When a visitor to a website performs a desired action, it’s called a conversion – and if you’re an ecommerce business, you want to turn website visitors into customers. Getting people to your site is only the first step. Even with a ton of traffic, if your website isn’t optimised for conversion, you’ll find it hard to hold customers’ attention and guide them to make that purchase.
In ecommerce, a conversion rate is a form of contextual data used to demonstrate the percentage of website visitors who purchase a product. You can calculate your website’s conversion rate using this formula:
Conversion rate = number of purchases ÷ number of website x 100%
Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can track your goal conversion rate. Goal conversion rates can be based on a variety of goals specific to your online store, such as ‘purchases completed’ or ‘newsletter signups’. Tracking your conversion rate can give you valuable insights into customer behaviour on your website, and can allow you to make suitable amends to features on your website so that you can make the most of your traffic.
The average conversion rate of ecommerce stores globally is 2.71%. However, a good conversion rate is unique to your business and is a highly contextual figure which can depend largely on several factors, including:
For instance, if a company sells high-end electronics, it’s not going to have the same conversion rate as one selling cheap t-shirts. Therefore, when analysing your conversion rate, it is important to consider all of these contributing factors. Industry benchmarks aren’t always an accurate comparison guide.
So, to work out the best conversion rate for you, you need a baseline. What is your current conversion rate? And what conversion rate do you want to achieve in the next month or the next six-to-12 months?
James King, Vice President Product – Payment Integrations, Elavon Europe
The conversion rate is useful because it tells you how successful your website is at guiding visitors into and through the sales funnel. A high conversion rate shows that your website is convincing users to become leads or customers, while a low rate indicates that you may need to shift tactics.
So, what contributes to a good conversion rate? We’ve outlined the main ones below:
It’s important to look at your pricing when thinking about your conversion rates. Are you competitively priced? If you are selling branded products that other companies offer, then you will need to price your products at or below the average price. Always adjust your prices frequently to see what works well with your customers and what doesn’t. Remember your marketing and imagery will heavily influence the price someone is willing to pay.
Ultimately, a good reputation will help boost sales. If you experience low conversion rates, then one reason could be that visitors don’t trust you. To improve your reputation, it’s important you address the following:
91% of consumers read at least one review and the typical customer reads between four and 10 reviews before making a purchasing decision. Only 2% shoppers did not have a habit of reading customer reviews before buying.
As mentioned above, one of the important ways to increase ecommerce conversions is to use customer reviews or testimonials at key points in the decision-making process. This helps to instil trust and confidence in you, especially if you place them throughout the whole customer journey.
98% of shoppers say reviews are an essential resource when making purchase decisions. Nearly half (45%) of consumers won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews available for it.
Around 40% of people abandon shopping carts because of high costs, including shipping costs. Offering free shipping over a certain basket value threshold can encourage customers to complete a purchase on your website. Strategies such as free shipping thresholds can often mean customers feel as though they are getting a better deal by shopping on your website.
If a customer is on your site and needs help, it’s important to be there for them as soon as possible. Real-time help works wonders and, more often, website visitors choose live chats over phone or email. Using on-site live chats on all pages of your website helps to reduce the chance that they may navigate away from a key page or leave your site altogether.
Live chats can help to increase the chances of a visitor converting if an issue is sorted efficiently or a question about a product or service is answered.of your pages, but not know where to go next. Adding ‘next’ buttons to sequential pages on your site can direct users and improve user engagement.
Guest checkouts help keep all visitors to your site engaged, especially if they are first-time customers. It can often cause friction for the user if there is that additional step of creating an account before purchase. Single-step checkouts are also one of the easiest ways for existing customers to finalise their purchase, as their details will have been saved previously. With all this in mind, it’s important to also offer multiple payment options – especially if you have a global customer base. This helps to ensure their needs and expectations are met.
Often, generic calls to action (CTAs) like ‘Sign up’ and ‘Start trial’ won’t give you the best conversion rates. Therefore, it’s worth brainstorming alternatives that will boost sales. For example, if you are offering a free trial of software, you may use the following offers:
Analyse your analytics report to see where most of your traffic comes from. If your top channel is social media and you have very little direct traffic, it might be a good idea to divert marketing resources to pay- per-click (PPC) or invest in an email campaign. Email yields better conversion rates than social and search, so it might be worth investing in an email marketing strategy to boost overall conversions.
Customers typically expect a website to load in just a few seconds and often expect websites to load faster on mobile devices. Having a fast page-load speed can help to increase your website’s traffic, as sites with faster page speeds are more likely to rank higher in search engine results, providing you with a larger potential customer base.
An ecommerce site that loads within a second converts 2.5 times more visitors than a site that loads in five seconds.
Collecting data on your website visitors can allow you to create a personalised shopping experience for them. By tailoring product suggestions and page displays, you can build stronger relationships with customers which can encourage repeat purchases and higher conversions.
Providing a quick and simple checkout process for your website visitors can reduce the likelihood of users abandoning their purchase due to unexpected costs, lengthy forms or surprise fees – therefore increasing your conversion rate. Also, consider using cart-abandonment software on your website that allows you to send follow-up emails to customers who have left items in their basket.
Product visuals are a powerful tool in ecommerce. Buying online is a very different experience than buying an item in-store, but providing videos of products and clear photographs can help to recreate that experience and allow customers to understand the product better. Product videos encourage customers to engage more with your product and visualise how they might use it, which can lead to higher rates of conversion.
Additionally, providing product videos can humanise your brand and answer questions about the product for your customers. This can increase trust in your business while also contributing to increasing sales. Photos of your products are also a useful tool for showcasing your product to potential buyers. Product photos need to be clear and professional, preferably photographed with a plain background to draw attention to your product and its features.
Taking the time to apply some of these methods on your product pages can help you to turn your visitors into paying customers. Conversion rates can be a good tool for measuring your business’s performance, and analysing any trends or changes in your conversion rate can allow you to make informed and suitable adjustments to your website.
James King, Vice President Product – Payment Integrations, Elavon Europe
Product videos are an effective way for ecommerce stores to showcase the features and benefits of items on their website. Without being
able to physically touch or see products in person, many potential customers may have questions about items that could hold them back from making a purchase.
Product videos give ecommerce businesses the opportunity to recreate part of the in-store shopping experience by demonstrating the key features of products and how they can be used. Product videos can also be a useful tool for increasing conversion rates, allowing you to make the most of your website traffic.
Product videos can be a powerful tool for increasing conversion rates and improving the user experience across your website.
84% of consumers say watching product videos convinced them to buy a product
Product videos can have a range of benefits for your ecommerce website including increasing user engagement, establishing trust in your brand and providing an enhanced customer experience, all of which can contribute to increasing conversions.
Videos encourage your website visitors to spend more time on your product pages and learn more about the products that you offer. Videos are effective at telling a story and building a narrative and can easily grab visitors’ attention, drawing their eye to the video. Encouraging customers to become more invested in your product’s details through the use of video can make them more likely to purchase that item.
Videos are particularly effective at grabbing a customer’s attention if they incorporate psychological cues through faces, voices, body language and movement. Combined, these elements can help to convey the nature of your brand and can help to define user trust in your products.
Many customers may be wary of making online purchases as they may not feel certain that they will get the item that the description and images promise. Inserting a video on your product pages can allow your business to be more transparent about your products and therefore appear more trustworthy to potential customers.
Additionally, videos can help to humanise your brand which can allow customers to connect more with your business and products, encouraging them to purchase from your store.
Videos are able to delve deeper into product specifics than a product description or photograph, as they can keep the attention of the customer for longer. Providing more detail in an engaging way can help to answer questions that customers may have had about your product which were holding them back from purchasing.
Videos are shared more than any other medium across social media platforms. Creating a successful product video can increase conversions from your current website traffic and allow you to reach more potential customers.
Be real and genuine
Avoid exaggerating the features or benefits of your products, as this could mislead your customers. While exaggeration may increase conversions in the short term, it can leave your customers dissatisfied and reduce trust in your brand. Product videos are a great opportunity to convey what makes your product and your brand different, and maintaining a genuine tone will allow your customers to more easily relate to your brand.
Keep it brief and concise
The key to keeping your site visitors engaged in your product videos is to keep your videos short and to the point. Having lengthy product videos can cause customers to become disengaged, particularly if they do not address their questions in the first few minutes. If your product has different versions, consider creating separate videos so that you can explain the features and benefits of each version in enough detail.
Engage directly with your customer
It can be easy to become too focused on talking about your product when making a video. Make sure that you’re also addressing your customer’s needs, questions and interests.
Make it shareable
A video shared on social media acts as a positive review for your product and increases awareness for your brand. This can allow you to reach more potential customers and increase your conversion rate over time.
Taking the time to produce tailored, considered videos on your product pages can help you to turn your visitors into paying customers. Conversion rates can be a good tool for measuring your business’s performance, and analysing any trends or changes in your conversion rate can allow you to make informed and suitable adjustments to your website.
There are many factors that can affect conversion rates for your ecommerce store, and the role of website personalisation is one worth considering.
Website personalisation involves tailoring and customising the way information is presented to appeal to customers. This can include the way your website looks, and how copy and images are presented. Presenting your products in a way that appeals to particular customers can help to build strong relationships and, when implemented successfully, can encourage customer loyalty and higher conversion rates.
To personalise your website successfully, you need to be able to collect, and effectively use, relevant data about your customer to enable personalisation. Wanting to get to know your customers well is the key to good website personalisation.
Peter Charmant, Head of Relationship Management, Enterprise Retail, Elavon Europe
This can be done using the information provided when visitors sign up to your website, or by collecting demographic information when a customer uses a social login. These methods will allow you to gather information on your customers’ location and interests and start to build up information about their order history, browsing habits and searches.
Website personalisation also encourages customers to return to your site, and the more they shop at your store, the better the personalisation and suggestions you can make for them. By applying personalisation to your website, you can start to increase the odds of selling the right content to the right customers, which can in turn increase your conversion rates and average order value (AOV).
Although it is easier to personalise your website for returning customers, there are ways you can segment all your site traffic. This can allow you to personalise your website even for new customers. Here are some common methods used to segment website traffic:
Geographic information
Information on a customer’s location can be collected from IP addresses or from information given by returning customers. This can be used to suggest more relevant products or products more popular within your customer’s region.
Device type
Although this method of personalisation is not as in-depth as others, ensuring the right site format appears on the right device can allow customers to more easily navigate through your site, making them more likely to make a purchase.
Self segmentation
This is an easy way to gain additional information about new visitors to your website. Self segmentation can be done using popups on landing pages that ask the customer questions about themselves or what they may be looking for on your online store. This can be especially useful to help new customers find suitable products on larger ecommerce sites and can lead to increased conversions.
Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that individual product recommendations are a form of personalised content on a website. Recommendations became popular in the early 2000s when Amazon introduced the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought...’ product carousel, which offers a selection of products by comparing each individual customer profile to another.
Recommendations can be based on search history or order history, if they are a returning customer. For new customers, you can recommend products based on what information you have about their location or demographic, to encourage them to explore your site further allowing you to begin to gather further information about their preferences. Presenting customers with new products that match their interests or purchase history will ultimately help to increase conversion rates and even average order value.
Personalised product recommendations drive revenue. Visits where a shopper clicked a recommendation comprise just 7% of all visits, but but 24% of orders and 26% of revenue.
Changing images or text on your site to suit particular customers can refine your customer’s experience. For example, you could use information collected about the country your customer lives in, and tailor content to the season, weather or public holidays in that country, making your products more appealing to those visitors.
For returning customers or customers who have signed up to your website, consider including their name around your online store. This could be within an order confirmation or directing them to their account information. By doing this, customers can feel more connected to your brand, which can encourage them to keep returning to your store.
Using information about their browsing history, you can add features such as ‘Recently viewed’ to your site or promote discounts relevant to products that your customer has viewed or purchased in the past. Additionally, if a customer is often returning to your site to purchase the same product, use this opportunity to promote offers such as subscriptions or multi-buy discounts on that item. This could save your customers time and money and help to build a stronger relationship with them.
Another great personalisation tactic is sending your customers ‘abandoned cart’ emails. These types of emails and communications deliver a personalised experience right to your customer’s inbox to show them how much your company cares and how you value the shopper’s custom.
James King, Vice President Product – Payment Integrations, Elavon Europe
Adding elements of personalisation to your ecommerce website can be a valuable tool in building profitable relationships with customers and increasing your conversion rate. The better the user experience on your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Personalisation is becoming an increasingly popular tool for ecommerce sites to boost conversion rates. Regardless of the size of your store, offering elements of personalisation across your site could also help you to grow your online business.
Live-chat customer support works like a real-time customer service advisor for your online store. Much like a customer would approach a sales assistant in-store, live-chat support can help in the same way: answering questions, aiding navigation and dealing with customer-service queries.
Whether you’re a clothes retailer helping customers deal with returns or a software provider dealing with real-time customer installation issues, live-chat support is a great way to ensure that you’re delivering excellent customer service.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the main benefits your business could see from installing a live chat service on your ecommerce site.
James King, Vice President Product – Payment Integrations, Elavon Europe
Being able to chat with someone in real-time makes for much faster problem-solving. Waiting for an email response can take several hours and customers may lose interest or look to shop elsewhere. Additionally, live chat allows you to easily send helpful documents or links to customers to support them with their query.
60% of online shoppers want a response within two minutes on live chat – and the average chat response time is about 90 seconds.
Using live chat to step in at the right time or offer support throughout the checkout process can help to reduce cart abandonment. Being able to offer support when your customer needs it could mean you convert a sale you may have otherwise lost.
Live chat provides the ability to engage with your website visitors, increasing your visibility and trust in your brand. Being able to reach all website visitors could help you to convert someone from window shopping to making a purchase.
Live chat support can be up to 50% cheaper than traditional over-the-phone customer support. Online chat gives customer service team members the ability to deal with multiple customers at one time. Additionally, implementing AI chatbots can reduce costs further and can effectively deal with common customer queries, only redirecting them to a team member if it should be necessary.
79% of businesses say that live chat has had a positive impact on sales and over 38 % of clients are more likely to purchase from a business with live chat widgets.
Connecting live chat with your business analytics tools can allow you to harvest data from your customer interactions. This can help you to gain a better understanding of your customer behaviours and makes your website easy to monitor. With this data, you can create reports and make more informed adjustments to your website or products to enhance your customers’ experience.
Support customers with website navigation, ensuring they find information or products that they may have otherwise missed. Website errors can also be quickly addressed this way, as customers may use your live chat to question broken links or faulty pages that can then be quickly rectified.
The ability to contact your store as quickly and easily as writing a tweet or social media post can divert frustrated customers away from the public domain. This can help to preserve your brand image and allows you to help frustrated customers more effectively and privately.
Your online store is 24/7, although your customer service team may not be. Offering a live chat service and using an AI chatbot can ensure that you’re delivering great customer service around the clock. Live chat and AI chatbots can also help your team cope with busy periods by automating the initial stages of live chat and redirecting customers to relevant pages, ensuring every customer gets the support that they need as quickly as possible effectively and privately.
Many live chat services also have multilingual capabilities, so you can more easily reach and assist customers globally, giving you the potential to easily expand your customer base.
Having live chat capabilities can make it easier for customers to interact with your store. Emails or long contact forms can be time-consuming and off-putting, and many customer questions and potential sales could be missed without a quick way to contact your business. The option to instantly interact with your brand can allow you to develop more meaningful customer relationships and increase trust and customer loyalty to your brand, encouraging repeat sales.
First, consider whether you’d like to use standalone or platform chat software. Standalone can be cheaper and ideal for smaller businesses, whereas platform chat software means your service is managed by an outside provider. Platform chat providers are integrated into WordPress, Shopify, Salesforce and other popular ecommerce software.
Secondly, consider where your live chat will appear on your site. Will it be on the homepage, support pages or available on all of your site pages? Take into account when customers may most need assistance, to ensure you’re on hand when they need you.
Finally, research which live chat service provider you’d like to use. Some notable providers include Intercom, Drift or PureChat. Live chat providers will offer different levels of customisation and features to suit your site.
Live chat is becoming increasingly popular in the world of ecommerce. Adding live chat software to your online store could be an effective way to build a trustworthy brand for your business and increase your sales.
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Copyright© | U.S. Bank Europe DAC. Registered in Ireland with Companies Registration Office. The liability of the member is limited. United Kingdom branch registered in England and Wales under the number BR022122.
U.S. Bank Europe DAC, trading as Elavon Merchant Services, is a credit institution authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Details about the extent of our regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority are available from us on request.
Helping thousands of customers around the world grow their business through payments
We’re here to help!
Customer service: 0345 850 0195 (menu option 2)
Telephone: Monday to Friday 8am-5pm
Chat: Monday to Friday 8am-6pm
Elavon technical support: 0818 20 21 30 (menu option 1)
24 hours a day, 365 days a year
Opayo product support: 0191 313 0299
24 hours a day, 365 days a year
Copyright© | U.S. Bank Europe DAC. Registered in Ireland with Companies Registration Office. The liability of the member is limited. United Kingdom branch registered in England and Wales under the number BR022122.
U.S. Bank Europe DAC, trading as Elavon Merchant Services, is a credit institution authorised and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority. Details about the extent of our regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority are available from us on request.
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