Here’s a question, does your website get lots of traffic but make few sales? If so, you’re not alone. Having lots of traffic, great offers, but barely any conversions is a common problem for ecommerce websites, especially those just starting out.
So, what gives?
Well, if people flock to your site but hightail it away before signing up or making a purchase, you may have an ecommerce conversion killer on your hands.
Ecommerce killers can lurk in any number of your site’s components, from your landing page’s design to your sales funnel.
So, if you’ve been asking yourself, “How can I increase my ecommerce conversion rate,” you need to identify your site’s points of friction and figure out how to rehabilitate the user experience.
Below, you’ll find a list of common ecommerce conversion killers to watch out for.
Slow Loading Time
A slow loading time is one of the leading causes of death for conversions. People are impatient and they want instant gratification. So a site that takes longer than a few seconds to load causes irritation and many visitors will flee.
You can check your site’s loading time using Pingdom or GTMetrix, which also offer recommendations for how to improve your website’s speed.
No Whitespace Or Formatting
Another way to kill your business’ conversions is to have a website crammed with images and big chunks of text.
A site like this is unapproachable. Your site needs to have whitespace so visitors don’t get overwhelmed. And your copy needs margins and frequent paragraph breaks. Big text chunks are less readable and visitors will avoid engaging with them.
Weak Reviews Or Testimonials
Social proof can be a powerful conversion aid. But it can also be a conversion killer if it’s too weak.
Reviews and testimonials containing only a hand-full of words, such as “Great product! Love it,” don’t do much in the way of informing and persuading potential customers. They actually can come across as fake and turn visitors off, especially if you don’t have any stronger social proof to back them up.
So, if the majority of your reviews or testimonials are weak, you may want to hold off on displaying them until your business earns more powerful social proof.
Fix What Actually Matters
Ecommerce conversion killers come in many forms. But savvy optimizers know that a data-based approach to finding the leading suspects is best. In other words, you shouldn’t shoot in the dark, randomly guessing at what the culprit may be and how to change it.
One of the easiest and most effective ways of assessing why visitors leave your site without converting is simply to ask. You can send out surveys or polls using tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualaroo.
Now, if people leave your site without converting, you won’t be able to contact them or send them a survey. Instead, you can poll your existing customers or people who recently signed up, asking them why they did convert.
This information helps you figure out how to tip the scales and better reach the people who might otherwise leave your site. Also, just because some people may have converted, that doesn’t mean they didn’t have any reservations about doing so.
There’s a lot to learn by talking to your customers. And going straight to the source helps eliminate the guesswork about what to tweak and test.
What are your thoughts on these ecommerce conversion killers? If you want a more in-depth response to the question, “How can I increase my ecommerce conversion rate,” fill out our contact form and we’ll be in touch!