Increase your conversion rate with these 5 onsite must-haves

Increasing your conversion rate is one of the best ways to make more revenue on your online store. If you can increase your conversion rate by even 1% that may mean doubling your sales, without driving any more traffic to your online store. 

When people walk into a bricks-and-mortar store they can use all of their senses to experience that shop and the products. They can look, touch, feel, smell and even taste (if you’re selling ice cream!) Customers don’t have that luxury when shopping online. They can only experience what you give them via their screen. And even though they are looking at their screen with their eyes, there are things you can do that evokes their other senses and encourages them to buy from you. 

Increasing your conversion rate can dramatically impact your revenue 

If a website has a 1% conversion rate, a $100 average order value and gets 500 visitors per month, that website will make $500 revenue.

If that same online store did nothing but increase their conversion rate by just 2%, and kept their average order value at $100, that same website would make $1500. 

This is without generating more traffic or increasing their average order value. 

Ok so let’s look at 5 onsite must-haves your online store needs to make sure you’re optimised for conversion rate. 

1. Your site needs to have a clean and simple layout

Imagine walking into a cluttered, dimly-lit store. Chances are you’d feel a bit uncomfortable and would want to get out of there as quickly as possible. Same goes for your online store. 

Viv from That Little Shop in Jinnali has a physical boutique as well as an online store. When you walk into the store you are greeted by a friendly face and the store is clean, beautiful and organised. This is the vibe you want to portray on your online store, right. So by having a clean and simple layout you’re giving your products a chance to shine. 

2. Give people an easy-to-navigate menu

Keeping with the physical store analogy, when you walk into a retail store you should be able to easily know which isle or section to go to. Things are categorised and grouped.

The default menu for an online store is home, about, shop and contact. Every time I see this on an online store a little piece of me dies because I have no idea what the store sells by looking at these headings. But if you have these as your menu titles, don’t worry, it’s an easy fix!

Categorise your products and display these as your menu items. Ditch home, about and contact from your main menu and put them in the footer.

Ashley from I Choose Me has done a great job of this: 

3. Make sure you have high-quality product images

Product images are EVERYTHING! Our recommendation is to invest in a photographer to take a set of eCommerce (white background) images for your online store. Or if you do them yourself, make sure they are great quality images that showcase your product in the best way possible. 

If you have poor quality images people will automatically (often subconsciously) assume your products are poor quality too.

Picnic Season does a great job of showing me all angles of their picnic basket:

4. Display evocative product descriptions

Some people like to read. But instead of being boring in your product descriptions, jazz it up a little. Include evocative language that makes me smile. Also, don’t be afraid to use bullet points, paragraphs and headings to make your product descriptions easier to read. 

Kate and Bec from The Better Packaging Co. do a great job of this:

Kim from Burbridge and Burke also does such a good job with product descriptions (she had me at fluffy duck hair!): 

5. Build trust, trust and more trust!

People are taking a leap of faith when they shop online so you need to give them lots of reasons to trust you. You can do this by displaying reviews, showing user-generated content and having a solid guarantee on your site. 

Final word

Ok, so go through your website and make sure your site has these 5 onsite must-haves for a good conversion rate and make any adjustments as needed. Improving your conversion rate by just a little can a huge impact on your bottom line.