There’s no escaping the fact that an increasing amount of business is now done online. What was a gradual move has been accelerated by recent events, meaning that many face-to-face interactions have now been replaced with their virtual equivalent. This has benefited many businesses but has also taken some others by surprise, as they have failed to adapt to the change.
This is not entirely unexpected, as many companies only have a portion of the necessary resources dedicated to this growing area of their business, so when it was tested to capacity, it was not fit for purpose.
So, if you see onsite conversions at a rate far short of what you were expecting and what your business needs to stay afloat – here are a few things you should consider looking at.
1. Website loading time and appearance
There is very little point in you spending large amounts of cash on advertising, or on SEO campaigns, or producing stacks of content for your social media channels if all a potential customer does when they arrive is just click away.
Ecommerce stores need to put an extra focus on loading time and user experience. Investing in SEO is a great way to bring in more organic traffic and revenue for your ecommerce store. Shopify SEO services can set you up for long-term growth and sustainable traffic to your site.
The two main reasons why this could be happening are that your site takes too long to load, and when it does, it looks terrible. The most likely cause of this is a poorly put-together website or one that is overdone and has too many elements to load. This can be solved by getting a webs design company to look at your site to improve the loading time and remove any unnecessary features.
2. Congruency and user experience
Many businesses fall into this trap. They will have an advert or an article extolling the virtues of a particular product or service then link not to the relevant page but their homepage. This is bad on it’s own, but it can be even worse if the website is difficult to navigate, and finding that product is more difficult than it should be.
Most website visitors simply do not have that much patience and will seek a similar service somewhere less challenging to buy from. Again, a web design company can provide the solution and make your site more user-friendly.
3. ID verification
As part of the onboarding process, it is not uncommon for the customer to have to provide some proof of ID before they can proceed. This id verification process can often be clunky and involve verification by a third-party service that takes the user off-site and dents their confidence. For this reason, a surprising number of onboarding processes go uncompleted.
Services have now emerged that allow the id verification process to be completed far more quickly and seamlessly, which in practice removes that barrier.
Conclusion
With the number of online interactions on the rise (and in many parts of the world the only way some businesses can continue to operate), the process between initial contact and purchase needs to be as efficient and user-focused as possible. Simple tweaks like improving loading time, site navigation, and the onboarding process can improve conversion rates and ultimately how much profit your business is going to make.
