Ecommerce Optimisation Tips for Boosting Conversions

Ecommerce optimisation has always been a key practice for online retailers, even before the ecommerce boom following the pandemic in 2020.

In a crowded modern-day digital marketplace, it's increasingly difficult to stand out amongst a slew of competitors.

Ecommerce optimisation and website maintenance has become an essential and invaluable method for online retailers to do exactly that - present themselves to consumers on the biggest stage of all and hold their own. It also helps to maximise not only conversions, but customer retention or 'brand loyalty' too.

Formulating an effective ecommerce strategy requires retailers to provide digital consumers with the best user experience across all your digital channels - essentially connecting them to your products and services in an agile, streamlined and convenient experience.

Here's some of our digital optimisation tips that will kick-start any conversion rate optimisation strategy.

1. Streamline the User Experience

Ensure every inch of your website should be clean, user friendly, and easy to navigate, especially for customers with accessibility difficulties.

Don't stifle your own creativity, by all means, but consider that the majority of users are quick to leave websites that appear too busy or unnecessarily complex, which will send your bounce rates soaring.

A website afflicted with over-categorisation may also seep into its mobile counterpart. With mobile commerce retail sales projected to hit over £100 billion by 2024, it's essential that every moment of your sales funnel is streamlined so the customer journey or 'path to purchase' is simple and convenient for each customer.

A clear path to purchase should be aligned throughout each digital channel you provide, from a social media shop, blog post, youtube video, to a desktop or mobile app. For example, checkout CTAs should be easy to locate and available on each channel.

Complex menus and, pop-ups or checkouts can cause significant navigation, and ultimately conversion issues where customers simply give-up, rather than continue to complete a purchase.

2. Manage your Cart Abandonment Issues

High cart abandonment can have a significant impact on conversion rates if it’s not addressed and optimised correctly.

A high cart abandonment rate is a common indicator of friction in the checkout journey. Businesses often need assistance identifying common reasons for shoppers abandoning a cart.

A thorough optimisation would likely require A/B Testing in order to narrow down what practices work best for a website’s experience, but there are lots of key reasons as to why shoppers can’t commit to a sale.

As discussed previously, mobile commerce is again, an essential channel to ensure that your checkout journey is a seamless one. Provide autofill options, clear text or numerical field options, easy and diverse payment options, along with a guest checkout option.

Making even the smallest changes to your checkout process could significantly reduce cart abandonment rates. This can result in an improved user experience and significantly reduce bounce rates and pogo-sticking.

3. Use AI & Automation to personalise the retail experience

Year-on-year, we've seen automation and AI technology evolve amid a backdrop of recession and inflation, hence why many retailers have been reluctant to invest significant sums of money to adopt new processes.

AI is driving efficiency across departments like Marketing, Sales and even Development. It's evolved beyond automating simple and repetitive tasks, but is now capable of providing meticulous customer data insights and making complex decisions to give retailers an edge in the market.

AI algorithms analyse invaluable user engagement data to locate patterns of 'successful' activity that informs campaigns and influences key marketing decisions.

New smart technologies will become a catalyst that fuels increased personalisation.

Automating processes that enable personalisation to customers provide a far more tailored experience that increase the chance of conversions.

Consumers want personalised offers and promotions centered around their shopping habits, and the technology to oblige them is widely available.

4. Run A/B Testing for insightful feedback

A/B (or split) testing is arguably the most effective method to generate more feedback from users. If you have any new features or are planning on implementing a UX rebrand (i.e. new colour schemes, logos, slides, etc), then A/B testing can be used to determine what works and what doesn't.

A/B testing effectively compares different versions of on-page elements to establish which version converts more users / visitors into buyers.

When it comes to optimising conversion rate, try testing different product pages, landing pages, checkouts and features to determine which changes have a positive effect on conversion rates.

5. Improve your Page Speed

Slow loading webpages will be left in the dust.

Ecommerce sites need to be lightning quick for successful conversions and low bounce rates as the majority of digital consumers expect ecommerce pages to load in 3 seconds or less.

You can test the speed of your webpages by using Google's free tool, PageSpeed Insights. It will provide you with clear and easy-to-understand recommendations on how you can make your page faster.

• 53% of online shoppers expect e-commerce pages to load in 3 seconds or less

• 21% of consumers say slow-loading pages are their main source of dissatisfaction when shopping online

• Half of customers will abandon their shopping carts if pages don’t load fast enough

• Businesses with slow-loading pages leave a negative impression on 45% of customers

Source: 1 in 2 visitors abandon a website that takes more than 6 seconds to load, Digital.

Discover how your website loading speeds could be impacting your bottom line here.

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If you want to grow your brand in today’s ecommerce market, retailers need a website that is highly functional and optimised to provide your digital consumers with the best experience possible.