Are you offering a wow-experience to your e-commerce visitors? Perhaps you are convinced… but listening to users may show the opposite.
The 80% of e-commerce companies believe they offer to their customers an above-average experience. However, customers think that just 8% of the companies are capable of providing such experience. The perception gap was highlighted in a 2015 study.
How to reduce this percentage gap by focusing on the experience? And how to turn a visitor into a customer, improving the user’s journey on a site created specifically to sell a product?
Online sales: User experience and conversion rates
Every best practice is standardized: therefore, it must be tested to assess the impact, positive or negative, that it will have on our site.
A good Conversion Rate Optimization strategy is the answer. It allows you to increase the conversion rate, or the ratio between e-commerce visits and actual sales, in a scenario such as e-commerce, where the increase in competition is constant.
Imagine your e-commerce as a machine. To transform a simple visitor into a customer, it must be oiled and calibrated to perfection. The goals to be pursued are to improve the user experience with sequential growth in conversion rates. There are no dogmas, but best practice to test: even small elements, properly optimized, can give results in a short time.
5 CRO best practices for your e-shop
Let’s understand how to operate on a practical level. We have compiled a list of the 5 primary best practices:
- Slider? No thanks. Replacing the carousel of images with a static image is the first step to improve the user experience. There are several elements against the slider: from the different reading speed to the similarity with advertising content. However, a value proposition and an ad hoc call to action will guide the user.
- Readability. Simple fonts, adequate font sizes and high contrast between background and text reduce lost sales caused by reading difficulties. A good general rule is to use 16px as the minimum text size in the body of the page.
- Mobile view. A specific look with a dynamic and immediate mobile menu is necessary. When clicking on a category, only its sub-categories should appear, avoiding unnecessary confusion.
- Easy selection of products. Categories and filters play a leading role. The first ones should be exclusive, while the second ones may be combined according to the different needs.
- Guest Checkout. The potential customer has chosen our product, added it in the cart, and is ready to make the last step: check out — a phase of second thoughts which can increase when the payment process is more complicated. Obligatory registration: the need to create an account is the second reason for abandoning the cart, according to a survey conducted in 2018. The solution? Implement the guest check-out feature.
Download the White Paper “5 best practices to increase your profit with your e-commerce.”
Are you interested? To learn more download our new White Paper “5 best practices to increase your profit with your e-commerce“, created specifically for our e-commerce customers and guests of the event It’s All Retail.