Most conversion rate ideas are not the big ideas. They are not the grand site-makeover plans or the elaborate testing plan that will convert all your visitors to buyers. Enhancing user experience to lead to conversions is not built on the one strong intuitive marketing idea that will make all the difference. A user experience that gets conversions is created through many subtractions, divisions and multiplications. Some get it right all at once, but most e-commerce sites have to try a few permutations to arrive to at a conversion rate optimized design, flow and experience.
The Basics First
To start with, before making any changes in the user experience, business owners on the web must know the rate at which the site performs currently. Is the design inherently discouraging customer conversion? If yes, an ambitious offer plan, which gets thousands of hits through the day, may not provide optimum results. It may very well be a pointless launch of a great idea. Figuring out the current CRO is the first step to making any further optimization changes. Sometimes, a special offer may not be what you need. Perhaps, you don’t need more visitors, but just need to turn more of the existing visitors into customers.
Imitate Traditional Store Models
Have you noticed how traditional stores enhance their user experience? Many department stores will have perfume counters at the entrance. Some shops, after discovering that baking smells make customers spend more, had the aroma of fresh bread waft through the store. As an e-entrepreneur, you’ll have to come up with the Web version of the perfume store: the draw that will get the visitor in deeper and an e-version of the baking smell that makes him spend. What could that be?
Often, observing the entire cycle of browsing to buying is the answer. How does that cycle function on your site? Are visitors so distracted between browsing and the last step of buying something that they leave your e-store empty-handed? Creating a seamless process of selecting a product and buying it can boost conversion rates immensely.
Technical Glitches
Look at the basic technical stuff like the functioning of the carts, selection of products and the acceptance of credit cards. The website must move smoothly from one page to another, a product once checked into a cart must be present till check-out. You could consider adding little features like, “Are you sure you don’t want to buy the product in the cart at this point?” - if the customer is leaving without buying. Make it easier for customers to look at product features. For instance, instead of taking them to a separate page to look at the product details, have the hover-cursor feature highlight the specifications.
In addition to getting the online features perfect to ensure that your website is Conversion Rate Optimized and your user experience is appropriately enhanced, you must also ensure that the user experience across various points of interaction – offline, over the customer helpline and at post-purchase service centers remains good as well. These factors can also, indirectly, boost the online CRO.
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