Are People Dropping Off Your E-commerce Site Before Making a Purchase? We Know Why
Okay, so you have built a nice e-commerce website and promoted it on social media. It looks the way you wanted it to. It works the way you wanted it to. It has also been gathering up a lot of visitors like you thought.
But no one is buying.
Does this sound familiar to you?
So, what do you do next? You spend a lot of dollars to bring in real visitors to your website. But again they fall short of converting to buyers.
This is a very common scenario for startups. Setting up a website and driving traffic to it aren’t enough for building a business. You have a lot more work to do than that.
What Should Be Your Conversion Rate?
The ideal conversion rate of a website stands at 11.45%.
This means for every 100 visitors you get, at least 11 should complete a transaction. This figure is based on the top converting websites. However, the average conversion rate stands at 2.35%.
But the question is, do you want your e-commerce store to be average or do you want it to be way better than the top-performing ones?
If you want the latter for your business, you need to first find out why it won’t convert visitors to buyers.
Why Isn’t Your Business Converting?
There can be a lot of reasons behind this.
Here’s an example:
Mr. Anderson is in the socks business – socks for every occasion. He knew his products would sell. So, he created a sparkling-looking site, added his products, invested a bunch of dollars into a few paid video advertisements and then he waited for the visitors to come. They came, they saw and then they left. He tried everything he could to get his visitors to make a purchase, but hardly anybody did. He loaded them up with discounts but nothing changed. Then one day he saw his video ads and realized where he went wrong. The ads were indirectly giving out the idea that he was selling shoes for every occasion, instead of socks!
You see what happened here? A little miscommunication can result in hundreds of lost sales. Your promotions should depict exactly what you are offering. Based on your promotion, customers visit your website with an expectation. If they find something completely different there, it’s quite natural for them to leave.
Image Source: http://ibuzzr.com/web-technology-revolution-in-21st-century/miscommunication/
Having said that, what gives e-commerce a run for its money is that customers in a brick and mortar store can see and touch the products and also give them a trial run before making a purchasing decision.
But the good news is, as many as 80% of shoppers use a mobile phone inside a physical store to look for a product they like at a cheaper price online. This means, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you could lose out on this advantage.
What Needs to be Done?
If your e-commerce store is under-performing, here are a few ideas you can use to quickly amp up your store’s conversion rate:
1. Use Good Quality Product Images & Descriptions
You need to be very lucid with your product description, photos, and other product specifications. People should know what they are spending their money on. Being upfront and honest gives credibility to your business and helps in boosting sales.
2. Test Your Store’s Checkout Process
A complicated checkout process can result in lost buyers. This is where you need to carry out most of the A/B testing and tweaks. Many prefer a single-page checkout over a multiple-page one, but it entirely depends on your business.
Image Source: https://www.borngroup.com/one-page-vs-multi-page-checkout-why-simplicity-is-everything/
3. Make Your Store Responsive
People rarely have time to switch on their laptops to browse for a product. If they need anything, they turn to their mobile phones. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it wouldn’t even take a second for your potential customers to look elsewhere.
4. Focus on Quick Deliveries and Easy Returns
Did you know that 67% of buyers check the Return policy before making a purchase? Not every customer will be happy with a delayed delivery timeline or a self-ship return policy. These things matter.
5. Use the Power of Email Marketing
What an e-commerce store has in huge quantities is customer data. Use it to understand the preference of your visitors and send them recommendations based on that. For example, a nice pair of shoes that match the trouser your customer had been browsing (or, added to the cart) can be a good place to start with.
You can also entice your customers with offers and bonus points that can be redeemed on their first purchase. Don’t stop there. Send an Email stating the expiration date of the offer. While getting a response may take a few Emails, it is important to find the right balance between engaging and spamming.
Take a quick look at how the experts are leveraging Email marketing in the following video.
We had conducted an Email drip campaign for our client, ChromaDex to accelerate the sale of their product, Tru Niagen which is a vitamin supplement. The campaign was designed to target 3 types of buyers – bounced, first-time and recurring. To ensure a seamless experience, we customized the Email template to match the website. The results were amazing! For more details, check out the complete portfolio here.
There are more ways than one to improve the conversion rate of your website. However, every store has a different requirement. Hence, it’s important to analyze what would work best for your website before randomly implementing strategies. Expert help is always recommended. You can reach out to us any time. We would be happy to help.