According to a recent analysis, Shopify stores’ mean conversion rate is 1.99%.
If your Shopify store falls in the category of below the average, you are missing out on the potential sales you can make.
And if that is the case, you’ve landed on the right page, where we will talk about different strategies to improve the conversion rate of your Shopify store.
Let’s gather the data or metrics before we move on to the strategies:
- Install Conversios GA4 and Pixel apps to make sure you have all the metrics before you change your strategy
- Install any Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tool/app
- Open the dashboard for each app of your Shopify store
Here we go for the strategies:
15 Strategies to Improve Shopify Conversion Rate
From promoting product reviews to using high-quality images, there are numerous things you can do to improve conversions. For every strategy, you’ll need respective metrics to measure. For your convenience, I’ll share metrics to monitor and what to look for with each pointer.
So, without further ado, let’s explore the 15 most effective strategies:
1. Showcase Product Reviews and Social Proof
Customer feedback indicates your status as a trustworthy merchant, with products deemed worth buying, thereby contributing to an impressive eCommerce conversion rate.
Research suggests that more than 99.9% of individuals read reviews prior to making any purchase decisions. In fact, products featuring 5 reviews have a purchase likelihood that is 270% higher compared to products without any reviews.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘That’s great, but how does this actually play out in my own online store?’ Well, let’s dive into the numbers and see the real impact of customer reviews.
Here is a Key Metric to Monitor: Track the conversion rate on product pages with and without reviews.
What to Look For: Higher conversion rates on pages with reviews indicate the impact of social proof.
Take a look at how bold Beardbrand went to prove the authenticity of their products.
2. Simplify the User Experience
The term UX encompasses the overall feel visitors get from your website. If your site disappoints, shoppers might leave, with 90% even deserting their carts for a rival.
Here is how you can improve the UX on your Shopify store:
- Focus on Functionality: Ensure design elements work seamlessly without slowing down load times.
- Craft Customer-Centric Copy: Compelling words are as crucial as striking visuals; align your message with your audience’s needs.
- Use Pop-Ups Wisely: Employ pop-ups sparingly and allow visitors to dismiss them easily.
- Leverage AI and Chatbots: Provide personalized recommendations and excellent customer service with AI and live chat plugins.
- Enhance Website Security: Regular updates and HTTPS safeguard both your and your customer’s information.
That’s not it. There are several additional things you can do to improve your Shopify store’s UX. We’ve covered them in detail in the upcoming headings. These strategies include implementing intelligent search, product categories, product image optimization, and more. So, keep reading.
If you wonder how to measure the UX, here is a useful metric:
Metric to Monitor: Analyze bounce/engagement rates and time on the page.
What to Look For: Lower bounce rates or higher engagement rates and longer time on the page suggest a more engaging UX.
To get an idea of what an optimized eCommerce UX looks like, take a look at the homepage of the Province of Canada.
Source: Province of Canada
The brand clearly states its unique selling proposition on the homepage itself. Also, the design is minimal, with thoughtful spacing, so the user isn’t overwhelmed with information.
3. Highlight Coupon Codes, Real-time Purchases, and More
Once visitors land on your homepage, it’s time to ignite their interest and steer them towards your amazing products.
To boost traffic and incentivize purchases, there’s a host of fantastic Shopify apps that can help boost demand:
- Welcome bars: Share sales, coupon codes, and promotions with customers upon their arrival. These non-intrusive floating bars placed at the top of your homepage instantly catch your customers’ attention, directing them to precisely where you want them to go.
- Pop-ups: Add a pop-up to your homepage to entice customers with a coupon code in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. This strategy effectively helps expand your email list.
- Real-time purchases: Display real-time purchase notifications in the corner of your store. By showcasing other customers making purchases at the moment, these notifications create a sense of urgency and provide social proof, encouraging more immediate buying.
Metric to Monitor: Track the click-through rate (CTR) on welcome bars and pop-ups.
What to Look For: A high CTR indicates effective engagement with these elements.
Consider the example of Our Place, which leveraged a welcome bar to promote a compelling BOGO offer and a tempting free shipping and returns deal.
Source: Our Place
Moreover, within seconds, the brand entices visitors with an appealing pop-under, encouraging them to participate in Our Place’s enticing free pan giveaway.
4. Implement Intelligent Search Functionality
When customers are browsing your website, they might not always know precisely where to locate the desired product. Especially if your store boasts a vast collection of products, it’s wise to prominently feature your search bar on the homepage.
This allows customers to swiftly navigate to their desired destination without having to sift through numerous categories.
Thanks to Shopify apps like Smart Search & Instant Search, you can supercharge your search bar, providing predictive results that expedite the search process for your customers.
This intelligent search functionality not only suggests relevant products as users type but also accommodates potential spelling errors and alternate product names.
Metric to Monitor: Observe the usage rate of the search function.
What to Look For: Increased usage and conversion through search suggest better findability.
Take a page from Alo’s store, where the search bar serves as a helpful tool for yoga enthusiasts to pinpoint exactly what they need.
Source: Alo
Even after feeding just a few letters, the search bar proactively suggests categories, products, and related results, serving as an effective strategy for upselling and cross-selling.
5. Organize Categories for User-Friendly Navigation
Effectively organizing your products is key for your customers to easily find what they need. This involves setting up advanced sorting options so that users can effortlessly locate specific products across different variations.
Metric to Monitor: Examine the navigation path and exit rate from categories.
What to Look For: Lower exit rates from categories indicate effective organization.
Take Nutriseed, a health products retailer, for instance. They’ve categorized their products into different groups such as food types, juices, health & well-being, and diet & weight loss, among others.
Source: Nutriseed
This convenient arrangement helps shoppers to swiftly locate and buy the items they’re looking for within their respective categories.
6. Optimize High-Quality Product Images and Videos
In an online Shopify store, customers can’t physically interact with the products like they would in a brick-and-mortar store. To provide a similar experience, the best approach is to utilize top-notch visuals.
Using high-quality product images and engaging videos helps customers better imagine the product they’re interested in purchasing. This not only boosts the likelihood of a successful sale but also minimizes the chances of returns.
Be sure to include multiple images that enable visitors to examine the item from various perspectives.
Metric to Monitor: Compare conversion rates of products with different quality visuals.
What to Look For: Higher conversions on products with better visuals.
For example, take a look at the product page for the nourishing hair oil by Love Hair. They’ve set some impressive standards with their well-crafted product pages.
Source: Love Hair
Featuring a collection of top-notch photos, engaging product descriptions, and brief yet impactful video reviews, the page truly highlights the brilliance of the product.
7. Transparency in Price, Delivery Time, and Inventory
A transparent pricing approach eliminates hidden costs such as taxes and shipping fees, ensuring no surprises during checkout and reducing the likelihood of cart abandonment.
By promoting informed purchasing decisions, customers can evaluate the total purchase cost, leading to fewer returns and complaints.
Moreover, clear communication about delivery timelines manages customer expectations, mitigating anxiety and minimizing inquiries regarding order status. By providing customers with an understanding of when they can expect their orders, the likelihood of disappointment and negative reviews declines.
Another important element where transparency is a must is the inventory. By being transparent about product SKUs, customers are more inclined to make immediate purchases when they know that the desired item is in stock and ready for immediate shipment.
Metric to Monitor: Monitor the cart abandonment rate at different stages.
What to Look For: Reduced abandonment after pricing and shipping details suggest improved transparency.
8. Use Heat Maps to Analyze User Behavior
Understanding user behavior in a Shopify store is crucial. Heatmaps are a powerful tool that helps analyze where users click, scroll, and move their cursors.
Here’s how heatmaps can help boost conversion rates:
- Spotting Popular and Neglected Areas: Identify which parts of a page are getting the most attention and which are being ignored to better position CTAs and product images.
- Enhancing Navigation and Usability: Understand how users navigate the store to improve its structure and make it more user-friendly.
- Enhancing CTA Performance: Optimize the placement, wording, and color of CTAs based on user interactions to increase click-through rates.
- Understanding Scroll Behavior and Attention Patterns: Utilize scroll and attention heatmaps to ensure crucial content is seen and users stay engaged throughout their visit.
- Addressing Usability Issues: Detect and rectify usability problems, like hidden form fields or confusing error messages, to enhance the overall user experience.
Metric to Monitor: Study heatmap data for user interaction on key pages.
What to Look For: Hotspots on CTAs and important content areas.
9. Prefill Customer Information for Faster Checkouts
Simplify the shopping experience for your loyal customers by automatically filling in their shipping and billing details using their accounts.
Letting customers skip the hassle of typing in information can significantly speed up their checkout process. According to Google, with autofill, filling out forms becomes 30% quicker, leading to more successful transactions.
Moreover, integrating Shop Pay, Shopify’s streamlined checkout solution, can further enhance the process. Shop Pay securely stores and encodes customer information, allowing them to breeze through checkout with a single tap.
Metric to Monitor: Look at the conversion rate in the checkout process.
What to Look For: An increase in checkout completions indicates effective prefilling.
10. Implement Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns
Not every visitor to your store makes a purchase, but that doesn’t mean they won’t ever buy.
Email marketing is a great way to bring them back and boost your conversion rate. Surprisingly, almost a third of all eCommerce revenue, about 28.3%, comes from successful abandoned cart emails.
When you send these follow-up emails, be sure to remind them about the items they left behind in their shopping cart.
You can also sweeten the deal with special offers like free shipping or a discount of a certain percentage to improve the chances of a sale.
Also, don’t forget to include a call-to-action (CTA) button that takes them directly to their shopping cart or checkout page.
Metric to Monitor: Measure the recovery rate from abandoned cart emails.
What to Look For: A higher recovery rate indicates successful email campaigns.
11. Ensure Mobile Responsiveness
Making sure your store is mobile-friendly should be among the priorities. With more than 59% of web traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, as reported by Statista, providing a seamless experience for mobile users is essential.
Fortunately, if you’re using Shopify for your online store, most Shopify themes are already designed to look great on any device.
If you want to confirm that your website is responsive, you can easily use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool by entering your URL.
If your score stays low, here is how you can improve:
- Pick a responsive theme. Shopify offers various free and paid responsive themes, and you can also find them from third-party developers.
- Integrate Mobile-Friendly Payment Options: Offer convenient payment methods for mobile users, like Apple Pay or Google Pay.
- Use Readable Fonts and Colors: Choose fonts and colors that easily read on small screens to improve user experience.
- Implement a Sticky Header or Footer: Include a sticky header or footer with key navigation links for easy access throughout the site.
- Optimize for Touchscreen Inputs: Design elements like buttons and forms should be easy to use on touchscreens.
- Use Mobile-Friendly Pop-ups: Ensure any pop-ups are optimized for mobile and don’t obstruct the entire screen or browsing experience.
Metric to Monitor: Compare mobile vs. desktop conversion rates.
What to Look For: Narrowing the gap suggests improved mobile responsiveness.
12. Optimize Website Loading Times
Having a slow website can drive customers away. Faster websites not only enhance user experience but also boost your store’s SEO. A tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you check your website’s loading speed and identify areas for improvement.
To speed up your site, consider reducing image sizes using tools like ImageOptim. This tool removes unnecessary data from image files without compromising their quality.
Also, uninstalling unused apps from your Shopify store can lighten the website’s load, even if disabled.
Metric to Monitor: Track page load times and bounce rates.
What to Look For: Decreased bounce rates as load times improve.
13. Allow Guest Checkout for Seamless Transactions
Implementing a guest checkout choice elevates the checkout enhancement journey.
According to Socital, a pop-up builder tool, 34% of shoppers bounce off because the shop insists on making an account for them to finish the purchase.
While implementing guest checkout, if you fear losing touch with your buyers, fret not! You’ll hook their contact info when they buy, anyhow.
Metric to Monitor: Analyze the percentage of guest checkouts vs. registered users.
What to Look For: An increase in guest checkouts indicates a smoother process.
14. Highlight Product Benefits Clearly
Customers purchase products to solve problems or enrich their comfort. Therefore, it’s vital to showcase the benefits of the product clearly. You can utilize the product description to incorporate SEO keywords and emphasize why someone should buy it.
For example, if you’re selling food items, make sure customers know if a particular product is made from certified organic ingredients or is 100% cruelty-free.
Metric to Monitor: Observe the CTR on detailed product descriptions.
What to Look For: Higher CTRs on well-described products.
Take Optimum Nutrition as an example. They explicitly highlighted the benefits and USPs of their product, such as offering more protein and being gluten-free.
Source: Optimum Nutrition
15. Implement Upselling and Cross-Selling Strategies
Upselling and cross-selling is a great strategy to boost your average order value. Yet, it’s crucial to restrict the number of options you offer.
Presenting too many related products or complementary items can seem pushy and might divert the shopper from finalizing their purchase. So, make sure to find a balance.
Metric to Monitor: Monitor the average order value (AOV) before and after implementing these strategies.
What to Look For: An increase in AOV indicates successful upselling and cross-selling.
But How Do You Gather Data for These Strategies?
You can use Conversios All-In-One Pixel app for this purpose.
It is a pixel management Shopify application that automates the data layer for eCommerce events and conversion tracking for Google Analytics, GA4, and Pixels.
It’s a no-code application that integrates various pixels without requiring any coding. Our Shopify application enables accurate tracking of every metric.
You can track crucial eCommerce events like ‘view_item_list’, ‘add_to_cart’, ‘remove_from_cart’, ‘view_cart’, ‘purchase’, and ‘begin_checkout’ to optimize your shopping funnel.
We utilize Google Tag Manager implementation to track conversions without impacting your website’s speed.
Our Shopify pixel management application supports multiple pixels such as Meta Pixel (Facebook Pixel), Microsoft Ads (Bing) pixel, Tiktok Pixel, Pinterest Pixel, Snapchat Pixel, Twitter Pixel, and Google Analytics 4 tracking code.
Measure Your Shopify Conversion Rate with Conversios
Peter Drucker, an Austrian-American consultant and educator, once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
The same goes for the strategies. You need to keep measuring their effectiveness if you want your Shopify store to perform the best.
Conversios is your go-to tool for this. It can seamlessly fetch the data and metrics from GA4 and Pixel apps for Shopify so you know everything at a glance.
FAQs
1.How can I effectively implement abandoned cart email campaigns on my Shopify store?
To effectively implement abandoned cart email campaigns, ensure timely and personalized follow-ups. Craft compelling and concise email content with clear call-to-action buttons. Offer incentives or discounts to encourage customers to complete their purchases.call-to-action buttons. Offer incentives or discounts to encourage customers to complete their purchases.
2.What are the key elements to consider when designing a comprehensive contact page for my Shopify store?
When designing a comprehensive contact page, include essential elements such as a clear email address or contact form, physical location details with a map, business hours, links to social media profiles, and specific contact options for support, like a phone number or email.
3.How does Conversios help in gathering and analyzing data to enhance the conversion rate on my Shopify store?
Conversios simplifies the process of data collection and analysis by automating the tracking of crucial eCommerce events. With its no-code application and support for various pixels, including Google Analytics and GA4, Conversios enables accurate metrics tracking, allowing you to make informed decisions to improve conversions on Shopify stores.