6 Essentials for eCommerce Conversions This Year.

The pain is all too familiar.

“Through our paid and earned efforts we have resulted in the site visitor volume that we expected we’d need, but conversions aren’t there to match. In fact, they’re declining”, said every manager of marketing implementation.

You’re not alone in this boat of ecommerce conversion dilemma, and it’s filling up with new passengers daily.

If you’re reading this, you’re already ahead of the pack, understanding that conversion doesn’t just happen: you need to optimize for it, especially as your traffic numbers climb.

Optimizing for conversion applies unilaterally, to everyone. No matter if you’re a startup and running the show yourself, or if you’re an ecommerce manager or marketing director who has been assigned a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for 2022.

Here are the essential 6 ways to proactively increase your ecommerce conversions this year.

Relevancy and Continuity

One-to-one relevancy is now the expectation upon shopper site arrival. Their ecommerce purchase funnel must match their site path landing experience and overall ecommerce website design. Assume a customer persona, search for an item, and go through each and every step of your ecommerce path to purchase to ensure that you have brand continuity and relevancy throughout. These are often the easiest items to resolve to make them number one on the list of essentials for improving ecommerce conversion.

Trust (Reviews and Testimonials)

Quickly establishing trust must be considered mission-critical. Small things like spelling errors or low-quality iconography and product shots erode trust instantly. These are easy fixes too in many cases. The more challenging to create and maintain trust is to include reviews and testimonials in a balanced way. Today’s buyer knows that 100% satisfaction or only 5-Star ratings are highly unlikely in any product or service experience. Don’t shy away from the negative reviews, embrace and respond to them quickly to demonstrate your high sense of urgency and customer satisfaction. Having an experienced ecommerce partner manage this aspect can often be the most viable and impactful solution.

Recommendation Engine

Often referred to as the value chain creator, the ability to recommend relevant value-add products or services based on the selection of a first item, or known visitor persona is today a ubiquitous feature of trusted, high-conversion ecommerce experiences. Ensuring that it’s dialed in with the right settings and triggers is essential. You likely have this feature available, so A/B test and constantly be experimenting with it to improve conversion performance. Ask a digital native and experts like Mike Cleary, or your agency to review your current engine, or provide recommendations on how to incorporate one.

Sense of Urgency or FOMO (Fear of missing out)

Promotions, coupons, free shipping, and price adjustments are just a few of the tools in your kit to experiment with. The underlying rationale is to create a sense of urgency or fear of missing out that is consistent throughout the purchase path from research and discovery to cart, check-out, and post-purchase advocacy. Shop your competitors, and other companies outside of your vertical – subscribe to their promotions both on and offline and follow through to map the purchase journey. Often a very inexpensive and highly effective way to ideate on optimizing your own ecommerce experience. There’s no shortage of opportunity here…

Our partners at Huemor such as Geico, Rug&Home, and Live Nation tell us that our ability to provide a balanced sense of urgency through promotions and FOMO has shown exceptional results.

Customer Connectivity

Once considered taboo in the ‘new age of digital transformation is now one of the simplest and overlooked opportunities to improve ecommerce conversions – highlight a real phone number and note that it will enable the customer to immediately connect with a live person. Ground-breaking stuff! Add in live chat, or even (good) AI bot chat for simple requests to catch people at the right time in the purchase path based on tripwires or triggers, or simply be there to answer a question rather than directing them to an FAQ. We all like a choice. Add this to your essentials for review and optimization of your ecommerce experience.

Friction Elimination

Perhaps one of the less obvious essentials to improve your checkout page design and increase ecommerce conversion is to be ruthless with removing friction at the cart. It starts with ensuring that adding, removing, and even multiplying items within the cart is seamless and that the “Add to cart” and “Checkout” buttons are always visible – even when “Continue Shopping” is selected. Too often these unintentionally are hidden. Ensure you provide the ability to checkout as a “Guest”. Guest Check-out can account for more than 50% of ecommerce website conversions. Avoid purchase friction by adding this feature as an option. And of course, ensure you have a test/refine methodology with your cart abandonment software. Win-backs can be the difference between a make-or-break of a sales campaign. Site visitor memory, where your site recalls where your customer was in their purchase cycle and then guides them back to that destination from an email or retargeting ad without any friction is today a reality and therefore one of the essential items to consider when you’re looking to optimize your ecommerce conversion rates.

Wrapping Up

Conversion optimization for ecommerce is certainly not a set-and-forget marketing item on the annual plan. It requires nurturing. Constant testing, refining, and reimagining.

At Huemor, it’s our hope that you are able to reverse the trend that you’re seeing in declining ecommerce conversions by taking action and implementing these top 6 essentials.

Again, optimizing for conversion applies unilaterally, to everyone. No matter if you’re a startup and running the show yourself, or if you’re an ecommerce manager or marketing director who has been assigned a BHAG for 2022. So, if you’d like some additional help, or simply a conversation around how a company like Huemor provides ecommerce conversion optimization through effective redesigns, reach out to us here.

If you’d rather get a sense of what a project might cost first, you can always use this ecommerce project calculator… the choice is great isn’t it?