10 Things That Might Be Killing Your Conversion Rates

Making your online retail business more profitable and more successful is pretty simple in principal. To make it grow, you need more sales, and there are essentially 2 ways to do that:

• Get more visitors (potential customers) to your website
• Get more of your existing visitors to make a purchase
This post details with the latter, because until you know that your website is doing the best possible job of converting your traffic, what’s the point in spending time/money generating more traffic?


General Site Issues

1. Busy home page
   
   
   
   Some e-commerce sites, particularly large ones, try to make the most of every promotional opportunity. You see it often, a product of the week, newsletter sign-up form, a few categories, some ‘about us’ text etc...
   A busy homepage looks overwhelming for your users and may cause your bounce rates to be high. Make your home page simple and welcoming.
2. Confusing navigation
   
   
   Getting your navigation right is perhaps one of the most important aspects of an e-commerce site. Remember that traffic arriving on your home page is relatively untargeted, so your home page navigation needs to make it as simple as possible for your visitors to get to the most relevant category for them.
   Try tracking which links your users actually click on and start selectively stripping away navigational/informational items that are not used.
3. Spelling & grammar
   This is pretty basic really, but it’s amazing how many sites actually have grammatical errors on them. It is easy to miss a silly mistake, but grammatical errors can instantly ruin the credibility of your site.
   If a user sees a mistake on your site, they might not really mind, but subconsciously your site will seem less professional, and that will put doubts in their head. So the lesson here, is proof read everything, and then come back to it later and read it again... And then get your mum to read it too!
4. Lack of personality
   In this day and age, personality matters a lot, with the amount of competition online, having a personality might be your only USP, so make the most of it. Decide what your business’s personality is going to be, and remember to incorporate a bit of it into your copy.
   For inspiration, think about ‘Innocent Smoothies’ those guys have a very clear and well recognised brand personality, and it works.
5. Other distractions
   Basically, anything that distracts your users from what you want them to do is hurting your sales. This is another reason to maximise white-space and minimize clutter. Don’t try to include every possible navigation option, instead show the most important ones.
   
   And avoid any flashy banners, adds or anything that doesn’t help achieve your business objectives.



Product Page Issues

6. Not including the right information
   Once a user arrives at your product page you only have one objective; to get them to click on the ‘add to basket’ button.
   You need to ensure that you include all of the information a user needs to make a buying decision. A great way to do this is to record any questions that your customers email you with – these are all clues as to what information is lacking.
   Remember to cover all of the obvious stuff (where relevant) like:
   • What will it cost to post?
   • Does the price include VAT?
   • What does it do?
   • How can it be used?
   • Can I return it?
7. Including the wrong information
   Equally, you need to keep your product pages simple. Avoid distractions and don’t clog up your page with unnecessary information. Once you have figured out what information your customers do need, you can figure out which bits they don’t need.
   Keep the essential information as concise as possible to make more room for white-space and the more valuable information.



Checkout Issues

8. Asking for too much at once
   It may be that you need a lot of information in order to complete an order, but as a rule of thumb, the less information you ask for, the better your conversion rates will be. So really reconsider which fields are actually necessary.
   
   Research has also shown that breaking up a long checkout process into steps can improve conversions. This is probably because you can make the first step very easy, and once the first step is completed the user feels more invested in the process.
   Consider making the first step of your checkout as simple as possible, perhaps only asking for:
   • Email
   • Postcode
   • House number
9. Requiring an account
   This should go without saying, but never make having an account mandatory unless absolutely necessary. It may even help to remove the option all together – just mentioning an account will put some users off.
   You can always auto-generate an account for every customer and email them a password, but be realistic – are they really going to keep their login details safe for next time? If not, you may just be making their next order that bit harder.
10. Failing to give reassurances
    The checkout is where users start to worry, they worry about whether they really want the item, whether they want to pay the money, whether they will get it in time.
    Think about what your users are most likely to worry about and make sure that you calm those fears. Often, all it takes is a couple of pretty badges reminding them that returns are free and shipping is fast.



Failing To Test (Bonus Tip!)

You know what the biggest mistake you can make is? Making assumptions and not testing them. No matter what you do to make your website more effective, you can never know for sure that you have picked the best layout, design etc...
Take the time to test different ideas, track the results and learn what works. Sometimes, seemingly trivial changes can make big differences. Like changing the position of a button, resizing your images or changing your navigation structure.

Test everything and you WILL improve your conversion rates over time.