4 website extras to increase ecommerce conversions

Convert browsers into buyers!

There are a number of ways to increase the conversion rate of your eCommerce website. I have selected four which I’ve seen work well together to create urgency, build reassurance, increase revenue, and speed up the buying process to convert browsers into buyers.

Countdown timer

A user comes to your site in the mindset of ‚Äòjust taking a look’ but by creating urgency to start with you can quickly change this mindset and get your users into the mindset of ‚Äòlooking to buy’. A really simple and effective way of creating urgency is by having a countdown timer to indicate when a sale or special offer is coming to an end, or even how long there is left for guaranteed next day delivery.

Whatever you use your timer for, it is sure to encourage immediacy as it plays on people’s fear of loss. People don’t like missing out on a great deal if it is relevant to the product(s) they are interested in. So having a timer visible could convert those who were ‘just going to have a look’ into buyers.

Personal product recommendations

You’ve created urgency with your countdown timer and the user is looking for the best product(s) to purchase to make the most of your offer before the timer hits zero. You therefore want to make the most of this opportunity by presenting the products that individual is most inclined to buy.

An addition we’ve seen be really effective is the personal product recommendation engine, Nosto. Nosto bases the recommendations it provides on the individual users’ behaviour automatically. The system has many other benefits but this takes Merchandising to a new, more intuitive level.

Anything which gets the right products in front of the user quickly is a winner in my book!

Independent reviews

You’ve created urgency, you’ve provided a product of interest now you need to reduce the risk factor.

Unless they have bought your product before and therefore know what they are getting, your users go into what I call ‚discovery mode’. Essentially they will do a little research on the product they are interested in, whether that’s looking at photos of the product, reading descriptions, looking at size and colour options etc. they will do what they can to reduce risk and reassure themselves ‚this is the product for me’.

With 63% of customers being more likely to purchase from a site with customer reviews, having reviews on your site is, in my opinion, essential to help avoid missing out on a potential sale opportunity. Your user is likely to have a read through reviews to see what others think of the product.

It’s worth knowing consumer reviews are 12 times more trusted than descriptions from manufacturers so displaying reviews whether they are about the individual product being reviewed or the overall service you provide is important to getting users to the next step.

I personally recommend TrustPilot for overall service reviews and Feefo for individual product reviews.

Checkout optimisation

We are nearly there now so we don’t want to slow the user down. Filling out forms isn’t exciting so we need to make sure the checkout process is as quick and pain free as possible.

Address fields make up the majority of a checkout form and by using a service like Postcode Anywhere you can speed up the process by auto populating the address fields as the user types. Really simplifying the checkout process to make finalising a purchase that little bit easier and quicker to complete. Klarna and Amazon Payments are two systems, among others, which offer this feature.

Increase your ecommerce conversion rate!

Summary

Together, these four additions are really useful and you can see how they can help increase your eCommerce conversion rate by changing the mindset of those who came to your site with no intention to buy, to actually making a purchase. Starting with a trigger (Countdown Timer) you can hurry a user’s buying cycle from a few hours, days or even weeks to right now.