11 Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics For Your Shopify Store
Are you having a hard time turning visitors into customers? If so, you’re not alone.
Sealing the deal has been one of the greatest challenges for online businesses for decades. Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar stores that benefit from less competition and local traffic, online shoppers have countless options and can simply leave your site forever with a single click.
As a result, the average eCommerce conversion rate is about 3.58%, which means less than 4 out of every 100 visitors make a purchase.
But it also means that an improvement of just 1% in your conversion rate can generate 25% more revenue for your business.
That’s why it’s essential to prioritize conversion rate optimization for your Shopify store.
In this post, we’ll highlight 13 ways to increase your Shopify conversion rates and recommend an app that makes it easier.
1. Add upsells and cross-sells when appropriate
Upsells and cross-sells are offers you create that let customers upgrade their purchase or add more products at a discounted rate. Their primary goal is to increase your average order value, but they can also improve conversion rates.
Use these offers to ‘sweeten the deal’ before and during checkout. If potential customers feel like they’re getting a better deal by accepting a BOGO or product bundle, they’re more likely to complete their order–and do it more quickly.
Cross-sells also have the added benefit of improving the customer experience by offering complementary products. Visitors new to your niche might not know exactly what they need to get started, so creating discounted bundles that cover the essentials can make buyers feel more confident in choosing your store over others.
You can add upsells and cross-sells to product pages, the cart drawer, the cart page, or at checkout.
2. Add plenty of social proof
Some customers are still hesitant to buy online, which makes social proof important for your store's credibility. In fact, 93% of customers say social proof influences their buying decisions.
Social proof includes testimonials, reviews, brands that use your products, and any awards or badges you may have. It shows that you can be trusted, reduces any perceived risk, and can even encourage shoppers to check out sooner with excitement from rave reviews or recognizable testimonials.
Add social proof to your product and checkout pages to help overcome obstacles that lead to lost sales.
3. Optimize your checkout process, but don’t overload it
Checkout is one of the most important pages to optimize for conversions.
The average cart abandonment rate is about 70%, which means you need to do everything you can to make it fast and simple to complete.
Here’s what you can do.
Avoid making users log in to check out
Account creation is one of the leading causes of cart abandonment at 26%.
Whether it’s because they don’t want to provide additional information, remember a password, or take the time to fill out the extra fields, guest checkout is a simple but effective way to improve conversion rates.
Offer free shipping
Since Amazon changed the shipping landscape with free 2-day delivery, nobody wants to pay for shipping anymore. In fact, added fees like shipping costs account for nearly half of all abandoned carts.
If possible, offer free shipping by default or as an upselling incentive when customers reach a certain cart total. That way, you’ll lose fewer customers at checkout and potentially generate additional income.
Provide multiple payment options
Credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, cryptocurrency—there are many different ways to pay online now, and customers like having options.
With 13% of abandoned carts coming from insufficient payment options, accepting multiple payment types is a simple way to enable more conversions.
Use a one-page checkout
Long checkout processes account for 22% of abandoned carts, which stems from unnecessary checkout fields or a complicated process that takes too long to complete.
One of Shopify’s recent additions, the one-page checkout option, helps to cut down the amount of time it takes to checkout. It places the contact, shipping, and payment information steps into a single screen that customers can complete quickly, reducing idle time and reducing abandoned carts.
4. Use scarcity, urgency, and FOMO language
As we mentioned earlier, online shoppers have a lot of stores to choose from. If you’ve been able to capture their attention and bring them to your checkout process, you can’t afford to let go.
According to EmberTribe, as many as 95% of visitors won’t return to your website without some kind of retargeting or recovery strategy (more on that later.)
You need to encourage action while you have their attention.
FOMO, or fear of missing out, scarcity, and urgency are powerful tools that help push visitors towards becoming customers. They work by forcing them to take action, like accepting an offer or completing checkout, before it’s too late and they lose the opportunity.
You can use time-sensitive language like “limited stock” or “limited-time offers” on product and checkout pages to demonstrate scarcity and instill urgency in their decision. Or, you can add messages like “Almost gone! Secure yours before it’s too late” in your cart page to push them towards checkout as soon as possible.
5. Add limited-time discounts to your offers
Similar to FOMO-inducing language, you can also add time-sensitive elements like timers, countdowns, and stock counts to any step of your checkout process so shoppers feel the pressure to make a decision sooner.
6. Use abandoned cart emails
Abandoned carts can cost you–but they’re not all lost opportunities.
If you collected an email before they left, you can send an abandoned cart email to try to get them back to your checkout flow.
These emails usually include an incentive to come back, like a discount or free item, and are usually sent shortly after abandonment to avoid losing the business to a competitor. However, further follow-up emails can also work.
Cart abandonment emails can achieve up to 18% conversion rates, giving you another opportunity to close the deal.
7. A/B test your checkouts
A lot of factors go into whether or not a visitor becomes a customer. It can be hard to isolate these reasons reliably, but when it comes to on-site optimizations, A/B testing offers valuable insight.
A/B testing compares two versions of a page or element on your site, like the copy on an upsell or cross-sell, a different FOMO-inducing headline at checkout, or different calls to action.
By comparing how each version performs, you can slowly refine your conversion rate optimization strategies until you find what fits your audience best.
8. Avoid hidden costs at all costs
Nobody likes surprises when it comes to spending. Price, transparency, and upfront pricing are huge factors in conversion rates.
21% of shoppers have abandoned their carts because of hidden fees like tax, shipping, or processing costs that weren’t disclosed at the beginning of checkout. These added fees may make them feel misled or lied to, which hurts their trust in your business and pushes them to your competitors.
9. Make your product pages stand out
Product designers put a lot of effort into creating eye-catching packaging, and retail stores spend a lot of time on shelving and displays that highlight their products.
You need to do the same for your online store by creating fully fleshed-out product pages that help sell themselves. They should include:
- High-quality images
- Compelling product descriptions and use cases
- Accurate specifications
- Clear pricing
- Related products
- Reviews and testimonials
- Strong calls to action
- FAQs and specifications
By creating a complete product page, you can build trust and excitement that encourages conversions.
10. Don’t neglect popups to highlight special promotions
Popups are a great way to get a visitor’s attention and your products front and center–as long as you use them sparingly.
You can use popups at any stage of the checkout process, but they’re especially effective on the product page after a visitor adds an item to their cart and before they reach checkout. Build them with upsells, cross-sells, and time-sensitive promotions to encourage engagement.
11. Look at analytics data to see where users are falling off
Data is a critical part of optimizing for conversions. Like A/B testing, monitoring your analytics to look for the stages where customers leave your site, like on the product page or at checkout, gives you an idea of where you should focus your optimization efforts.
Within checkout, you can also determine which step shoppers abandon their carts at, like shipping costs or payment screens, to identify improvements you can make.
Increase your conversion rate with UpsellPlus
Conversion rate optimization is one of the most cost-effective strategies you can implement on your site. With the right tool, you can use a low-cost method to maximize each sale's value, allowing you to increase revenue without spending more on marketing.
UpsellPlus is your all-in-one conversion rate optimization tool. It offers comprehensive upselling and cross-selling throughout the checkout process, allowing you to add popups and time-sensitive deals to push customers to purchase.
UpsellPlus is also a checkout customizer that enables checkout optimizations, such as adding social proof, customizing checkout fields, and controlling payment and shipping options, to satisfy more customers.
Best of all, it’s free to try for 7 days, so get started with UpsellPlus today.
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