11 hacks to increase ecommerce sales

The year 2020 has seen a dramatic surge in the E-commerce industry due to unprecedented pandemic situations across the world. Many businesses focus on traditional brick and mortar sales felt the importance of having an eCommerce site.

There are more than 1 billion websites in the world, and they keep on increasing every second. Out of these, there are more than 24 million eCommerce websites.

These statistics merely show how competitive the eCommerce industry has become. Every business wants to make a mark to themselves and try out different ways to attract consumers in making online sales.

This article forms a part of the Conversion Rate Optimization mini-course provided by the CXL group. As part of the study, I have got an opportunity to learn some conversion optimization tricks which will help the eCommerce sites optimize their conversion rate and increase revenue.

We will be discussing top conversion hacks which eCommerce business can use to increase their online sales.

1) Increase site speed:

Most online visitors take less than 50 milliseconds to create an opinion on the website they visit.

Whether they like the website or not, whether they will stay, or leave is determined within those milliseconds.

The average time spent by the user on a website is less than 15 seconds.

These stats clearly indicate that online visitors have less patience and are willing to choose a website that is more appealing and provide more value within a short period of time.

Did you know that slow loading websites cost retailers $2.6 billion in lost sales each year?

In order to gain user attention, a greater emphasis has to be provided in making the website loading faster.

Two seconds …..

Yes, you read it correctly.

If your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, 53% of your customers lose interest to stay on the site.

Facts associated with load speed:

• • Amazon reported 1% revenue increase for every 100 milliseconds of improvement to their site speed
  • Walmart saw 2% increase in conversions for every 1-second improvement in site speed
  • Mozilla boasted 60 million more downloads with increased site speeds

Here are a few things, you can do to address this:

• • Test your site speed on google page speed tool
  • Check your hosting plans and opt for high performing plans
  • Minify CSS, Javascript and HTML
  • Leverage browser caching
  • Use Content Distribution network
  • Optimize images

 

2) Responsive design:

Make your eCommerce website a mobile-first design.

According to Statista, by 2020 42.9% of all US retail e-commerce shopping will be done through mobile and is projected to increase to 54% by 2021.

With mobile screen sizes increasing over time, the consumer is more inclined to do the shopping through mobile.

Responsive designs mean that your site will automatically fit the size of the user’s device thus enhancing user experience.

Having a mobile-first design will help in SEO rankings in Google as well.

 

 

3) Product Images:

People like to see what they are willing to buy.

Using high-quality product images in eCommerce sites will boost the conversion rates.

Use multiple images in multiple angels for the product. Having good images will help in improving the product

Amazon is the best example that uses good quality images to attract website visitors to make buying decisions easier.

 

4) Clear and Bold CTA:

Call to action (CTA) is any message designed specifically with an intention to prompt an immediate response from the visitors to act.

CTA button has many components like a copy, color, size, urgency..etc which influence it’s effectiveness.

We need to tweak these factors and perform A/B testing to identify the better converting CTA.

Wondering why CTA’s are very important?

Here read some stats about it –

• • HubSpot found that anchor text CTAs increased conversion rates by 121%.
  • Content Verve saw a 90% increase in click-through rate by using first-person phrasing: “Start my free 30-day trial” “Start your free 30-day trial.”
  • Reducing clutter around their CTA increased Open Mile’s conversion rate by 232%.

Personalization is another factor that is gaining momentum in the persuasion-based efforts to increase conversions.

Keeping the CTA’s personalized can convert 42% more visitors into leads. Personalization can be achieved by using the person’s name, understanding the needs of the visitors, and addressing them.

Examples of best CTA’s:

Qualzz sets a very good example in its homepage HERO section for CTA:

• • The turquoise colored CTA button stands out with the blue background-color
  • The copy is appealing with the word “FREE”
  • The button size is big enough to grab the attention of the visitor

 

5) Create urgency

One of the important persuasive factors which have been highly underrated is to create urgency.

The reason why I call it underrated is that a lot of eCommerce stores still shy away from using the psychological tricks to persuade online visitors.

There are many ways to increase urgency in your sales copy:

• Use urgency words in your headlines
  • “Now”
  • “Today”
  • “Right Now”

These words in your headlines increase the click-through rate.

This works best for google ads in particular where you have less real estate space to entice your visitors to take actions or increase CTR.

• Use number stats can also increase the CTR
  • “How to earn $10,000 in one week”
  • “How Lemlist bootstrapped from zero to $1m ARR in 2 years”

Tom Hunt, a seasoned growth hacker, investor, and entrepreneur in his blog SaaSMarketer uses this enticing persuasive trick to increase visitors’ attention and grow an email list.

His extensive research on the topic and deciphering the growth hacks and the ease in his writings makes the posts highly effective.

If you like to read growth stories and hacks, I would highly recommend you subscribe to his blog.

Another example of a high converting headline is ” How Creating a Sense of Urgency Helped Me Increase Sales By 332%” this article from CXL covers the topic in detail.

 

6) Use countdown timers

Another important urgency factor is the count down timers. Count down timers work really well for the limited time offers.

Ecommerce stores can increase their sales multifold by using countdown timers. These can be used on the notification bars, exit-intent popups, Discount popups etc.

Using Qualzz, we can create countdown popups and personalize them according to your website visitors.

Did you know?

The UK is the biggest individual eCommerce spender – $4,021,

The United States is the second with $3,428,

then comes South Korea with $2591,

France $1946 and

China with $1,855.

 

7) Nudge visitors into customers with incentives

Neuromarketing expert Roger Dooley has devised a simple framework called “The Persuasion Slide”

In this slide one of the important aspects of neuromarketing is Nudge.

He emphasizes the fact that every website visitor is engaged with specific motivation and it is very important to keep the visitor motivated throughout his journey.

Right from the landing page to the checkout page.

In his journey, we need to nudge the visitor to take a specific action we intent from him. This has to be performed periodically throughout his journey. Else we risk losing his attention and can end up with a lost sales.

Nudges can be a popup reminding them of the ongoing sales discount

It could be asking your visitors a sales call or a phone call.

In the above example, Astra uses the chat nudge to its visitors to contact their sales team to clarify any doubts regarding pricing or features.

Did you know?

By the year 2021, there will be more than 2 billion people buying goods and services through e-commerce shops. In the year 2019 alone consumers have spent $601.75 billion online with US merchants.

 

8) Convert abandoning visitors with exit intent offers

According to Statista, In March 2020 alone 88.05 percent of online shopping orders were abandoned.

Below are the reasons why the visitors abandon during checkout.

Identifying the root cause of your visitor’s abandonment is the critical step in conversion optimization of an eCommerce store.

High shipping cost is one of the major driving forces for cart abandonment.

Using exit-intent technology and providing the right offer at the right time to your visitors you can convince the abandoning visitors to make a purchase and thus increase the conversion rates.

Did you know?

E-Commerce Brands Lose $18 Billion in Sales Revenue Each Year Because of Cart Abandonment

 

9) Show product reviews and ratings:

Social proof is one important factor we cannot overlook while working on increasing the conversion rate of an eCommerce store.

Human psychology is the science behind it.

People in general do not want to take risks. They fear about making bad decisions and being humiliated by others for their decisions.

They tend to observe others and follow their path.

This brings us an important element of psychology to deal with and that is social proof.

Adding product reviews and ratings to a product page will increase conversions. Ecommerce visitors tend to look at ratings and read the reviews provided by other customers.

This acts as a base for them to make their purchasing decisions.

Amazon is a great example of using this form of persuasive technique to increase its sales. Recent reports show that Amazon has nearly 50% of the global eCommerce market share.

Read about the social proof and how it impacts the buying decisions and Email popup conversions.

10) Add security seal:

Your website visitors have the motivation to make a purchase, added a product to the cart, and then head towards entering their credit card details. But they are hesitant to complete the purchase.

This is the highest point of friction they face in their buying journey. They face an important phycological aspect called trust.

They are confronted with a set of trust questions –

• • Why should I trust this website to make a purchase?
  • Is it safe to enter my personal and credit card details?
  • Is the product guaranteed with good quality?

It is very important for an eCommerce store to answer these trust questions and remove any friction a visitor might be facing in his journey.

Next, comes an important question – How can you provide trust to your visitors?

Adding security seals and batches can help in answering these trust issues.

Trust seal examples:

Money-back guarantee seals:

 

11) Offer guest checkout:

Don’t ask your visitors to signup to your store to make a purchase. This can deter them from making a purchase.

A good rule of thumb is to provide a guest checkout for your visitors to complete the purchase.

Also, focus on reducing the steps needed to complete the checkout process. The less the number of steps and friction the more are the chances of your visitor making a sale.

Conclusion:

These persuasive techniques if used effectively on your eCommerce store will certainly improve the conversion rate. Again, these techniques differ from store to store and you may not know which of these techniques work better for your audiences.

Keep testing to figure out what works best for your store visitors. You never know it unless you tried it. So keep testing and keep iterating to improve your sales.