5 Common Pitfalls of eCommerce Conversion Strategies

Once you have qualified traffic to your site, you need to start focusing on converting those shoppers into buyers. There are many reasons why a shopper leaves your website without converting. In this case, the term “converting” could mean making a purchase or filling out a contact form so they can be reached at a later date (these correlate to visitor-to-sale and visitor-to-lead conversions respectively). Below we share 5 common pitfalls that may be negatively effecting your eCommerce conversion rate strategy.

1) Hidden or Misleading Calls-To-Action

A universal understanding for all eCommerce sites is that the longer a shopper is on your site and interacting with your content, the higher the chance that they will purchase. With this premise in mind, there are too many websites who place great content behind hidden and misleading calls-to-action. A call-to-action needs to be a flashing light telling shoppers that you have additional information that they are interested in. Calls-to-action can also be a great conversion point if you are trying to generate additional leads for sales at a later date. The content behind calls-to-action is crucial - you want to use these opportunities to build trust and make sure that people have the ability to see them. 

2) Underutilized Homepage

Your homepage is the best real estate on your site. Far too many eCommerce websites are more concerned with a homepage that looks good rather than having a cohesive conversion strategy. Get people to engage early without needing to use the search functionality – easy navigation will help increase time on the site and decrease bounce rates.

3) Focusing on One Source of Traffic

Every source of traffic is important as long as it results in quality visitors. Use Google Analytics or a similar platform to determine the number one source of traffic for qualified visitors and focus your efforts there. Make sure that you direct that traffic to the appropriate landing pages. Each traffic channel (organic, referral, social, paid, etc.) needs to direct the prospect to the content that they are looking for. Unqualified traffic will only skew your reporting. Bring qualified traffic to the correct optimized landing page and watch your conversion percentages increase.

4) Leaning on Promotions to Drive Sales

Promotions are a great way to build up a database and generate initial sales, but you need to be concerned with the long-term strategy. If customers start to equate your site with promotions, you will always need to discount to get that shopper back, which will consistently eat away from your profit margins. Using promotions are a great way to build up a brand following, but there needs to be an exit strategy. Otherwise, your conversions will look great, but your profit margins will dwindle.

5) Poor User Experience (UX)

There are hundreds of quality tracking and retargeting email platforms that will help you to get a lost opportunity back to your site. Within your conversion strategies you assume that these bring qualified traffic back to your site. However, you may be over looking a big reason why they left: have you considered that the user experience on the site is poor? Online shoppers are getting smarter and as the price of website development continues to decrease, there is no excuse for a poor user experience. You want people to come back to your site because they were impressed and had a great shopping experience. Great UX builds trust and gets people in the mood to make a purchase.

When all else fails, you always have the ability to pay for traffic to your site. Obviously, that is not the case with getting people to buy. In order to get people to buy on your site, you need to invest in strategy and work.  By taking a holistic view on conversion strategies, you will realize some common pitfalls that you may be over looking.

For more information about eCommerce strategies, read our latest case study on eCommerce results.

 Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici via FreeDigitalPhotos.net