For any ecommerce store, it’s important to track performance metrics like conversion rate. Defined as the percentage of total visitors on a site that take a desired action, conversion rate is a useful measure of the effectiveness of your site, offers, and marketing tactics.
How to calculate conversion rate
To calculate conversion rate, you must determine the desired action. For example, an ecommerce store would count a sale as a successful conversion. The conversion rate is the number of successful conversions (in this case, sales) divided by the total number of site visitors. If your site had 500 total visitors over a certain period, and 50 total sales, the conversion rate for that period would be 50/500, or 10%.
What is a good conversion rate
According to a 2022 survey of Shopify stores, the average Shopify store’s conversion rate is 1.4%. The top 10% of Shopify stores have conversion rates of 4.8% or higher. Conversion rates vary according to industry, so you may expect to see different average rates for B2B or professional services sites.
How to improve your conversion rate
If your conversion rate is too low, you can use creative tactics to improve your ecommerce conversion. Below, find five of our favorite ways to increase the conversion rate for your store.
1. Leverage Social Proof
Consumers want to feel confident when they make a purchase. A great way to instill that confidence is to use ‘social proof’ to convince the customer that other customers have bought and enjoyed the product. Social proof can take the form of testimonials, reviews, customer photos, or even data on how many people have purchased the product. By adding social proof to your product pages, you can more effectively persuade your visitor to make a purchase.
2. Optimize for mobile
Consumers are shopping via mobile devices more than ever. If you don’t optimize your site for mobile traffic, potential customers could be stymied by clunky scrolling, cut-off menus, and bad UX. To increase your conversion rate, you want to create the best possible user experience for your site visitors. Consider working with a UX designer to ensure your site works just as well from a phone as it does from a laptop.
3. Consider your customer journey
The customer journey consists of every touchpoint a customer has with your store before, during, and after a purchase. You can use tactics like in-cart upsells, abandon cart emails, and product recommendations to enhance the customer journey by increasing the customer’s exposure to the products you offer. While you don’t want to overwhelm the customer, offering tailored suggestions and behavioral nudges can help move a site visitor from the consideration to the purchase stage. And, it can make it more likely that the customer will purchase again.
4. Offer inspiration
Research shows that a large proportion of purchasing decisions are made during a search for inspiration. By creating compelling shoppable content, you can reach potential customers who are looking for the right product to meet their vision. Curated shopping guides, content-driven emails, and visually appealing social posts featuring your products can be the perfect way to help a customer envision the product in their own life.
5. Test new products and offers
It’s crucial for any ecommerce site to feel fresh and updated. That means adding new products, refreshing your messaging, and switching up your sales offers. By continually testing big and small changes to your site, you can hone in on the most effective products and offers to convert your customers. Offering a constantly changing site will also keep your customers engaged long-term.
Ready to find the right products for your audience and power the customer journey that will optimize your conversion rate? Learn more about Canal.
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