eCommerce Conversion Optimization Tactics
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eCommerce is booming in India and in the western countries like USA, Canada a lot of businesses have already gone online. In India, traders are signing up on Amazon & Flipkart to sell their products online. Many businesses are also setting up their own eCommerce shop to sell online. Selling online does not mean that you focus on getting more traffic to your website. It actually works better when you focus on getting relevant traffic and then optimizing your website for conversions.

Here are my eCommerce Conversion Optimization Tactics: 1. Mobile compatible website: What we have seen for a lot of eCommerce clients is that their website gets 60-65% of traffic from mobile devices. Even more in some cases. This further's the case of having a mobile responsive / friendly website. Your audience is going to visit your eCommerce store on the go and it is important that you don't lose your audience. If you are on Shopify, Magento or OpenCart then you can simply choose a theme that is mobile responsive. This will take care of most of your mobile-related UI / UX problems. You should also run a mobile-friendly test (Google Tool) to check for issues / errors on your mobile website.

2. Page Speed matters a lot: According to Amazon, a 100 ms drop in page load time is worth 1.6 Bn $ in sales. Page speed matters a lot. If your pages don't load in less than 2 seconds, then people might just move on to a better website. You should run the Google Page Speed Insights tool for different types of pages (Homepage, Category/Collections page, Product page) and check for page speed. One of the biggest factors of page load is the size of the page i.e. if you are using high resolution images on your eCommerce site, then they are going to load slowly. Go for .png images of optimal resolution. Also, implement a caching solution to improve page speed.

3. Reviews on product pages: Consumers are looking for reviews and opinions of people who have purchased your product. Make a conscious effort to have your customers review your products. Use the rating schema on your product pages to show reviews. Apart from star rating reviews, collect video testimonials of customers using your products and put them up on relevant pages.

4. Adding Live Chat: People want to talk to other people when they are shopping. Your website visitors might have questions related to the products you are selling. All information related to your products might not be available easily on your website. Hence, it is imperative to setup a Live Chat platform such as Intercom.io / Tawk.to to engage your website visitors and assist them in their path to purchase.

5. Surveys: This is regarding collecting qualitative information from your website visitors. You want to ask them about the hurdles they are facing while shopping on your website. No analytics tool (Google Analytics / Adobe ) is going to provide you this qualitative information. You should deploy surveys using 4Q or Survey Monkey and get to know more about your potential customers. Taking qualitative feedback about UX / UI will help you in making further improvements to your site design.

6. Images / Videos: All your visuals should be of high quality. Use decent resolution .png images on your website with your product shot i multiple angles. You should also use How to tutorial videos to let your customers experience your product better.

7. Two-step checkout:  It's best to have a two-step checkout process. Step 1 is where  you ask your customers to add shipping details (address, name, email, phone number) or create an account.  Step 2 is where you ask users for payment related information (bank, credit card, debit card, cash on delivery etc.). By having a two-step process it is easy to understand where users are dropping off.

8. Up-sell's and down-sell's: During the checkout process, you can get your potential customers to buy more from you. Use an up-sell before the user goes to Step 2 (payment details). Adding an up-sell will increase your average cart size and thus optimize conversions.

9. Urgency: Building a sense of urgency is one of the best conversion optimization hacks. Booking.com is a master of urgency.  Another example I have is of Bookmyshow.com where they show a countdown timer on checkout page while you are buying movie tickets. This coaxes you to complete the transaction in a limited time. Other urgency elements can be introduced on product pages i.e. only 5 left in stock / deal lasts for 30 minutes / Free Shipping before 10th January etc.

10. Promotions / Offers: Doesn't matter whether you are a big or a small eCommerce player. Offering discounts and occasional promotions would work wonders towards increasing conversions on your site. You should have coupon / discount codes for first time buyers, loyal customers (repeat buyers) and also members who have signed up for your newsletter. Festive and seasonal discounts also drive incremental sales.

11. Free Shipping:  Yes, you heard it right. No one wants to pay for shipping.  What you could do to cover the costs of shipping / returns is to incorporate cost of shipping in product price i.e. increase product prices slightly and offer free shipping.

12. Retargeting: This is a promotional strategy to bring back users who have dropped off from your website. You can use Facebook Product Catalog Sales or Google Dynamic Product Remarketing ads to target users who are browsing certain products and show them the same products in their feeds via Ads.

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