Conversion rate is the rate that visitors are turning into buyers.

Probably the single most important statistic for any ecommerce business.

Here are ten key ways to increase the chances of a visitors to your site turning into  customers-

1. Structure – does the website have an easily understood navigation structure? Test this by asking people who are not familiar with your website to find products and see if they always head to the right place every time. Ask them about your delivery or returns. They should be able to tell you this basic information easily, without foraging around.

2. Mobile – Thinking about mobile users is an important part of this as any user who can’t access the site quickly in the way they choose, will inevitably leave. Having a site which can be easily navigated by touch, and asks for minimal information input is vital to mobile conversion.

3. Speed – Does your website load quickly? Can shoppers tell what you sell within 3 seconds? If not, research from Google* says they are most likely to leave your page and go to a competitor site.

4. Trust – would a shopper trust their card details with you? Display security credentials at the vital parts and display ensure the user knows your company is respectable and trustworthy.

5. Be available – can shoppers easily phone you up to ask a question? They may have questions and want the reassurance of speaking to a person. Consider a live chat function, and make sure they can find a telephone number, with operating hours clearly displayed.

6. Delivery costs – Delivery and returns policy need to be clearly displayed. Hiding delivery costs until after card details have been entered is not helpful, and is one of the biggest causes of cart abandonment.

7. Related Products – do you actively present similar products? Marketplaces are the most popular e -commerce sites today, as they allow customers to browse rather than searching for a specific product. Displaying related products within each product page will help facilitate browsing. The more time visitors spend browsing your site, the better the conversion rate.

8. Quick/guest checkout – Do you force users to login to use the shopping basket? Forcing customers to register to purchase is a massive friction point for customers. Offer a quick checkout to make sure you don’t lose impatient customers.

9. Abandoned carts – Are you following up potential opportunities? Retargeted advertising and emailing those who abandon shopping carts can bring in as many as 20% of those who abandon carts back to the site to buy. Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer cart recovery options which can be added to stores.

10. Product Information – are you giving people enough information to buy the product? The more information you can give people the more likely they are to make the purchase. Tell them the strengths (and weaknesses) of each product in order to allow them to make an educated purchasing decision. Include plenty of photographs showing multiple views of the product

Concentrating on the above factors will help increase conversion rate, which will help deliver improvements in the real key metrics that matter to Ecommerce website owners which are revenue and profit.

* Google Data, Global, n=3,700 aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, Mar. 2016.