Ultimate Guideline for Shopify Store Conversion Rate Optimization

Companies looking to start or grow their businesses online are taking advantage of the Shopify technology to set up a store and sell digital products and physical goods.  Small to medium-size brands use this e-commerce platform mainly because it is affordable. Since Custom website builds are costly, more than 1 million brands prefer getting a Shopify domain. 

You can do the following with your Shopify online store:

• Add stock
• Track inventory 
• Complete sales

As more companies continue to invest in Shopify, the most frustrating thing about getting a store is having a bunch of visitors or viewers but no actual sales. Some merchants are spending a lot of money to get people into their stores, only for them not to buy any of the available products. This situation is common in Shopify online stores that have low conversation rates. In this case, Conversion rate optimization is required to get back your ROI. 

In the eCommerce industry, a Conversion Rate is usually a percentage ratio of the number of visitors purchasing the number of people visiting the store. If you are using Shopify and Google Analytics, then your Conversion Rate is a result of your transactions over sessions. Improving this rate is all about increasing the value or quality of the traffic coming to your store. 

What Is a Good Conversion Rate?

Based on case studies the average eCommerce conversion rate is slightly above 2 %. However, conversation rates vary from one industry to another; therefore, you should only compare your results with the average rate for your industry. Also, mobile conversation rates are usually lower than desktop conversion rates. 

No matter what figure you have as your conversion rate, there is always room for improvement. There are three things you can improve to get a better rate: your brand or product, traffic sources, and the customer journey or funnel (marketing and sales). 

Shopify Store Funnel 

The first place that most Shopify merchants start with when it comes to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the store funnel. It is important to consider the journey your customer goes through from the time they are aware of your product or brand to the time they decide to purchase your product or subscribe to your services. In the eCommerce world, the customer journey is a process known as the marketing and sale funnel. 

According to research, only 2% of purchases are made at the first contact customers make with a product or brand. Rarely do prospects buy a product the first time they visit a store, research shows that most of them will need between five and eight extra contacts moment before they decide to make a purchase.  However, this number can reduce by half if you can attract the attention and interest of your potential customers and gain their trust. 

In real life, the funnel process for a retail store will have the following steps:

• walking into your store
• get attracted by your product 
• look at your product 
• put the product in the cart
• walk to the checkout 
• complete the purchase

On the other hand, the funnel of an online store is as follows:

• Find your store or product through search & advertising
• Go through the product page
• Read the product description and customer reviews 
• Add the product to the cart
• Proceed to checkout
• Make the purchase

Marketing and Sales Funnels

Marketing gurus and experts have come up with countless models to help explain the customer journey when it comes to marketing. AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) is one such model that most digital marketers use to increase their website conversion rates. Each stage of the model has its unique approach and message that needs to be conveyed. 

For a marketing funnel, your main focus is to attract potential customers from a broader audience. Your efforts in this process are to communicate the problems and opportunities that your potential customers have without mentioning your product or services as the solution. The tools you use in this funnel should help you increase visibility and gain a competitive edge over your competitors on Shopify. 

Marketing and sales share the same funnel. The marketing funnel transforms into a sales funnel when your leads turn to prospects. At this stage potential customers are aware of your brand and have developed an interest in your product. The stages available in a sales funnel are designed to make the prospect develop a need for your product and eventually make a purchase after providing the necessary information on how your product or solution can help the customer. 

Merging the marketing and sales funnel yields a six stages model, AICIEP (Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Intent, Evaluation, and Purchase). 

• Awareness 

The first step of the Shopify store conversion rate optimization is getting people to visit your website. Identifying your target audience will help you get the right traffic to your online store. Your goal is not to get the highest number of views but to increase your sales. There are different traffic sources you can use and most of the popular ones are social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Creating brand awareness is part of lead generation. During this process, you will need marketing activities and tools such as content marketing, Affiliate marketing, inbound marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online advertising, viral campaigns, and more to attract prospects. 

• Interest  

Once your potential customers are aware of your brand and product, you’ll need to develop a thriving relationship with them. At this point, you can nurture your leads by using tailored content to introduce your brand, product, or services to capture the interest of your prospects. Find the best way to establish a connection with your target audience.

Before a prospect develops an interest in your product, they need to trust you first. Having trust badges in your store is one way of appearing trustworthy but that is not enough, potential customers need to know more about you before they direct their focus on your product. Prospects wish to know your background experience and reputation. 

For trust building you may need the following:

• About page
• User-generated content or testimonials 
• Returns and refunds policy
• Contact Page
• Customer support (live chat, phone number, email)
• High-quality content

These are some of the things you need to consider when coming up with an effective marketing and sale funnel for your Shopify store:

• Your potential customer’s behavior 
• Where you are likely to find them 
• How your services or products can help them
• The message you wish to communicate in each stage
• The phases or stages you would wish them to go through 
• The communication channels you would use to respond to them

• Desire 

When your potential customer has reached this stage of your funnel, you may need to work on your best-converting channels to get them to the Action stage. The most promising channels at this stage are email marketing and referral marketing or affiliate marketing. Free shipping and return policy can easily make your conversion rate go up.  Since people love free things, adding promotions and discount codes to your sales funnel can improve your sales. 

• Action

The last step of the CRO optimization is to optimize the checkout flow.  Long or complicated checkout process, high cost (shipping, tax, and fees), and sign up requirements are the top reasons why most prospects abandon their carts during checkout.  You should make the checkout process simple and less involving. 

Shopify Store Optimization Considerations 

1. Landing page optimization

The Conversion rate optimization process aims to reduce the number of clicks a potential customer has to make before they purchase your product. You can achieve this by making the product page your landing page. Normally, this is achieved by using outbound or Interruption marketing through advertising. However, your home page should not necessarily be the first page that customers see when they visit your store. 

Characteristics of an effective landing-product page:

• Attractive layout 
• Cohesive color scheme 
• Detailed product descriptions 
• Use of high-quality and resolution visuals (images, videos)
• reviews, testimonials, and ratings

2. User-Generated Data

Most buyers rely on informational social influence or Social proof to make the last decision to purchase.The use of User-generated data (UGC) on your Shopify store can help you gain the trust of potential customers. When prospects see other people buy or use a product, they develop a fear of missing out (FOMO).  This type of peer pressure is what makes potential customers want to jump on the bandwagon. This effect can be achieved through the use of customer reviews, testimonials, awards, and social feeds. 

Displaying product reviews can increase your Shopify Store conversion because most customers will prefer to buy the product that has reviews over the one that does not have any. You can at least install review collection apps such as JudgeMe on your site. 

3. Mobile optimization 

More than 50% of website visitors use their mobile devices to access these platforms.  You might be losing the right audience by failing to make your website mobile-friendly. Adding a responsive design to your Shopify store website allows your potential customer to view your platform from different mobile device screen sizes. Therefore, browsing your online site through any mobile device should provide a pleasant user experience.  

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Your Shopify store needs to appear first on the result page when prospects search for items related to your products. For this reason, you can optimize your website for various search engines such as Google. The use of Keywords or phrases and link building has worked for many merchants using Shopify. SEO works best if you have quality content- solid grammar, more conversational, and informative. 

5. Analytics

Numbers do not lie if you can analyze them to identify the pattern. Most Shopify stores with high conversion rates use analytical data to understand the behaviours of their prospects. This data can be obtained from tools such as Shopify and Google Analytics.  Data from your Shopify store should help you perform a conversion analysis.

6. Retargeting or remarketing 

Abandoned carts may not mean lost money, you can still help your visitor complete the transaction by sending them retargeting ads. Abandoned cart emails can be used to encourage potential customers to interact more with your brand before making a decision.

7. Performance optimization 

The loading speed of your Shopify store does affect your conversion rate such that an improvement in the performance of the site brings more sales and revenue per session. You can run your site through the Shopify Analyzer and see what can be improved. Every second of a prospect counts, so the less time it takes to load your website the lower the bounce rate.  

8. Navigation optimization 

Moving from one step to another should be obvious to your potential customer. By eliminating distractions and creating clear navigation links your visitors can easily get what they want with ease.  The most important thing to do about navigation is to create clear calls to action buttons that stand out prominently from the rest of the page. You can take navigation to the next level by providing clear directions. 

9. Design optimization 

When it comes to design, you should consider modifying your color scheme and site layout. You can achieve this through web design elements such as logos, themes, custom icons, Lifestyle images, and graphics.  Your Shopify store outlook should reflect your brand’s vibe. 

10. A/B test

During a Conversion rate optimization (CRO) process, A/B tests are used to evaluate the performance of different changes in your Shopify store. It is through this type of test that you can confirm that a specific change will lead to an increase in the conversion rate of your site.

Conclusion

Optimizing your entire marketing and sales funnels can help you improve your conversion rate and generate sales and revenue.  You need to take a step-by-step approach when optimizing the various parts of the customer journey, it should not be overwhelming. The best strategy is to observe the behaviors of your potential customers and identify areas in your funnel that need some CRO optimization.