Ecommerce currently makes up 16.1% of all retail sales (2nd Quarter 2020). This number was only 9.8% in 2018, so ecommerce is rapidly increasing in popularity – but you already knew that. Why deal with the hassle of in-store shopping when you can find just about everything you need (in more variety, nonetheless) online.

And that’s why you took your business online. Or it’s one of the many reasons you joined the ecommerce bandwagon. Many businesses continue to follow suit with new ecommerce websites launching every day. Competition is high, so make sure that your website is performing its very best. Here are three simple website changes to make today to increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

1. Utilize customer product reviews

If you aren’t already featuring reviews anywhere on your website, sign up for a review app immediately. (Check out our Shopify plugin recommendations). Traditionally, we only see product reviews just on the product pages. We recommend expanding their reach across your website, and especially featuring customer reviews directly on your homepage.

89% of consumers will make the effort to read reviews before buying a product, and generally, people are going to trust other people (and their reviews) before trusting what a brand has to say. So if your homepage only contains your own brand language, it’s not going to be nearly as effective at selling your product as the language by the people who already love it would be. Show off your great reviews on the first page that people land on before exploring the rest of your site and your products.

What if not every review is a good one? That’s okay because that’s real. Not every customer is going to be a happy customer, and if you have 100% 5-star ratings, that’s not going to look very legitimate. Keep the 1-star reviews, but actively respond and resolve the issues at hand. You can take these reviews as an opportunity to showcase your quality customer service.

2. Add benefits to product pages

And across your entire website for that matter. We already know that competition is high in ecommerce, but how high is the competition within your industry? Surely you have plenty of direct competitors with similar products as you. What makes your product unique, what are the benefits of your product specifically, or the benefits of shopping from you? Make your value known on your product pages, even within the product images themselves.

Helping shoppers visualize the product can help increase sales, as well. Using user-generated content for product images to see the product in action, effectively representing the size and shape through the product photography, and even showing your shipping packaging if it’s unique can help get shoppers from the “browsing” stage to conversion.

3. A frictionless path to conversion

Don’t make it difficult for users to make a purchase. That sounds obvious, right? A checkout process that seems “easy enough” for us, might deter a lot of people from completing their purchase. A few of the many reasons people abandon checkout include the process taking too long, unclear navigation, and unexpected costs.

Minimize your checkout process but cutting down on the unnecessary forms; for example, allows the user to automatically fill out their billing address based on their shipping address. What seems little to us means almost a minute of valuable time to the customer.

You’re going to want to also math the path to conversion very clear. Don’t make the “add to cart” button small or difficult to access, make it as prominent as possible. From there, give the customer all of their options (edit cart, checkout, or continue shopping). If you push them in one direction, it may not be the move they want to make and they will abandon the transaction.

Lastly, be clear about all costs upfront. We recommend including shipping information on the product page, as well as in the checkout process as to not confuse or surprise anyone. Shoppers are very used to fast and free shipping thanks to Amazon Prime, and if you can offer the same – boast about it. And if you cannot, be honest about it to avoid disappointment, distrust, and cart abandonment.

Conversion optimization is a long-term game. If you’re unhappy with your current ecommerce conversion rate, take a look into your site analytics and find the disconnect. And if you are happy with your ecommere conversion rate, remember that it can always be better. Depending on your business, just a half of a percent increase in conversion rate can result in thousands of dollars in revenue.

If you need help cracking your ecommerce conversion rate, we’ve helped ecommerce businesses see 200% increases in revenue with an optimized ecommerce strategy. Connect with us to learn about getting your website performing better than ever before.