shop in In-store and end up buying more while they reach to the billing counter. Some chocolate , candy bar, mouth freshener etc. For Online Retail – the trend has not started yet, but it is good to sell certain things. More analytics is involve in online retail compare to brick and mortar store. Here you know what all item a buyer has picked up, you can offer something like if he has bought shoes, you can sell him  socks with discount.
17. Call to Action: As they say, what is visible is what gets sold. But it is good to provide that button very prominently , may be in different color and in a bigger shape and font size. It sometime coerce buyers to click on it. It is all behavioural science.
18. Return Order: it is good to show Return order button. It gives confidence to buyer if he doesn’t like the product at least he has an option to return it.
19. Out of Stock: Don’t leave your buyers with out of stock option, if you are confident that you can replenish the goods in few days’ time. Let them add to cart and you can intimate immediately by current standing and when you are going to supply it.
20. Minimum Number of clicks to complete the Sales cycle:  Every shopper would like to get things in minimum number of clicks possible. If you are showing the clear progress indicator, it would be good for a buyer to see where exactly he has reached in his cycle completion.