In this guide, we'll walk you through some of the tried-and-true tactics and strategies you can employ to improve conversions on your ecommerce website.
Table of contents
What is ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO)?
Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase. This involves improving site design, user experience, and marketing strategies to encourage more conversions.
To measure CVR, you’ll use the ratio of transactions to sessions, expressed as a percentage. Here is the common formula:
[number of transactions] ÷ [number of visitors or sessions] x 100 = CVR
So, if you had one transaction for every 10 sessions (or 10 users, depending on the metrics you choose to use), this would have a conversion ratio of 10%.
But while conversion rate typically refers to the number of visitors that become customers, you may have other actions you’d like them to take, such as signing up for a newsletter or joining a loyalty program. CVR can then be used to help you evaluate the effectiveness of specific promotions or sales, UX changes you make to your site, or any A/B testing.
So a more helpful formula might be:
[number of goals met] ÷ [number of visitors or sessions] x 100 = CVR
Regardless of your goal, determining your conversion rate isn’t just about evaluating changes to your bottom line. Often, it’s about examining the overall health of your site, your products and brand as a whole, and your marketing and customer service.
What are the typical conversion rates in ecommerce?
According to real-time market data from IRP Commerce, the average conversion rate as of March 2024 is 1.95%, but it usually hovers between 2.5% and 3%. The average CVR varies based on several factors, such as the type of goods you sell, the cost of your products, and your average order value (AVO).
20 advanced conversion rate optimization strategies
- Get the right ecommerce platform
- Set benchmarks with analytics data
- Get the right conversion optimization tools
- Optimize site speed
- Provide a smooth checkout experience
- Ensure visitors to your website feel safe
- Run user testing
- Improve your site navigation
- Make your site searchable
- Collect data with surveys
- Make your product pages actionable
- Write great product description copy
- Get copy feedback from customers
- Use high-quality product images
- Take advantage of social proof
- Run A/B tests
- Create discounts and offers for website visitors
- Offer multiple customer support channels
- Improve your customers’ post-purchase experience
- Offer virtual reality shopping
1. Get the right ecommerce platform
Your ecommerce platform is the foundation for all your conversion activities. It impacts everything from your site’s user experience to scalability—and even total cost of ownership (TCO). If your TCO is too high, focusing on revenue generating activities is reckless and leads to financial instability.
So it makes sense to choose a platform like Shopify that helps you reduce costs and increase revenue. A leading global management consulting firm discovered that, compared to competitors, Shopify has:
- 33% better total cost of ownership
- 23% better platform costs
- 19% better operation and maintenance costs
The study also found that Shopify's conversion rate outpaces the competition by up to 36% and by an average of 15%.
Shopify's accelerated checkout feature, Shop Pay, increases conversions by up to 50% over guest checkout, outpacing other accelerated checkouts by at least 10% when used. Just by being present, Shop Pay can boost lower funnel conversions by 5%.
👉 Compare Shopify to your current ownership costs
2. Set benchmarks with analytics data
Before you begin looking at ways to improve your CVR, you’ll need to determine your current conversion rates, alongside other metrics worth measuring, such as AOV and customer lifetime value (CLV).
To do so, you’ll need to understand your website’s analytics, including how customers move through it from the moment they land on your page until they reach the checkout. This is sometimes referred to as conversion funnel optimization.
Shopify customers get access to a variety of analytics views and dashboards to help them conduct this phase of CRO research.
This includes:
- Shopify’s live view reports, which gives you real time view of the activity on your store
- Shopify’s product insights, which provides insight into the performance of your products for the last 90 days
- Shopify’s marketing reports, which helps you understand what leads shoppers to your online store, and what converts them into paying customers
- Shopify’s customer report, which helps you gain helpful insights about your customers to serve as input to develop segmented campaigns
- ShopifyQL, an API that enables you to write analytical queries to find insights in merchants’ store data
- Shopify’s web pixels, which helps you collect and manage tracking pixels from third-party analytics tools to better observe behavior on your store
Doing a full conversion funnel analysis requires taking a deep dive into sales analytics reports (which can then be used to create CRO tests).
Learn more: How to use Shopify reports to figure out how you can lift sales
Only after examining these baseline factors will you be able to accurately benchmark and set goals for your CVR and determine how you’ll measure your success.
3. Get the right conversion optimization tools
Your customers are more than just numbers. That’s why one of the first steps in CRO is taking a holistic and user-centric approach to figuring out where site snags exist. By identifying your site’s functionality issues, you’ll be able to see what’s causing visitors to abandon their carts or leave your store altogether.
From analyzing data and tracking visitor behavior to testing page loading speed, there are hundreds of tools for evaluating your CRO. However, user behavior tracking tools (like LuckyOrange, a Shopify Certified App Partner, or CrazyEgg and HotJar) tend to examine how users interact with your site through one or more of the following:
- Heat maps: This tool is like a virtual version of the game “hot or cold.” This visual representation captures users’ mouse movements, with the hottest spots glowing red, so you can determine what attracts users’ attention—and what goes unnoticed.
- Confetti maps: A variation on heat maps, these charts show where users click based on filters (such as traffic source or country of origin).
- Scroll maps: This tool determines the ideal landing page length for maximum conversions and, in turn, helps determine the best placement for CTAs.
- User recordings: These reports are only possible to generate if done while complying with privacy guidelines. However, they let you record and view a user’s session, which provides rare insight into how users navigate your page and any barriers they might be encountering.
On top of evaluating your existing site, all of these methods can also be used for A/B testing for CRO.
4. Optimize site speed
It’s not a myth that your site’s speed plays a crucial role in conversion.
According to Google, a one-second website speed improvement can increase mobile user conversions by up to 27%. With 70% of shoppers buying on mobile devices, site speed clearly has a huge impact on revenue potential. Simply put, having the goods delivered more quickly results in higher CVR.
For Shopify merchant Smoke Cartel, trusting Shopify’s servers to deliver faster site load times resulted in increased conversions and sales. The changes increased the click-through rate from 0.8% to 1.2%. “It’s just a fraction of a difference, but it means thousands of additional dollars,” says store owner Sean Geng.
Likewise, after Pineapple Dance Studios migrated to Shopify, they experienced similar results. Their new site loaded two seconds faster, improving sales by 207%.
5. Provide a smooth checkout experience
For many stores, turning a customer into a conversion happens at the checkout page. Yet, the average abandonment rate is around 70%, according to Baymard Institute. The study also found that 18% of users will abandon their cart if the checkout process is perceived as being too long or complicated.
That’s where a seamless checkout experience comes in. Increasingly, brands are recognizing the benefits of removing friction at checkout and reducing the overall steps required at checkout, and no other wallet does this better than Shop Pay.
When a prospective customer with a Shop Pay account lands on a storefront, Shopify recognizes them with one click. If they've used Shop Pay before, Shopify will recognize them without any user action at checkout. With this, Shop Pay automatically prefills customer information for a seamless one-click checkout, 4x faster than a guest checkout.
Over 150 million buyers are pre-opted into one-click checkout with Shop Pay. During heavy shopping seasons like BFCM, Shop Pay thrives. GMV processed through Shop Pay during BFCM in 2023 hit a whopping $2.54 billion. That's a 60% jump from 2022’s $1.59 billion.
💡 Read how Everlane reached record highs in checkout conversion rates with Shop Pay
6. Ensure visitors to your website feel safe
Data breaches don’t just have financial implications. Fallouts from phishing, viruses, and stolen information can do harm to your brand and affect your CVR. Just ask mega brands Estée Lauder, Canon, Nintendo, and Barnes & Noble: all were victims of hacks and data breaches in 2020.
That’s why it’s important—for new customers and seasoned online shopping pros alike—to demonstrate your site’s trustworthiness.
Learn more: 2024 Guide To PCI Compliance: Mastering the 12 Requirements
7. Run user testing
User testing is a more hands-on approach to CRO research that requires you to contract or hire users to walk through your site and share their commentary out loud on the experience as they go. Various SaaS companies, like User Testing, offer this service at a fee so that you don’t have to organize these data collection activities independently.
Typically, this process will ask the user to complete:
- A specific task
- A broad task
- The full sales process
As each user walks through the process, observe what they do on your site and how they interact with each page. Record their commentary for future analysis.
For example, ask the user to enter the website through your homepage, find a specific product category, and then find a specific product. Once on the product page, ask them to select the size and color they would want, add the item to their cart, and complete the checkout process.
As they work through that process, ask them to comment on how hard or easy it is to effectively navigate through your website:
- Is it easy to find the next step in the process, or is the process confusing?
- Is there anything in the process that would make them feel uncomfortable about purchasing from you?
- At what points would they likely drop off if they were purchasing this item on their own?
This type of testing helps you gather direct input about how real users interact with your site. For the best insights, try to get a good cross section of users with differing backgrounds. You want tech-savvy users, those with more basic website skills, and those anywhere in-between.
8. Improve your site navigation
A site's navigation should be smooth, intuitive, and seamless, which will make it easier for customers to find and buy more products. Anything that causes friction lowers conversion rates.
By improving your site navigation, you can increase conversion rates by 18.5%, as well as reduce your bounce rate, which improves your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and improves your page rank.
For example, retailers like Partake can use dropdown menus to so customers can easily discover and buy products.
There are a few top options when customers click the top-level navigation, like the Products tab. It shows its bestselling categories, and has links to product pages so customers can find them more easily.
📚Learn: Ecommerce Navigation: How to Get Potential Customers to Find and Buy More of Your Products
9. Make your site searchable
An integral feature of site navigation and usability, site search bars allow customers to find exactly what they’re looking for, improving chances of conversion. The easier the information is to find on your site, the less likely shoppers are to leave and look elsewhere.
With searches, shoppers may be conducting an exact search (such as knowing the exact name of a product), a general product type search, a problem-based search (where they don’t know what product they need for their problem), or a non-product related search (such as sizing info or shipping options).
Alo Yoga uses a search bar that recommends popular products and trending searches in its ecommerce store. The search function also provides suggested searches after you start typing to match you with items you may need.
Some top Shopify partner solutions that can help you improve site search include:
10. Collect data with surveys
Qualitative data collection and analysis are critical to understanding the “why” behind problems and underperformance on your website. This is where you aggregate open-ended feedback from your users to help determine specific areas of improvement.
Common techniques for qualitative data collection include:
- On-site surveys, like exit or on-page surveys, that ask users customized questions about their experience on your site. These questions should primarily relate to areas of friction on the site, opportunities for improvements, and any fears, doubts, and hesitations the user might have felt during their interaction with your store.
- Customer surveys, including emails to first-time buyers or newsletter subscribers. These are users who have had a fresh experience with your website. Ask them about the buyer journey, why they chose to purchase, and if they have any recommendations for how you can improve.
Try to collect a reasonable sample size of answers—around 200 or more for surveys or about 12 people for interviews—so you can effectively identify trends in the answers. To do so, establish a consistent coding or categorization process for survey or interview answers. This will help to group disparate or open-ended responses into hard data, such as “20% of people who failed to complete the checkout did so because there was no return policy information.”
It’s best practice to conduct these surveys either on an ongoing basis or in waves throughout the year to ensure you always have a pool of recent qualitative insights.
11. Make your product pages actionable
Imagine your product page as being the moment that a customer has picked a product off the shelf and is considering putting it into their shopping basket.
What if they have a last-minute question and can’t find a sales associate to help them? Or what if they want to buy a product, but a particular color or model isn’t on display, so they head over to the competition to make their final purchase? Or maybe they put it in their cart but can’t find the till, or discover that the store only takes a particular form of payment?
The exact same things can happen when someone is shopping online. Visiting a product page is the moment a customer might make the purchase, but any friction can make them turn around and leave the store.
The solution is to create more actionable product pages. If your shoppers aren’t clicking Add to Cart, it might be time to employ user testing to see the page through your users’ eyes.
📚Learn: Ecommerce Product Pages: How to Get Visitors to Take More Actions and Convert Into Customers
12. Write great product description copy
According to Baymard’s research, 10% of ecommerce sites have product descriptions that are insufficient for users’ needs. As we’ve touched on previously, great product descriptions aren’t just written for SEO. They should be persuasive and detailed, yet easy to skim.
Sound like a tall order? It’s easier than you think:
- Write in a language that’s designed to appeal to your target demographic—not just search engine crawlers.
- Address your customers’ biggest pain points. Infomercials work because they focus on how they’ll help solve a problem. You’re not just selling a product—you’re selling a solution, a lifestyle, or a feeling.
- Use sensory words, but avoid superlatives unless they can be proven. (Think of all those pizza shops that claim to have the world’s best pizzas. Unless they’ve got the actual award to prove it, you’re unlikely to believe them.)
- Include key information such as dimensions, sizing (with links to size guides, if relevant), materials or ingredients, compatibility info, included accessories, and corresponding photos that show the product’s scale.
Good product descriptions don’t just improve a user’s experience, they can also lower the rate of returns. This is important since conversion rates often don’t account for high return rates, which can mean your actual conversion rate is much lower.
13. Get copy feedback from customers
The last research phase is getting feedback on your current website copy using a process similar to the one above. Copy is one of the biggest drivers of conversions, but it’s nearly impossible to collect objective data about which aspects of your copy work best, and why.
Copy testing via qualitative research interviews, A/B testing, or focus grouping helps you put your creative in front of your target audience and gather insights about how they perceive it. Is your copy clear? Does your value proposition resonate? Do certain words or phrases derail users’ conversion paths?
After seven phases of research and data gathering, the next is to move into the hypothesis stage. This is where you begin to form ideas for new experiments, based on the data and insights you’ve collected thus far.
14. Use high-quality product images
There’s a reason “buyer unseen” stories make the headlines. After all, while we may have reveled in the surprise of mystery grab bags when we were kids, as adults we want to know exactly what we’re getting.
For many, photos are the best way of determining this. According to our data, 33.16% of customers prefer to see multiple photos, while 60% prefer images that enable them to have a 360-degree view of the product.
Producing your own photography in-house—rather than relying on supplier imagery—lets you differentiate yourself from your competition. It also gives you the opportunity to showcase every product consistently and in its literal best light, allowing shoppers to easily scan the page and find what they’re looking for.
As a general rule, use four to five shots per product—both hero shots (which focus on the product) and lifestyle shots. Make sure to show different product colors or styles and angles, and if possible, give users the option to zoom in. By using clear, well-lit, and high-resolution photos, you’ll minimize your rate of returns and improve your CVR.
15. Take advantage of social proof
Shoppers who are new to your brand will compare you against the competition. Nearly 70% of online shoppers read between one and six customer reviews before making a purchasing decision.
One of the best ways to capture both wary shoppers and those who have done their research is to make the most of social proof, which is the online equivalent of word of mouth. This may include showcasing customer or expert reviews, social media following and engagement, publications that your product has been featured in, trust symbols, award badges, or celebrity or influencer endorsements.
Learn more about the Shopify partner solutions that can help you leverage customer reviews like:
16. Run A/B tests
For A/B testing, you usually show 50% of visitors version A of your page (the control) and 50% version B (the variant). You then compare ecommerce conversions between the two versions over time.
In a test, you want to make sure the difference between the control and variant is as targeted as possible. So, you can experiment with header copy, button placements, videos, images, and so on. Don't include too many differences between the control and variant in one test, and the results won't be clear.
Once the highest conversion rate is recorded, the CRO then decides whether to drive 100% of traffic to the winning page, or keep testing.
Here’s how to run an A/B test:
- Pick an A/B testing tool.Optimizely makes it easy to get minor tests up and running, even without technical skills. States Engine makes it easier to analyze test results too. VWO offers a tool called SmartStates that makes analysis easier. Every plan comes with heat maps, on-site surveys, form analytics, and so on.
- Set up variations of the pages you want to test. Use the parameters of your hypothesis as a guide for these changes. Remember to keep the changes as targeted as possible for each individual test.
- Setup the A/B test using your chosen tool. This process will vary depending on the tool you’ve chosen. In general, you’ll be asked to include the targeting parameters for your test and specify the KPIs that you wish to track.
- Run the test until you have an adequate sample size. Ensure that the sample size of web visitors that run through your A/B is within the recommended sample size benchmark.
- Run the test for an adequate time duration, based on your business cycles. For large sites, you may reach a sample size within a day or two. But this isn’t necessarily a representative sample. Look at your own conversion path data to determine how long a typical business cycle is (i.e., how long it takes a person to go from discovery to purchase on your website).
- Ensure your A/B test results reach statistical significance. Statistical significance can be summarized as a question: “Assuming there is no underlying difference between A and B, how often will we see a difference as we do in the data we’re seeing?” The answer is called the significance level. Most A/B testing tools will be able to provide these metrics. But you’re looking for a statistically low likelihood: somewhere around 95%. Reaching a higher level of significance is usually a tradeoff with speed.
- Analyze A/B test results and determine the next step. Use your A/B testing tool or choice to dig into the data and results from the test. What is the data telling you? Based on this analysis, either keep the page the same or switch it to the variant. You may also identify signals that could indicate the need for further testing.
💡NOTE: Be wary of narrative fallacy. A test might work for any number of reasons—and A/B testing data won’t tell you why a variation worked.
17. Create discounts and offers for website visitors
If you’re looking to improve your CVR quickly, one surefire method is to offer a discount code. Promotions, such as free shipping, can also be an important factor in converting a website visitor into a sale.
Offering discounts and promotions via email and SMS campaigns helps improve CVR, particularly when abandoned carts are involved. For example, Glossier offers 15% off the shopper’s first order when entering their email address. It’s a smart way to get new customers in the door and spend money on your products.
But don’t lose sight of the fact that while discounts may result in more conversions, they will also decrease your margins, potentially canceling out the benefits of an improved CVR. Offer too many promos or discounts? You may also risk doing damage to your brand.
18. Offer multiple customer support channels
The importance of good customer service to CROs certainly isn’t new. But what is changing is the different channels through which people interact with brands and how quickly they expect responses.
It’s no longer enough to offer customer service through only one avenue—you need to have multiple customer support channels. Some Shopify partners that can help include:
19. Improve your customers’ post-purchase experience
Yes, one conversion is good, but good customer retention rates are even better—which is why the post-purchase experience is a key part of CVR. Take welcome campaign emails, for one. They have a particularly high open rate of around 50%.
If you’re hoping your customer reviews a product, wait until they have an opportunity to use it or test it out before requesting a review. Finally, make sure they don’t hit the Unsubscribe button by giving your customers an opt-down option and a choice of how often they want to be contacted.
20. Offer virtual reality shopping
In ecommerce, the uses of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are still in their infancy. But even now, research indicates it’s working. Customers are much more likely to purchase a product if they can try it out, even virtually.
Ecommerce merchants are also already seeing success in improving CRO by using VR and augmented reality (AR). High-fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff can tell you exactly what a difference it makes. Website visitors who interacted with a 3D model of one of its products were 27% more likely to place an order. When customers view a product in AR, they are more than 6% more likely to make a purchase.
Likewise, by using Shopify’s 3D/AR capabilities to let users place their dog beside a prospective kennel, Gunner Kennels experienced a 40% increase in conversion rates.
Creating a research process for increasing conversion rates
If you want to improve conversion rates on your website, you need a repeatable, proven process. This will help you determine:
- What the problems are
- Where the problems are
- Why the those problems exist
Research helps you figure out what your users need and how to improve their experience over time by finding the answers to the above questions.
You have to be able to systematically:
- Identify areas of improvement
- Learn what visitors are doing and how your website features affect behavior
- Gather and analyze data to draw insights that feed into action plans
The purpose of research is to gather and analyze data, form new hypotheses, and generate new insights that guide a roadmap to improve your website.
Succeeding in conversion rate optimization really comes down to three things:
- Running as many tests as possible at all times
- Winning as many of those tests as possible
- Having a high impact on conversions (i.e., uplift) per successful test
The goal is to get more high-value conversions that drive revenue growth, not just increase a KPI on a dashboard. You should spend time identifying the specific issues and opportunities on your website and testing solutions to them.
Increase your website’s conversion rate today
While there are many best practices for CRO, there are just as many myths and misunderstandings that come with it. Check out these articles for more tips:
The problem is that while research and surveys can tell us so much about customer behavior, CVR goals have to be driven by the unique needs of a merchant and its customers.
What works for one store is not guaranteed to work for another, which is why setting clear goals, digging into the day, doing the research, and being willing to experiment is the only real solution to CRO.
Read more
CRO FAQ
How do you optimize conversion rate in ecommerce?
- Make sure your website is easy to use and navigate: This includes having a clear navigation structure, intuitive features, and a responsive design.
- Offer multiple payment options: Offer multiple payment options such as credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. to make it easier for customers to complete their purchases.
- Offer free shipping or discounts: Offering free shipping or discounts can help to encourage customers to complete their purchases.
- Improve your product descriptions and images: Make sure your product descriptions and images are accurate, clear, and up-to-date. This will help to ensure customers understand what they are buying and are more likely to complete their purchase.
- Provide customer support: Offering customer support can help to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. This can be done via email, phone, or live chat.
- Create urgency: Creating urgency by offering limited time discounts or sales can help to encourage customers to complete their purchase.
- Test your website: Testing different elements of your website such as colors, layout, and images can help to optimize your website for conversions.
What is a good conversion rate optimization strategy?
A good conversion rate optimization strategy starts with a thorough analysis of your website analytics and user behavior. You should identify the biggest opportunities and prioritize tests based on the potential impact they could have on your bottom line.
Additionally, you should focus on improving website speed, user experience, and making sure your website and landing pages are optimized for mobile devices. Finally, you should use A/B testing to determine which versions of your content, images, and other website elements will help you achieve the best conversion rate.
Why is conversion rate optimization important in ecommerce?
Conversion rate optimization is very important in ecommerce because it helps businesses to increase the number of customers who complete a purchase after visiting their website. It also helps to reduce cart abandonment and optimize the customer experience by improving website usability, increasing website speed, and reducing distractions.
What is the average CVR for ecommerce?
The average CVR (conversion rate) for ecommerce is generally between 2%–3%. However, this figure can vary significantly depending on the industry, quality of product/service, and the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.
Illustration by Jennifer Tapias Derch
