How to Boost Sales with Conversion Rate Optimization

If you are struggling to increase your eCommerce sales, understanding the importance of conversion rate optimization will help.

You’ve posted all your products on your eCommerce site, published several blog posts to generate new leads— but your sales are dismal. You just don’t understand what’s going on. Why is no one purchasing your products?

It could be because your posts and pages are not optimized to attract and convert visitors into customers effectively. Conversion rate optimization can help you understand why your call to actions (CTA) aren’t generating new leads or inspiring people to buy.

Keep reading to find out what conversion rate optimization is and how you can leverage it to your advantage to increase your eCommerce sales.

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of designing and tweaking a website to generate new leads and increase sales. The more visitors that take the desired action on your website, the higher your conversion rate will be.

How Do I Calculate the Conversion Rate?

Your conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors who took action (signed up for your newsletter, purchased a product, downloaded a guide, etc.) by the total number of visitors that viewed a specific page your call to action (CTA) was published on.

# of Conversions / # of Total Visitors = Conversion Rate

For example, you had 50 customers purchase a product on a sales page that 1000 people viewed.

50 (Sales) / 1000 (Page Visitors) = 0.05% Conversion Rate

Now that you know what conversion rate optimization is, and how to calculate your conversion rate, let’s dive into how you can use CRO to boost your sales.

1. Understand Your Benchmarks

Benchmarking is the process of defining your current conversion rate, using the formula above, and comparing it to average conversion rates for your industry.

A typical conversion rate for most websites is 1-2%, but the target goal should really be 2+% for a CRO page or post. Once you have done the math and you know what your conversion rate is for all your content, you can start creating goals and an action plan to achieve them.

Determine which pages and posts are generating the most traffic and start with those first.

What’s the current conversion rate for each page?
What would you like it to be in 3 months? 6 months? 1 year?
Are those goals reasonably obtainable? If not, you should rethink your goals to a percentage that you believe is realistic.

Check your progress at frequent intervals and adjust your goals as necessary.

man checking and pointing statistics on the laptop

2. Use Tools to Monitor User Behavior

User behavior is the actions your visitors take when they land on your website. Monitoring user behavior will give you insights into what is working and what’s not so you can make improvements to your design and content.

Tools We Recommend

You can track the actions visitors take on your website by using a few different analytics tools. Some of the most popular tools that we recommend are Hotjar, Google Analytics, and Shopify‘s in-store analytics.

Hotjar

Hotjar was built with marketers, product managers, and UX designers in mind. Marketers can track customer satisfaction, net promoter score, and customer feedback. Product managers can see how people are using your products by watching session recordings, and UX designers can monitor user behavior to see where they are getting stuck. One of the biggest upsides to Hotjar is that it integrates with Shopify and WooCommerce — the top two eCommerce platforms we recommend you use.

Visit Hotjar’s Website for more details on how it works and how to set it up.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool created by Google to help website owners get a deeper understanding of their customers. It comes with built-in analytics tracking that you can use to see what pages and posts your visitors are coming in on, what actions they take while on your site, and what pages they exit on.

It will tell you how long a visitor was on your site, what city/state/country they are from, and what device they are using to view your website. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that we recommend every marketer take advantage of for tracking website performance.

Visit the Google Analytics Product Page for more information and instructions on how to use it for your website.

Shopify In-Store Analytics

If your eCommerce site is built on Shopify, you have access to their in-store analytics. They offer reports for acquisition, visitors by referrer, visitor by location, visitors by landing page, visitors by device, user behavior, and marketing.

We recommend monitoring your analytics with a combination of Shopify’s built-in analytics, Hotjar, and Google Analytics to get the big picture overview of what your users are doing.

Results will vary between the tools, so make sure you’re comparing apples to apples when you analyze the data. For example, you don’t want to take data from a month ago that you got from Google Analytics and compare it to the data from Shopify’s built-in analytics this month. You want to compare the data from the same tool over a period of time for more accurate reporting.

Read Shopify’s Beginner’s Guide to Analyzing Shopify Reports and Analytics for more information.

WooCommerce Google Analytics Plugin

WooCommerce created their own analytics plugin that works with their platform. You can use other plugins out there, but they could be buggy and not perform as well.

The best plugins for WooCommerce are plugins that have been created by their developers to be used specifically with their platform. The benefit of using this plugin is that it pulls the information from Google Analytics into your WordPress dashboard so you can track it from one place.

Download the WooCommerce Google Analytics plugin from the product page on WooCommerce’s website.

3. Clearly Communicate the Product Attributes

Optimizing your product descriptions is the key to increasing conversion on product pages. You need to clearly explain what problem your product solves for your customers, what the benefits are, what makes your product stand out amongst the competition, and how your customers feel after receiving it.

Connect with your customers by telling a story. They need to be able to visualize themselves using your product to solve their problem. If you aren’t sure what to say, think about a time when you used your own product.

What were you using it for? How did it help you? When you aren’t sure what to say, use testimonials from your customers for inspiration. Share their stories about using your product and the success they had. Insert their testimonial as social proof that your product does what you say it does.

Don’t forget to include all the product details and specifications. You need to specify size, color, ingredients, if applicable, customizations offered, etc. Include professional product images that show your product from all sides. Use a white background for the main product image and provide some shots of your product in action.

4. Use Trust Signals

Gaining a visitor’s trust will help you boost conversions and give them the confidence they need to complete their purchase. Visitors want to know that your website is safe, it’s not a scam, and that your product will deliver on its promises. If they have an issue with an order, they need to know how to contact you to have it resolved.

Help your visitors become customers by securing your site with an SSL certificate (required for websites that process payments), displaying security badges, allowing customers to leave reviews, displaying testimonials on your product pages, and making sure your support number or email is prominently displayed on the shopping cart and checkout pages.

5. Talk to a Professional

Are you ready to boost conversion rates and ramp up sales? Our staff of eCommerce conversion experts can help you calculate your conversion rate, come up with benchmarks, set goals, and create a plan of action to get you where you want to be.

We have helped several clients achieve their eCommerce goals, and we’re here to help you too! Here’s what some of our clients have to say about us:

“They always understood what we wanted, and they were quick to take any feedback when we needed them to make a change.”
— Mark Holmlund, Strategic Advisor for Alaethes Wealth

“They didn’t talk to us in a coding language and explained subjects in simple terms.”
— Jenna Jones, Director of Marketing and Creative for Edens Garden

“It’s hard to find a transparent company like Future Holidays…”
— Josh Cohen, President of eCommerce for Intelligent Blends

Let us help you get the maximum return on your eCommerce site by speaking with one of our experienced team members today!

Give us a call at 619.736.3972 or fill out the form on our contact page to talk to one of our experts.

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