Running an eCommerce store takes a lot of work, so it can be disappointing when sales aren’t as high as you’d like. Faced with a lot of competition and competitive pricing, you’re going to need to work on your conversion strategy to help you drive those sales.
Fortunately, there are a lot of tried and tested ideas that can help you improve your conversion rate and start increasing sales for your online business.
Here are 11 ways to improve the conversion rate for your WooCommerce store.
1. Run a limited promotion
Promotions are a great way to boost sales, getting your shoppers excited about the fact that they can score a good deal. The best types of promotion for a quick increase in conversion rate is a timed promotion. A timed promotion, such as a discount for a 24-hour period or even a two-hour period could be a fantastic way to help you boost those sales. Limited promotions can be a useful way of increasing sales, particularly on your most searched-for products.
Some great plugins to implement limited promotions on your WooCommerce store include YITH WooCommerce Product Countdown and YITH WooCommerce Topbar Countdown.
If you signup to our Professional maintenance plan, we are able to provide the required plugin, and setup this functionality for you for free.
Source: YITH WooCommerce Topbar Countdown
2. Send some ‘abandoned cart’ emails
Sometimes, people need a little reminder to help them complete a purchase. Having an email saying ‘did you forget something?’ can prompt a user into returning to your store and completing their purchase. There are many reasons why a cart could have been abandoned, and you might just make that conversion through a little prompt. If you can include a discount in that email too, then you stand an even better chance of helping your customer convert.
Some great plugin options for this are WooCommerce Follow-Ups, and YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned cart. The WooCommerce reporting software metorik.com also has an “abandoned cart emails and cart reports” feature.
If you signup to our Professional maintenance plan, we are able to provide the required plugin, and setup this functionality for you for free.
3. Keep your content simple
A busy, complicated website can give the user a headache, so why not strip your right back to make it clear and simple? Simple content sells, so rather than trying to add fancy descriptions or using too many features on one page, try going down the simpler route. Your calls to action should be strong and clear, helping to drive those sales that will significantly improve your conversion rate.
4. Be transparent about your products and services
Honesty is the best policy, which is why you should always be transparent about your products and services. Don’t make bold claims that can’t be backed up, make sure you’re always honest about your products to avoid problems in the future. Include as much detail about your product as possible including what it’s made from, how it works and what the care instructions are. When people shop online, they take a lot of risks as they are unable to touch and verify a product themselves before buying, so the more you can do to help them with their purchase, the better.
5. Use high-quality images
High-quality images are important for helping to sell a product. Not only do they make the product look more appealing, but they can help fill in the gaps that are missing when people shop online. High-quality images help a shopper establish exactly what they’re buying, which makes it easier to take the risk and checkout. Try to photograph your products at many different angles, while a photo that reflects the scale of the item can also be beneficial to the customer.
It is however also important to make sure your images are well optimised to keep site performance optimal. A great way to automatically optimise your images is with the Smush Pro plugin, which is also included free with our Professional maintenance plan.
6. Keep descriptions simple
The right product description provides the perfect sale pitch for your product or service. While many businesses stuff them with keywords to boost SEO, you’ll get much more from your descriptions if you keep them simple and more meaningful. Try to limit the length of your descriptions, 100-200 words should be fine for most products. This way, your focus will be to sell your product in as few words as possible, which will help you produce simpler content.
7. Use reviews to boost trust
Reviews are important for online shoppers. Shoppers rely on reviews to be able to gauge the trustworthiness of a company, as well as what a product is really like. Reviews are very valuable to a business, especially a new or growing one. By including product reviews on your webpages, you can help make it easier for your customers to make the decision to buy.
WooCommerce includes product reviews functionality by default. However the “WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro” plugin is a great option for implementing some more advanced features.
Alternatively, you could choose to signup to a reviews website like www.reviews.co.uk, and embed your reviews onto your pages via the variety of widgets available.
8. Simplify your checkout process
There’s nothing more off-putting than a poor checkout process. As a quick way to turn your customers away, a poor checkout could be one of the main reasons behind a poor conversion rate. There are different ways you can optimise your checkout process. Firstly, allowing user accounts can speed things up, while a ‘remember me’ function can also make the process smoother. Try to limit the number of steps it takes to checkout and remember to include a variety of payment methods. PayPal and Stripe are great options for WooCommerce, since they’re super easy to setup, and simple to manage.
More and more businesses are also operating ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes, through companies like Klarna, which provide more flexibility to customers.
Investing in your checkout process to make it simpler, faster and more effective will have a strong impact on your conversion rate.
9. Improve your search tool
How effective is your search tool? A search tool is a powerful function and helps your customers find exactly what they’re looking for. If your search is ineffective, you could find your customers looking elsewhere to buy products.
Did you know that your search tool can provide some valuable analytics for your business? By looking at the search terms your customers are using, as well as products that they’re searching for, you can make smarter decisions about which items to promote, as well as which items you should be selling in your store. It’s a great way to see what sort of products are trending and to help your buying strategy going forward.
10. Provide live chat support
Communication with a customer needs to happen quickly. If they have to spend ages on the phone or wait for an email response, you could find that they’ve moved on to shop somewhere else before you’ve even had a chance to reply. By providing live chat support, you can give people answers immediately, helping them make a purchase. It can be a great way to offer a discount and let them know about any special offers or promotions you’re running at that present moment.
There are plenty of great options for live chat software to use on your WooCommerce website. Here at RelyWP, we use Re:amaze, which has some great features such as automated and targeted messages, FAQ helpdesk, desktop and mobile apps, and more. They have a very helpful support team, incase you ever need help getting started.
Example of the re:amaze live chat widget.
A free, but slightly more basic live chat option is Tawk.to, which may be worth considering if you are on a small budget.
11. Don’t forget your promotion strategy
Promoting your products and services plays an important part in driving your conversion rate. Without a promotion strategy, how can you expect people to land on your page in the first place? There are plenty of effective marketing strategies you can use to push your products, including using channels like Pinterest and Instagram that are driven by people looking for inspiration and ideas, as well as Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn.
Investing in pay per click advertising on some of these social media platforms, or on search engines like Google Ads may also be worth considering. These allow you to target specific audiences, based on certain criteria, to promote your products and services to those who will be the most interested. You may want to work with a PPC consultant to help you optimise your ads for the optimal performance. Most of these PPC platforms also have free ad credit for new accounts, allowing you test it out, before deciding whether to invest further.
For some stores, using influencer marketing can also help you to boost those conversions, as customers are more likely to trust the opinion of someone they respect and is ‘like them’.
Think of some innovative ways you can boost your marketing efforts to help you improve your conversion rate.
Monitoring your conversions
To understand your conversion rate, you’re going to need the right tools. Many stores use Google Analytics with their WooCommerce system to be able to get real-time, useful insights on consumers’ shopping behaviours. Identifying the areas where your conversions are high will help you adopt the same approaches across your website to lift the areas that aren’t doing so well. Regular reporting can help you identify trends both long-term and short-term, giving you strong data to make more effective decisions for your business.
Summary
Improving your conversion rate is important for your WooCommerce store. By creating a plan geared towards improvements, you could soon see the increase that’s needed to boost your business. Try different approaches to find the ones that work for you, and don’t forget to keep an eye on the latest eCommerce trends to make sure your business stays ahead of the game.
At RelyWP, with our Professional and Enterprise WordPress care plans, we can help you implement the functionality you need to boost your conversions, and even provide more personalised suggestions and tips, with our frequent website audits and reviews.
Check out our care plans at https://relywp.com/pricing