The world of eCommerce is exceptionally competitive, so you need to make sure that when users find your website, they stay and make a purchase because they’ve had a fantastic experience.
If your website isn’t easy for them to use, they will simply move on to one of your competitors. So, spend some time investing in your website’s conversion rate and your business will certainly benefit.
1. Provide Free Shipping
One of the first things you can do to improve your website’s conversion rate is to offer incentives to get new customers such as free shipping, which is clearly displayed with a banner on each page of your website. It is unlikely that offering free shipping all the time with every purchase is going to be cost-effective for your business but offering free shipping over a certain price is a great idea. Some research has found that free shipping can improve conversions by 50%, so it is definitely worth looking into for your business.
Look at your customer’s average order value through Google Analytics and price your items around there, or slightly above to encourage people to add one more item to their order to be able to get the free shipping! For example, if someone had £60 worth of clothing in their basket, shipping costs £5 but there is free shipping for over £70, it is highly likely they’d rather have an extra piece of clothing and spend the extra £10 rather than spending £5 on shipping.
This could be just what your customers need to either get them to spend that little bit extra or to commit to the purchase. Having completely free shipping in competitive sale periods (Black Friday, January Sales, etc.), can also work well to push your brand above competitors.
2. Make Sure Users Can Easily Navigate
An absolute essential when it comes to improving your conversion rate is to make sure your website can easily be navigated. This includes them being able to easily browse if they want to, quickly understanding where to go if they want to look for a particular product, and making sure that the process is smooth and quick for them.
This can be quite a complex job that you may need to work with web developers for, but here are a few basic tips that you can focus on:
- Have a “Hamburger” menu, an icon on a website that when clicked opens a side menu with all of your main categories. Make sure that this is easy to see as soon as users land on the website, on both desktop and mobile, and ensure that the menu isn’t glitchy at all to avoid users feeling frustrated at clicking the wrong thing.
- Work on your mobile and desktop speed, so that the website loads very quickly, and users aren’t left waiting, as this can be a major cause of frustration that reduces the conversion rate. Ecommerce websites tend to get most of their users through mobile devices, so focusing on making your website mobile-friendly specifically is important.
- Have the option for users to shop in a logical way, for example by occasion like “Going Out Dresses” and “Wedding Guest Dresses” or by color like “Blue Dresses” and “Red Dresses”. Helping your users to find exactly what they are looking for as quickly as possible is key to a good user experience.
3. Have Fantastic Quality Images
Our next tip to help you improve the conversion rate of your eCommerce website is to have fantastic quality images. If your images are too small, blurry, or aren’t engaging to show how great your product is, then users will simply leave.
Ecommerce is focused massively on imagery so investing a good amount of money in it can completely transform your website to make it more profitable. Show each product from a range of different angles and even include videos if you can, to give users the best possible idea of what they are going to be buying.
One thing to note is to make sure you use some kind of compression software so that when you are uploading the images, they don’t slow down the website, but they also don’t lose quality at the same time.
4. Allow Guest Check Out
Something else you can do to improve your conversion rate is to allow guest checkout. These speeds up the purchasing process significantly, when you give users the opportunity to simply input their email address and go straight to checkout rather than having to create an account, verify it, etc. When people have added items to their cart, having a guest check-out option just makes everything easier for them.
If you are wanting people to sign up for an account, as well as the guest checkout option, you could offer a discount like 10% off if people sign up and create an account. This is a slight incentive to drive people to make the account, but they still have the option for a faster guest checkout should they need it.
5. Offer A Variety of Payment Options
Last but not least, it is important that you offer a variety of payment options for billing your customers. Everyone has their preferences, and if a user doesn’t see their favorite payment method, it could be enough to discourage them from purchasing. If you simply offer card payment where users must manually input all their details, you’re going to be very out of date.
Some people feel more secure paying this way so keep it as an option, alongside quicker checkout options like PayPal and Apple Pay (this is an important one!). You should also enable people to use payment platforms like Klarna and ClearPay, as this can really push someone to commit to the purchase if they are on the fence!
With these 5 expert tips, you should be on your way to a fashion website that stands out and converts.
Manuela Willbold
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