43 Ecommerce Conversion Drivers...The type of product description depends on the target audience and the channel — beyond your ecommerce site. Potential customers are everywhere

Practical Ecommerce | 43 Ecommerce Conversion Drivers | 1

43 Ecommerce Conversion Drivers


Introduction Our inaugural issue, in July 2005, included an article from an articulate ecommerce consultant in Florida. “Preventative Maintenance,” the title, encouraged merchants to troubleshoot potential website snafus.

The author was Pamela Hazelton.

Among our many contributors, only Pamela remains from the outset, having published 175 articles across the ensuing 15 years.

For ecommerce merchants, attracting visitors to the website was once the principal challenge. No more. Merchants now know that converting those visitors into paying customers is equally important. A high-traffic site with few buyers is sure to fail. Thus “conversion rate optimization” can make or break an ecommerce business.

Pamela’s conversion expertise is recognized worldwide. You name it, and she’s covered it, explained it, or debunked it. Cart abandonment, site search, navigation, personalization, trust, customer service, much more — she’s addressed them all.

Ecommerce in 2021 is sophisticated and competitive. Pamela’s conversion recommendations have never been more essential. We’ve assembled 43 of them here — a checklist for high-performing ecommerce businesses.

KERRY MURDOCKPUBLISHER, EDITOR

JANUARY 2021


Deploy Targeted Email Campaigns Sending the same email to your entire list isn’t the best practice. Targeting customers based on purchases and interests produces more conversions.

Offer an Attractive Rewards Program Loyalty programs reward customers based on the amount of money they spend. Take things up a notch by providing additional benefits, such as first dibs on limited and exclusive items, special pricing on select goods, and free shipping after a set period of buying.

Place What You Stand For Front and Center 2020’s events caused many consumers to scrutinize companies’ ideals. Make sure shoppers know of your key charities and causes. More people than ever want to patronize stores whose priorities align with their own.

Spotlight Your StaffConsumers want to know whom their money helps — from the cleaning crew to tech support.

Emphasize Value Give your shoppers more purchasing power. Consumers are looking for the best overall value, not necessarily the cheapest items. Subscriptions are helpful for consumable products. Volume pricing can entice people to buy in quantities and allow families and friends to group their purchases, resulting in higher average order values for the business and lower prices for customers.

Offer Many Ways to Pay Consumers have preferred ways to pay, and it’s not always a credit card. Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Stripe, Google Pay, and buy now, pay later are increasingly popular. Offering multiple payment methods can help almost every demographic. Limited payment options can result in lost sales.


Address Payment Error Messages About 10 percent of initial credit and debit card transactions fail. The most common reasons are (i) wrong card number, (ii) too many charges or attempts in a short time, and (iii) limit reached on the card. Most shopping carts display a simple “decline” message. But that’s neither clear nor encouraging for the shopper to try again. A better message could state, “Oops, there’s a problem with your card number. Please re-enter your number, expiration date, and security code. Alternatively, you can pay via PayPal or Apple Pay.”

Ease the Surprise of Address Verification Fails Popover messages from real-time address verification services can be alarming and bewildering. Explaining the reason for wanting the shopper to accept the suggested address can prevent abandons and eliminate confusion.

Append Delivery Days to Shipping Methods Customers want to know when they can expect delivery. By displaying transit times, you help them choose the best method and decrease order status requests.

Eliminate Unnecessary Fields The trick to decreasing cart abandonment during checkout is to remove all distractions, including collecting info that’s unnecessary for payment or fulfillment. For example, most shoppers would prefer not to provide a phone number or details about how they found the store. Beyond unnecessary info, make as many fields optional as possible.

Define Every Error Red asterisks can be hard to catch. Rather than displaying an error at the top of a page, place messages next to or beneath each problematic field. This combats two common issues: the top-of-page error may not appear on the screen, or the error that displays further down the page may be missed. Shoppers get frustrated if an entry appears correct and there’s no defined issue.

Include a Discrete Link to Edit the Cart While you don’t want to promote leaving the checkout, making it easy for shoppers to edit the cart can save a sale. A simple link within the cart contents section will suffice.


Ease Up on Shipping Restrictions Expect to miss out on profits if you require that orders ship to the billing address on the credit card. Gifts are increasingly shipped directly to family and friends. A better solution is to rely on a payment fraud monitoring tool and integrate trusted third-party payment platforms such as Amazon Pay and PayPal.

Display a Countdown Timer Rather than issue deadlines for standard shipping to arrive by a certain date, display a countdown timer for a better sense of urgency. When that date has passed, update the timer to reflect the deadline for expedited methods. After that, replace it with a timer for intangibles, such as gift certificates or services.

Incorporate Real-time Communication ToolsLive chat remains an essential tool for ecommerce. Social media messaging is a preferred method for many shoppers. Even phone calls are popular. Shoppers want answers immediately. They don’t want to wait for an email response. They also don’t want to fill out lengthy online forms. You’ll likely gain more sales if you can allocate staff to monitor incoming requests and provide instant answers.

Test Trust BadgesClick on all the trust icons displayed in your site’s footer, those that confirm security and safety. Make sure they all populate the correct content.

Focus on What Shoppers Hope to Accomplish It’s easy to spout off the technical features of a product, such as a digital camera. But unless the consumer is a professional photographer or has done extensive research, features aren’t what sells the camera. Perhaps the shopper wants a simple camera to point and shoot, with minimal risk of taking blurry pictures.

Feedback from Shoppers Is Gold A question from a shopper is an opportunity. Consumer inquiries provide critical keyword search terms. They also help understand your audience’s vernacular to include in product descriptions, calls to action, and checkout funnels.


Log Customer Service CallsCustomer service reps should log details of interactions with shoppers. The info can provide insight into prime keywords for off-site and on-site search, trigger terms that help sell, and potential disclaimers. Gather data from multiple sources, including product reviews, shopper questions, pre-order inquiries sent via email and chat, post-order support requests, and reasons for return or exchange.

Focus on Stay-at-home Trends Way fewer people are traveling, so promote products they can enjoy at home. Study promotions by big retailers and smaller competitors. Monitor what your target audience is talking about online. Look at data — wish lists, site search— from your store over the past two months. Otherwise, consider home entertainment, relaxation, backyard festivities, and housework items.

Offer Accessories and Add-onsPromoting accessories and add-ons on the product and cart pages can increase order totals without interrupting the checkout process. Restrict offerings to related items.

Tailor Product DescriptionsThe type of product description depends on the target audience and the channel — beyond your ecommerce site. Potential customers are everywhere. Generate these seven types of descriptions for your most promising products: comprehensive catalog descriptions, shareable overviews, shopping-feed details, organic search descriptions, quick details for category pages, landing page info, and videos of products in use.

Accept Pre-orders Accepting pre-orders on highly anticipated products can drive demand. Pre-orders appeal to innovators and early adopters and work well for technology, games, and luxury items.

Feature ‘As Seen On’ Posts Who says you need to spend thousands on influencers and brand ambassadors? With celebs and social media influencers competing on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, there’s a chance your products are already being hyped. Using social network embed tools, you can show this content on your own pages.


Use ‘Limited’ and ‘Out of Production’ Labels Limited and out-of-production items urge shoppers to buy now before the goods are no longer available. And displaying the remaining available quantity reinforces the urgency.

Let Shoppers ‘Favorite’ Stuff A “favorites” feature allows shoppers to communicate their views of a product — what they would likely buy. This feature alone can close more sales.

Use Emojis Emojis are a powerful way to express urgency. Younger shoppers especially will appreciate that you’re speaking their language. And older shoppers will accept emojis so long as you use them as visual aids, not word replacements.

Use Meaningful ‘Contact Us’ Forms Contact forms enable visitors to request information, ask questions, and submit concerns. The forms are important for customer acquisition and retention. Yet most contact forms fail usability tests. Essential form features include responsive across all devices, dynamic fields that change based on a user’s input, proper labels (“First Name,” “Last Name,” “Email Address”), instructions for complicated fields, and how the info provided is used.

Write for Fifth Graders Shoppers who cannot understand your communication will not convert. To grab their attention, write at a fifth-grade reading level. Reading at a lower grade level is less work for shoppers. It’s not dumbing down the content. Consumers who quickly understand a product are more apt to purchase it.

Use FAQ Pages A frequently-asked-questions page is essential to any online store. Done right, FAQs can close sales by saving time for shoppers, validating a concern, decreasing negative comments and reviews, and improving time on site.


Personalize Common ItemsPersonalized and customized products can help smaller ecommerce businesses stay ahead. Personalization can be as simple as packaging a group of items as a custom “kit” or providing engraved plates, quality vinyl decals, or monograms.

Jazz-up the Confirmation Page A post-purchase thank-you page is an underutilized tool for online stores. The page (also known as the invoice page) often contains only order details. That’s a mistake. Merchants should use this all-important page for brand recognition and sales, such as related items, social follow buttons, feedback, email sign-up, one-click account creation, how-to videos, and contact options.

Consider Voice Commerce Now’s the time to delve into voice selling, which is dominated by big companies. Voice commerce is simplifying how people browse and shop, especially for consumable items.

Implement Cross-selling The act of successfully offering complementary items on the same or subsequent orders is cross-selling. It is one of the best ways to increase overall revenue, especially if the additional items have a higher profit margin.

Create Gift Guides A well-designed gift guide showcases goods, helps customers build wish lists, assists new visitors in finding an ideal gift, inspires themed gift-giving, presents something for every budget, and provides an opportunity to turn first-time shoppers into repeat customers.

Use Non-standard Product Images Quality product photos are crucial to selling online. To maximize sales of a product, though, consider multiple types of images — beyond studio shots. Three types of non-standard photos that encourage sales are (i) context of use that show how a product is utilized, (ii) size and proportion images such as showing an item beside a coin or a hand, and (iii) user-generated images.


Focus on Key Product-page Elements Communicate an item’s benefits to the highest number of shoppers by (i) maintaining layout consistency across all product pages, (ii) making prominent the key buying points, (iii) using fixed headers and footers, (iv) conveying a product’s scarcity, and (v) deploying a no-brainer call-to-action button.

Utilize Powerful Site Search Ecommerce site search is vital for navigation and conversions. Picking the right provider should be based on features, data, and measurability. Choose a provider that produces relevant results, offers robust synonym and phrase matching, uses behavior-based rankings, and supplies detailed analytics and reports.

Speed Sells, Especially on Mobile Page speed drives conversions and improves organic search rankings. Common culprits for slow-loading pages include tracking tags, plugins and extensions, excessive JavaScript, unoptimized images, and lack of caching.

Manage Inventory Closely Canceling customer orders (or shipping incomplete orders) due to out-of-stocks prompts calls, complaints, and negative reviews — driving shoppers to your competitors.

Prosper against Larger Competitors Ecommerce is highly competitive. It’s also dynamic and ever-changing. Smaller online stores can prosper by understanding how their shoppers use smartphones, offering mobile-specific payment options, embracing chatbots, presenting compelling images and videos, and recognizing trends that impact their business.

Create a Sense of CommunityMore than ever, shoppers want to feel appreciated. Include customers in your brand’s “family” by encouraging them to share experiences. Likewise, provide videos of your staff at work and home.

Offer Pay-later Options Services such as PayPal Credit, Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay allow consumers to get products now and pay for them later in installments. Studies show that average order values for these types of payments are about 18 percent higher.

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43 Ecommerce Conversion Drivers...The type of product description depends on the target audience and the channel — beyond your ecommerce site. Potential customers are everywhere