Frooition works solely with online retailers, improving conversion online. It’s all we have done for over a decade – and it is a never-ending quest for perfection.
There are so many articles online about getting customers to your site with PPC, SEO, and social media, but a poorly optimized page will drive away visitors and waste most of the money you invested in lead generation. Customer conversion may not be as talked about as customer acquisition, but it’s just as important.
E-commerce and customer expectations are evolving fast, so the goal posts are always shifting slightly and there is always room to improve both customer experience and conversion online. These three simple points are the most important core basics of improving conversion online that we see many retailers missing out on.
1. Cart Abandonment Emails
Cart abandonment is a thorn in the side of any retailer interested in improving conversion online. Statistics show that, while numbers can vary between industries, the overall rate of cart abandonment is 68%. Reasons for abandonment vary, with distraction, confusion, security, mobile accessibility, and delivery costs being the most common.
If an online retailer knows a shopper’s email address, it is possible to remind that shopper about products left at checkout and recover a significant number of sales.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify stores feature cart recovery functionality. Developing a cart abandonment strategy to use with these tools will help you to save those otherwise lost sales.
Read our post on creating a successful cart abandonment strategy for practical advice on how to write emails that will save sales.
2. Video
Facebook live, Youtube and branded content on Snapchat are some of the most powerful, fastest growing internet channels. Video is the internet’s most popular and powerful medium.
Only a short time ago, retailers were focused on improving conversion online by using high-quality images to increase conversions and sales. As attention spans have reduced and customers have come to expect more instant information with less effort, video has become even more attractive than photos.
Our brains processing visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Using video in your e-commerce provides customers with the information they need to make a confident purchase, without any extra effort on their part. 73% of consumers say they are more likely to buy a product after watching videos that explain how it works.
Where to put videos
You can put them on virtually any page where you are trying to convert.
- Embedded in eBay listings
- Homepage
- Product pages
- Landing pages – a study by com found that using video on your landing page can increase conversions by 80%
- Embedding in blog posts
- Social Media content
- Testimonial pages – The key is to introduce them at the right time, when users are ready to make a decision about requesting more product information or making a purchase.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Videos
Investing in and producing a great video is only half of the equation. It’s no secret that we all want to get thousands of views, have our videos go viral, and boost our sales. Most videos don’t do this because they are missing a number of important, yet simple to implement, strategies to increase viewership and engagement:
- Place videos above the fold: Make sure videos are immediately identifiable by users when they land on a page.
- Include a text call to action: Invite users to watch your video using actionable call to action text. Be direct and use text such as “Watch the video” to increase engagement.
- Size matters: Ensure the size of your video player is 480x720px or larger. Smaller video players may get missed by users.
- Video thumbnails matter: Whether you are using text or an image for your video thumbnail, make sure that it’s engaging and will pique the interest of viewers.
- Embed rather than link: When you share a video link, you can expect a 5-15% view rate, but when you embed a video, you can expect a view rate of 10-35% on the same page.
- Keep it short and to the point: Viewers are impatient, and most won’t watch a video to the end. It’s recommended to keep your video to about 30 seconds or so to keep people’s attention.
3. Live Chat
If customers are not able to find answers to their questions, chances are you will lose them.
Live chat helps an online retailer answer customer questions, respond to customer concerns, and boost sales. In fact, adding live chat may be one of the easiest ways to improve an e-commerce business overall, and it can be simple to implement.
It is worth noting that live chat is not new to the web or to e-commerce. Live chat is a feature that has been around for years, and there is a lot of data showing the value of adding live chat to a site. For example, as far back as 2010, a Forrester Research report stated that 44% of online shoppers liked having questions answered and concerns addressed in the very middle of the purchase process.
Live chat addresses the reasons that shoppers leave a site without making a purchase. It can help identify problems in site design or the checkout process. It can provide insights about how product photography, product descriptions, or even price are impacting sales, and it can be a great marketing tool too.
With live chat is it very easy to identify shoppers’ most common questions or concerns. Those questions can be addressed in blog posts, other site content, or even in social media. In this way, what the merchant learns through live chat becomes part of a content marketing campaign — helping shoppers and encouraging an increase in site traffic.
The most difficult part of offering live chat is having someone available to answer customer questions. But merchants can easily control when live chat is available and offering it even a few hours a day is better than not having it at all.
