The Ultimate eCommerce Conversion Checklist As part of our Marketer’s Challenges Series we’ve put together the Ultimate eCommerce Conversion Checklist, giving you a comprehensive list of the areas you should consider to help increase your conversions. To help you map out the different types of conversion tactics we’ve included a downloadable Worksheet where you can plan out your conversion strategy. Download the Worksheet. Newsletter Signup Every eCommerce store should have the ability for visitors to subscribe to their email newsletter. A regular email newsletter should be considered an important part of your growth and conversion strategy. Ensure your email newsletter signup forms are above the fold, meaning that it is clearly visible as soon as a visitor lands on your website. 87% of brands put the signup form below the fold, therefore adding your email signup form at the bottom of your website can decrease the chance of conversions compared to when it is visible when a visitor first lands on your website. The newsletter signup should be as simple and seamless as possible, we suggest only asking for their name and email address at first. You can then gather further information after they have signed up through your preference centre or progressively profile them throughout the customer lifecycle. Limiting the number of fields on your form to three can ensure around a 25% conversion rate. Welcome Emails Sending an email welcome series to your new subscribers is essential to help introduce your brand, make a lasting first impression, increase conversions, build an ongoing relationship and keep your subscribers engaged from day one. A welcome email generates high open rates – between 50-60% and welcome emails are 50% – 86% more effective than email newsletters. Despite these benefits, only 58% of brands send welcome emails to their newly subscribed users. We have put together a comprehensive guide that you can download called: A Best Practice Guide to Welcome Email Campaigns. Website Personalisation There are many ways you can use personalisation on your eCommerce store to effectively help increase conversions, we have outlined some of these tactics below. Use your worksheet to plan which types of content you will use based on the different types of personalisation covered below. Product Recommendations Adding product recommendations to your eCommerce store will be a surefire way to increase conversions and give your website visitors a personalised experience. Recommending products based on the visitors website activity and their shopping habits will make the visitors journey more seamless, helping decrease the time the visitor takes to find the products that resonates with them and increases conversions. We’ve created a blog called: Using Product Recommendations to Increase Sales which will give you a wide range of tactics you can use to help increase your conversions through product recommendations. Upselling and Cross-Selling Generating more sales from existing customers or potential customers who have already basketed items can be supercharged by implementing up and cross-selling tactics. This could be through onsite personalisation based on complementary and relevant products they have previously purchased, browsed or added to their baskets. These types of upselling and cross-selling tactics can also be implemented via automated emails and onsite including at the checkout, which will massively help scale your outreach to win back potential customers and to gain more value from your existing customers. To discover further benefits and tactics for using upselling and cross-selling tactics on your eCommerce store, read our guide: The eCommerce Guide to Upselling and Cross-selling Weather A tactic that eCommerce brands can use to help increase conversion is personalising the content displayed or emailed based on the website visitor’s weather associated with the location of their IP address. Weather personalisation allows you to dynamically change your website content which includes the products being displayed based on the visitors geographical location. This can help influence the buying decision, urgency and impulsiveness to purchase. This conversion tactic is ideal for eCommerce brands in sectors such as clothing, as weather specific clothing can be displayed, based on the visitors location, giving a personalised experience to help drive conversions. Discover more tactics on our blog: Weather-based Personalisation: An Untapped Opportunity for Retail and Travel. Personalised homepage when it’s sunny Social Proof Using social proof, such as reviews, star ratings and testimonials can massively increase conversion rates. Research shows that 77% of consumers say that word of mouth from family, friends or peers is the most persuasive way to get information about new products. This also applies to new email subscribers. Utilise customer reviews from sites such as Trustpilot, Feefo and Trip Advisor to display these on key conversion points within your eCommerce store, this could be next to the product itself at the checkout or within an exit intent popover. You can even use these in your cart and browse abandonment emails to drive urgency and re-engagement which otherwise could be potentially lost opportunities. Read more details about how social proof can help your eCommerce brand within our guide: How Do I Use Social Proof to Increase Conversions. Cart Abandonment An effective conversion tactic is to implement Cart Abandonment emails, this will allow a triggered email to be sent to the subscriber if they have added an item into their shopping basket but have not completed the purchase. These emails can contain incentives or social proof to help drive conversions, as over 69% of online carts are abandoned. For a more detailed look at Cart Abandonment check out our Ultimate Guide to Cart Abandonment Emails. Browse Abandonment Similar to Cart Abandonment, Browse Abandonment is an excellent way to increase conversions. This re-engagement tactic will trigger an email once a visitor has left your website. This email can include items that they have browsed on your eCommerce store, previous purchases they have made to help with upselling and cross-selling, or other relevant content to help increase the chances of conversions such as social proof or incentives. Watch our popular webinar: How to win back lost website visitors with abandonment recovery for a detailed look at how abandonment recovery can help increase conversions on your website. Popovers Popovers can have a big impact on your conversion rates. There are a range of popovers that you can implement such as exit-intent popovers, so that if a visitor is about to leave your website then a popover will appear. The types of content you can display to re-engage them are discounts, social proof, an option to sign up to your newsletter or test other ways to engage them such as a white paper download. Also, experiment with popovers on specific pages on your website that are personalised to that specific content. These can be set on a timer for the length they are on the page or how far they scroll down the webpage. Map out the types of content you would like to display using your worksheet. Are you looking to introduce popovers then check out our blog: How to Use Pop-ups Without Annoying Your Visitors. Discounts and Promotions Introducing incentives such as discounts and regular promotions can have a significant impact on your conversion rates. Using such incentives at points of abandonment can help re-engage potentially lost subscribers and increase your conversion rates. This does not have to be a discount code, it can be for example a buy one get one free offer, advanced access to new product lines or other types of incentives to help with conversions. Make sure you take advantage of key dates such as Black Friday, Christmas, Summer sales and so forth. Offering discounts and promotions on these key dates can massively increase conversions and impulse purchases. Discover more tactics on How to use Discounts, Coupons, and Offers Effectively in eCommerce. Replenishment If you’re an eCommerce brand who sells products that have an easy to map out replenishment date is an automated email replenishment campaign. This helps conversions of repeat sales, leading to strengthening your customer retention strategy and drive recurring revenues. If for example, you know that a product normally has a use life of 6 weeks, then ensure that your automated replenishment emails are set for 5 weeks after the purchase date. This will ensure you remind the customer in good time to repurchase the product before they forget to repurchase or look at similar competing products or suppliers. Help increase the conversion rates of these replenishment emails by offering an incentive such as a discount off their next purchase, try and upsell to more of a bulk quantity of the product(s), or cross-sell complementary products. Find out more details on how Replenishment Email Campaigns can help your eCommerce brand in our Guide to Replenishment Email Campaigns. Subscription Expiry Very similar to replenishment, if you run an online subscription service through your eCommerce store it is essential to ensure you have a subscription renewal email strategy in place. These can be automated so your customers are reminded in good time before their subscription expires. These email alerts will help remind them and increase the chance of renewal. These emails can include content such as ‘renewal now and get 10% off your normal monthly subscription price’ to increase urgency and conversions. Back in stock/out of stock An effective conversion tactic for eCommerce brands is ‘Back in stock’ automation emails. If a visitor to your eCommerce store browses a page that the product and it is currently out of stock, you can set up automations to trigger an email to that subscriber when the item is back in stock, this can be accompanied by an incentive to help increase conversion rates. Price Drop Emails Emailing your subscribers that have visited the same product pages several times but not made a purchase can be incentivised to convert by alerting them when the price is reduced for that product(s). Set your price drop automations up with your specific criteria and these will be sent out in the background, helping drive new sales and increasing your conversion rates. A/B Testing / Optimisation Conversion optimisation is all about A/B Testing your website and email content. This can be achieved on scale using personalisation software which will automatically optimise your website and email content based not only on the content your subscribers have viewed, but also by the highest converting and most popular products and content. By using machine learning your website and email content will be automatically optimised based on the highest converting content, this will not only be on an overall high level of conversions but it will also learn about the individual based on their browsing, engagement and purchasing history and compare this to historical data of people who have match similar personas and behaviour and display the highest converting content to them as well. Discover more tactics on our blog: Power up your A/B testing for even better campaigns. Take Away There are a wide range of solutions and tactics eCommerce brands can implement that have a significant positive impact on their conversion rates. With such a wide choice of competing brands available, studies show that 98% of consumers don’t make a purchase during their initial visit to a brand website (source: inc.com). Introducing simple changes as outlined in this guide will help you quickly win back lost opportunities, gain more value from your existing customers, offer your visitors a more personalised experience and scale your outreach conversion program by automating this process. Our all-in-one AI Marketing platform covers all of the eCommerce solutions and tactics outlined in this guide, so please feel free to contact us to arrange a chat about your requirements.