Tips You Can Try Today to Increase Your E-Commerce Conversions

When you first started to think about your e-commerce site, you envisioned how it would look: the placement of your logo, the color landscape and, of course, the extra touches that would best show off your product. Your goal was to drive traffic to your site, but by now you’ve learned that visitors don’t always equate to paying customers. How can we bring not just people to our e-commerce site, but the right people?

Conversion rate doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all definition; it varies by industry. Ultimately, though, conversion rate signifies the percentage of visitors that turn into customers. As of Q2 2019, the average e-commerce conversion rate in the U.S. was 2.57 percent.

If you’ve already launched your site, you have at least a small amount of data about what your customers need, and the most successful marketers are the ones who are proactive with the information they have available. Here are the top e-commerce marketing trends that businesses can leverage to increase conversions and turn those daily visitors into paying customers.

SEO First

Businesses should identify pages that either need content refreshed or new ones created altogether (e.g., images, videos, testimonials). Structured data is also important for search engine optimization (SEO) because it helps search engines create rich results in search engine results pages (SERPs), helping your website stand out and improving clickthrough rate and conversions. Merchants that incorporate structured data that addresses their customers' pain points or answers common questions are poised for even better results.

Punch Up Paid Search

Paid search ads tend to be more successful when they advertise specific incentives. Therefore, be sure to highlight promotions if you’ve got them and encourage your customers to visit top-selling items, promotions or special sales on your site. It’s also important to advertise your promotions, discounts and sales on your landing pages. A paid search campaign is a quick strategy to execute, but does require long-term care. That is why I suggest making real-time adjustments to campaigns, like decreasing ad spend budget for products that are less in demand.

Refresh A/B Tests

Performing A/B tests throughout the year is a simple and efficient way to improve conversion rates on your landing page. You can test many elements, including different headlines, color schemes and even the text in your call to action. Testing time frames can vary dramatically, but you’re in a great spot if: 1.) it’s been a few weeks; 2.) you’ve got a good volume of traffic in each variation; and 3.) your testing tool is displaying 90 percent or higher confidence.

Take a Break From Regularly Scheduled Programming

Social media is a great place to drive awareness for your site. However, instead of following the regular routine, take a break from planning and spend more time listening and responding. It’s a great exercise for any business at any time, and it can help marketers understand their audience in a whole new way.

Get responsive (if you aren’t already). Online and mobile go hand in hand, and studies predict that mobile will dominate online sales by 2021, driving 54 percent (or $659 billion) in sales. If your site isn't mobile-friendly, it’s time to get there — and fast. Having a responsive website template means that your store “responds” to whichever device it’s being viewed on by altering its appearance to assure that consumers can easily navigate and make purchases via their mobile devices without a problem.

Monitor your conversion rate progress with diligence, and don’t expect to see immediate results. Small tweaks will only result in small increases, so think of this journey as a long but rewarding one. Before you know it, you won’t just be bringing people to your e-commerce site, you’ll be turning them into paying (and happy) customers for the long term.

Terrence Brown is associate director of Grow With Studio, a marketing and creative agency specializing in e-commerce and a sub-brand of Volusion, the e-commerce platform for small and midsized businesses.