eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices

When it comes to e-commerce, the most important business healthy metric is the conversion rate. Many e-commerce business owners understand the value of conversions and the number of visitors to the e-commerce website. Often the time, e-commerce business set goals on unique monthly visitors and monthly sales made other than the sales conversion rate. A better focus on conversion rate could actually drive more inquiries and purchase on your e-commerce website. I listed e-commerce conversion rate optimization best practices. The best practices are also the guideline for our website SEO services. If you have tips for a better conversion rate from your experiences, please leave your comments as a contributor input.

Go to guides for e-commerce website
eCommerce Product Page Optimization Best Practices
How to SEO for eCommerce Product Pages

Visitors has no patient for a web page that loading for more than 10 seconds. What the visitors will do? They will just simply close that e-commerce website tab, and go to other websites. Many e-commerce websites are losing thousands of customers simply because of the poor website loading performance. Use service like Google Page Insight for an instant website speed test. Based on my experiences of website speed optimization, a 3 seconds or less loading time will make your e-commerce website ahead 90% percent of your competitors.

This actually happens a lot on small business e-commerce websites. Small business owners hire the local web development firms, which has limit user experiences design knowledge. As the result, the small business owners become the judge and make the final design decisions all based on his or her preferences. For best practices, business should always learn from the user actions such as tracking the user visiting flow on the e-commerce website. Implement easy to use functions on the website often. Small business owners with low budget can go for a well-designed e-commerce template, which had done the optimization for user experiences.

Your e-commerce website homepage is not the only page for your online advertisement. You should create a unique optimized landing page for your online advertisement for a better conversion rate. If an electronic accessory e-commerce website promotes the best selling item multi-purpose USB hub. The advertisement link should go directly to the USD hub product page instead of the homepage. Customers click advertisement only because they interested in what you advertised. If you make them lost from your advertisement, you will lose customers.

This is both for user experiences and search engine optimization. Every visitor goes to a website for a particular purpose. As an e-commerce website, focusing on customers with the purpose of purchasing. Giving information on pages that related to your products or services as much as possible. Take away irrelevant information that confuses your customers. A relevant and information-rich page can help search engine better understanding your e-commerce website, which results better ranking for pages with particular targeting keywords.

What will the customers do if they need to register and fill much information on the form before they can actually make a purchase? They will run to your competitors. It does not make any sense to challenge the customer for making a purchase. Many e-commerce websites are providing the guest checkout, which makes the purchasing process fast and simple. Customers should always required to fill minimum information to make a purchase. Implement this best practice for a better conversion rate.

The e-commerce website is a virtual retail store that running and visiting by real people. Apply effective communication practices will remove the obstacle of virtual networks. Giving both text and HTML viewing options for the newsletter. Replying any customer inquiries within 24 hours. Notifying customers on every step of their order status. All of this effective communication practices will leave a positive impression on your customers, and build the customer loyalty. The increased sales and conversion rate will come as the result.

There are many other conversion rate optimization best practices. It is an endless list. The purpose of best practices is to make the e-commerce website easier for customers to use. The high conversion rate will come naturally when the e-commerce website meets the goal. Keep this approach in mind, your e-commerce business will save a lot of money and time.

Updated on Dec 9, 2016:

It is no hurt to ask your loyalty customers for writing testimonials for your products or services. A real customer testimonial with customer photo can make an effective persuasion to your eCommerce website visitors.

Your SEO marketing effort should always focus on driving the qualified visitors from organic searches. If your eCommerce website sells building toys for baby, use the keyword ‘baby building toys’ is likely to drive more relevant visitors than the keyword ‘baby toys’.

Install an SSL(secure server certification) from a well know SSL authority for your website. Subscribe to a website security protection service like Mcafee. Put the security logos on pages. A protected eCommerce website will earn the trust from customers.