One goal that should be integrated in the strategy of your online store? Quite clearly: Conversion Optimization.
Ultimately, the costs you spend on marketing and the sales funnel must be profitable in the best possible way, because cancelled orders from users are extremely frustrating. The devil is in the details.
From the lead generation to purchase, it is often just about the little things during the customer journey that cause the transition to the next phase to fail.
Luckily, there are numerous possibilities to improve your conversion rate. Which actions to take in order to make more high-quality sales is revealed to you by two experts in conversion optimization. David Odenthal and André Morys have concrete tips in the AX Semantics Meetup that you can quickly implement.
Conversion rate optimization: 3 tips from von André Morys
The first three tips are mentioned by André Morys, CEO and founder of konversionsKRAFT, with whose help you can make your online store even more successful and drive sustainable growth.
Tip 1: Plan in advance and build a new conversion funnel (especially before seasonal events)
Searching for gifts for seasonal events (e.g. Christmas) starts many weeks in advance. For this reason, it is important to start preparations early on and build a funnel for your sales. It is important to plan specific campaigns for your products that have already worked well in the previous year.
Inform potential customers early on about a limited-quantity offer of certain products. In this way, the customer has an incentive to secure the product quickly. This addresses the "fear of missing out" phenomenon. This is a form of social anxiety or concern and describes the fear of a growing number of people of missing out on something. In today's society, this is becoming increasingly common and is closely linked to the digitalization of our everyday lives.
Tip 2: Offer the user a constant experience - from the teaser on the homepage to the checkout in the shopping cart.
A big mistake that many e-commerce retailers often make is to put extra effort into advertising materials such as creatives, banners, or email teasers. However, this effort is not rewarding if the potential customers, after clicking on the teaser of the advertising material, arrive at a product page without specification and are left alone with it.
It is necessary to offer the customer a constant experience - from email teaser to high-quality product descriptions and the checkout in the shopping cart.
One possibility are personalization tools. In this way, for example, the online store can be individually customized for all users who access the homepage via e-mails. It is also relevant to customize the checkout by convincing the customer the purchase is a good idea, for example, by reminding them how much they save when buying an individual item.
Tip 3: Profit through optimized product detail pages, “Add to Cart Layers” and reminders to create an account
As many products are strongly reduced during promotional weeks in the e-commerce sector such as the Christmas season, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and companies generate a small profit from the discounted items, profit must be generated in other ways.
For example, optimized product detail pages can significantly influence the return rate, and features such as "Add To Cart Layers" like "Complete Your Look" can suggest additional matching items to the customer.
Reminding users to create a customer account can also help trigger follow-up purchases. This can be best achieved by deprioritizing or completely removing the option to order without a customer account.
Optimize your conversion rate successfully: 4 tips from David Odenthal
Apart from Andre Morys' advice, David Odenthal, CEO of konversion.digital, mentions four helpful and easy-to-implement tips that will help you get considerably more value out of your "digital process".
Tip 1: Start your Conversion Rate Optimization with your campaign distribution
Conversion Optimization starts already with campaign distribution.
Conversion optimization starts with campaign distribution. Despite creating the perfect campaigns, they will be of no effect if they cannot be found on the web. Therefore, your campaign distribution needs a strategy. This includes optimizing the online store modularly and testing it iteratively during the optimizations.
Lack of improvement in conversion and user experience are very expensive for the e-commerce merchant. That's why it's important to start exactly there.
Tip 2: Provide all the essential information “Above the Fold” on your website
The perception of the user when visiting a product page in the store plays an important role. The goal when visiting a page is to allow the visitor to process all the essential information. The user experience is in part related to Gutenberg's design theory, in which the layout is divided into four sectors and, amongst other things, it is a matter of users reading from left to right and from top to bottom as a habit (see graphic).
In the "Primary Optical Area" (sector 1), the customer expects the logo of the online store. The second sector, "Strong Fallow Area", should include the shopping cart icon and any trust elements, and the third sector, "Weak Fallow Area", should include essential information about the store and the product. The call-to-action is located in the fourth sector at the bottom right "Terminal Area".
Based on this design theory, it is important that you position all the essential information in the online store "Above the Fold". This means that the user can easily capture all the information without scrolling to make a purchase decision.
Tip 3: Name all essential information on the product detail page
Provide the user with all essential information at a single glance on the product detail page. This includes, among other things, the payment options, shipping options and the shipping time. The aim should be to answer all the user's open questions at a quick glance. Answering the question about payment options is particularly important for improving conversion.
Tip 4: Quickly solve the cutomer’s expectations with the help of the “Gaze Cueing Effect”
All relevant information must be displayed on the product page right at the beginning, clearly visible and understandable for everyone. Among other things, this is possible with the help of the "Gaze Cueing Effect". Through this effect, also known as "gaze cueing," it is possible, for example, to focus special attention on the most important information. We instinctively always look at the people around us and pay attention, for instance, to where our conversation partner is looking at the moment. These instincts lead us to follow other people's gazes. Through the additional analysis of the other person's facial expression, we subconsciously adopt their expressed feelings in connection with the direction of their gaze.
If, for example, the website contains a photo of a person radiant with joy looking down to the left, it implies that something pleasant is waiting for us there. The "gaze cueing effect" can thus quickly solve the customer's expectations.
Conclusion
The optimization of your conversion rate is essential for the overall success of any online store and should therefore always play a role in the strategy of your e-commerce company.
In order to keep your website and store appealing to your target group, you should aim for a consistent and, above all, continuous optimization of your store. It is important that all essential information is visible "above the fold". A user-friendly online store with high-quality product pages and with a continuous experience - from the teaser to the checkout in the shopping cart - ultimately leads to a higher time spent in the store, more sales and a positive effect on the search engine rankings (SEO).