Last Updated: December 2024
Shopify came into existence in 2004. The platform accounts for more than 500,000 active stores that generate around $40 billion in sales, making Shopify conversion rate optimization harder.
According to Blend, “A desktop Shopify conversion rate of over 3.1% would mean a store is within 20% of all Shopify stores”.
To achieve this level of Shopify conversion rate and stand out from the competition, it seems crucial for you to implement best practices to optimize Shopify conversion rate.
In this post, we will help you know:
- What is Shopify conversion rate optimization?
- What is a good conversion rate on Shopify?
- 14 Ways to Optimize Shopify Conversion Rate
What is Shopify conversion rate optimization?
The conversion rate gives you an insight into the number of people who land on your page and then are convinced to make a purchase.
Conversion rate optimization in Shopify can be defined as the practice to increase the percentage of your website traffic that would make a purchase.
A good conversion rate is quite important for any eCommerce platform.
There are many factors that lead to a good conversion rate optimization in Shopify. But what a good Shopify conversion rate is? Let’s know:
What is a good conversion rate on Shopify?
According to Littledata, “Anything more than 3.7% would put you in the best 20% of Shopify stores we benchmark for conversion rate, and more than 5.2% would put you in the best 10%”
Just like a good conversion rate, you should also be aware of a bad conversion rate.
What’s a bad conversion rate on Shopify?
According to Littledata, “Ecommerce conversion rate (all devices) of less than 0.5% would put you in the worst 20% of Shopify stores, and less than 0.1% would put you in the worst-performing stores”.
So if you got an idea of what’s the good and bad conversion rate for a Shopify store, let’s understand how you are going to optimize it:
14 Ways to Optimize Shopify Conversion Rate:
An increasing conversion rate of your Shopify store is not just proportional to sales. Rather, it is mainly related to the customer experience your Shopify store provides to visitors.
Simply put, if you would focus on enhancing the customer experience on your e-commerce store, your Shopify store’s conversion rate will most likely automatically get optimized.
Here are the 10 best ways how to improve your Shopify store’s conversion rate:
1. Capitalize by personalization:
Personalizing content to cater to the needs of a customer is a great way to increase your Shopify conversion rate. Customers often expect to see personalized suggestions on eCommerce platforms.
And personalizing the shopping experience can significantly improve your conversions. In fact, according to Bloomreach, “Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when offering personalized experiences”.
Tip: Data science techniques can come in handy while personalizing content. They can help in distinguishing between customers on various parameters like age, purchase history, spending patterns, and search history. This gives you an insight into the type of products that a customer usually goes after.
2. Highlight your product benefits:
Customers buy a product or service to fulfill their needs and be satisfied.
Highlighting your product benefits can be crucial to making your customers believe that the desired product will do so.
To do that, you need to come up with precise yet engaging product descriptions. The description should properly cover various aspects like product specifications, warranty, and offers.
Moreover, product descriptions allow you to optimize product pages for search engines. You should indulge in thorough keyword research and find relevant keywords that match your product. This will incur more traffic to your shop and lead to a higher conversion rate.
Check out these practices by Google on writing product descriptions for SEO.
3. Simplify the checkout process:
A low conversion rate can be due to a high cart abandonment rate. According to Omniconvert, “21% of US shoppers would abandon the cart if they feel that the checkout experience is complicated (or too long)”.
Hence, you should calculate your cart abandonment rate and then ensure that your checkout process isn’t too complicated.
Here are three ways through which you can simplify the checkout process:
- A checkout progress bar acts as an indicator of the number of steps that are left before the payment. Since the customer is aware of their progress, they would not leave the process in between.
- Add a call-to-action option like ‘Buy now’ or ‘Checkout’. This would allow users to direct checkout for a specific product.
- Provide multiple payment options. Adding as many relevant payment options as possible can increase the rate of complete purchases.
4. Reduce shipping charges:
Extravagant shipping costs turn out to be the reason for cart abandonment.
According to Codeinwp, “55% of customers bounce back from an eCommerce store because the extra costs (shipping, tax, fees, etc.) are too high.”
One way to combat this issue is by highlighting on your website that you offer free shipping. However, if you can’t offer free shipping, be upfront about the extra costs before the checkout. A user should not suddenly get to know about a surplus amount when they go on to make the purchase.
5. Make your Shopify site easy to navigate:
If your visitors have landed on your sales page, there is a very high probability that they are interested in the product you have to offer. However, unless the navigation menu on the top of your main landing page is easy enough for visitors to follow, chances are that they may eventually leave. The first few seconds after a visitor arrives on the main landing page are the most crucial to increase the conversion rate for Shopify. Pretend you were visiting your site for the first time. Would you rate it as easy to navigate?
Split test a couple of theme layouts based on on-page activity reports and compare the user response each gets. Position the ‘Buy Now’ button in a location that is hard to miss. It is equally important to include search, filter, product comparison, and delivery menu options at the top of the page.
6. Add a blog to your Shopify site:
Apart from writing product descriptions and landing page content, you can start blogging to garner the attention of your target audience. This can help them in their purchasing decisions, increasing your Shopify conversions as well.
Moreover, posting regular and relevant content can help build the trust and loyalty of your customers. In a Helplama survey, 80% of consumers said that they trust a brand or company that publishes custom online content relevant to them, keeping their customer journey in mind.
It can be used to portray your deep sense of knowledge and expertise in that particular field.
Also, adding blogs to your Shopify site is a great way to increase organic traffic. Writing on trending and relevant topics with appropriate SEO keywords can work wonders for your Shopify optimization. To do so, you must always stay updated with the latest trends and topics of your industry.
7. Integrate live chat to your Shopify Store:
According to SuperOffice, “Live chats lead to a 40% increase in the conversion rate”.
Moreover, customers always desire to get quick responses to their queries.
Live chat software for Shopify is just the right solution for this situation. It adds a touch of human interaction that might convince a user to purchase a particular product. Also, it helps build a direct connection with the user that can lead to possible conversion.
If there are no available agents outside business hours, you can incorporate a chatbot into your Shopify site as well. In times when you aren’t available, chatbots come in handy to instantly reply to the user’s queries. A chatbot can be helped to clarify basic queries.
If you still feel overwhelmed, you can always outsource live chat to an experienced customer service agency within a few hundred dollars per month.
8. Use explainer videos:
Since video content is a multi-sensory experience, it can help increase the conversion rate for eCommerce and boost customer engagement. Research suggests that 77% of viewers watch explainer videos of up to 2 minutes from start to finish. Using a variety of editing tools, some of which are even available for free, you can create crisp, highly engaging videos to answer questions and overcome objections.
Embed a professional-looking explainer video on the check-out page to keep customers engaged during the checkout process. Besides, it makes the overall user experience more personalized and exclusive.
9. Categorize your products properly
All the products of your store must be appropriately categorized. Sometimes, due to a wrong product id, an unrelated product ends up in a particular category. At times it may also make a user question the quality of the site. Hence, leaving the site in response to that. Every product must be logically categorized so that the users find what they are looking for.
One way to combat this situation is by adding a search bar for categories and sub-categories. This can make the users find what they are looking for quickly. Also, you can expand your categories section by adding relevant sub-categories so that the user can get to their product easily.
10. Show user reviews/testimonials:
As per studies, 72% of shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Borrow a time-tested strategy used by most large retail stores and exclusive dealers to attract visitors to their respective websites: User reviews. If you’re having trouble monetizing your traffic, include reviews from other users in the checkout section to increase the conversion rate for Shopify. Since reviews are a type of user-generated content, customers tend to see them as a credible source of information about a product they are considering buying.
Use widgets in the footer section of your checkout section to display reviews to nudge visitors to buy. You can even use a carousel or slider-based review plug-in to boost conversions on your Shopify site.
11. Integrate the “Notify Me” feature:
Often a user does find what they are looking for, but the product seems to be out of stock. In a situation like this, a ‘Notify Me’ feature can ensure a great conversion rate for your Shopify store. This option would help you collect the user’s contact information. Therefore, you could notify them when the product is back.
This helps in keeping in connection with potential customers by sending them regular emails and offers on various products. This way they stay updated about the various services that your store offers. Along with a good conversion rate, this option also helps in increasing the Customer Lifetime Value.
12. Have a clear returns policy:
A consistent and clear Returns Policy is a key aspect for both international and local customers. This pertains to not just the product range you offer but also to related aspects such as shipping costs, gift cards, and taxes that may have to be refunded, following a return.
To be transparent and build trust with your customers, articulate the terms and conditions with regards to:
- The timeframe within which customers need to return the product
- How the return will be processed – exchange, replacement, or refund
- Any additional shipping or handling costs
Some of these questions may generate phone calls or emails from customers. If you’re too busy to handle customer queries, consider hiring a professional 24X7 customer support provider to help you resolve customer queries through email, phone, or live chat and increase the conversion rate for Shopify over a period of time.
13. Engage with customers that did not buy:
An abandoned sale is not a lost opportunity if you decide not to give up easily. The reasons why a customer might have decided against buying from your store are varied. Email marketing is an effective and affordable tool for online businesses to reengage with customers and increase the conversion rate for eCommerce stores.
- To get the most out of your email customer retention campaign:
- Ensure that the first follow-up email is sent within an hour of the attempted purchase
- Use compelling copy that creates urgency through limited period offers or discounts
- Include images of the product the customer was about to purchase, including specifications such as color, size, and make.
- It is likely that customers may have questions regarding the product. Include contact information so that they can reach out to your support team for assistance.
It may not always be possible for you to provide customer support, especially if your customers live in different time zones. To improve the conversion rate for e-commerce products, choose an on-demand 24X7 customer support outsourcing agency like Helplama that comprises native English-speaking representatives skilled in providing world-class live chat, email, and phone-based support to customers around the world.
14. Do not show Too many ads:
No one can blame you for wanting to upsell your own products. After all, that’s a proven way to increase conversion rates used by the biggest ecommerce giants, right? However, if you go overboard in terms of displaying pop-up ads, it may get annoying for customers. This is especially true when the customer is in the process of entering his credit card details or shipping information. You may probably never hear back from some of those customers again.
To ensure a positive user experience, you can:
- Wait until the customer has completed checkout to upsell or cross-sell products.
- Add a Thank You page confirming the original transaction, before pitching more products to the customer.
- Make personalized recommendations similar to those used by global eCommerce brands.
- Include a comments section at checkout to get feedback from customers about their overall experience on your Shopify site.
While increasing conversion rate for eCommerce is a numbers game, for the most part, it also has a customer service dimension to it. Feedback can help you iterate and improve your product further so that it can continue generating a steady revenue stream.
Conclusion
Over the years, the increase in competition in the eCommerce world has been massive. Also, with over 500,000 active Shopify stores, the race to rise to the top has been brutal. To survive in this cutthroat environment, your Shopify store needs to make a mark of its own in the eCommerce market.
A good conversion rate can work wonders for your Shopify store. Implement these 10 proven ways to have a good conversion rate optimization for your Shopify store that would help boost your revenue.
Also, you can enhance your customer service with Saufter. It is a customer service software that can help you automate and scale your customer support.