Are your customers bouncing off your site without buying anything? Well, this is because getting traffic to your site is only half the battle. You still need to transform that organic or paid traffic into paying customers once they’re on your site.
The only way to do that is to optimize your site’s conversion rates and get rid of the top conversion killers.
In fact, according to data by Baymard Institute, 69% of users leave without completing a single purchase and won’t likely come back unless you incentivize them to.
Fortunately, there are simpler ways to enhance your conversion rates, and that is to know and fix your top conversion killers.
1. Poor user experience
Your site is the face of your brand, so if it doesn’t fit the needs of your visitors, you’ll leave a bad impression. It’s also the most common reason why your site traffic may be high but your sales aren’t.
The thing is, online customers want a simple and highly intuitive shopping experience with your site. They want shopping on your site to be quick and efficient.
Here are factors that might stop this from happening:
- A poor site search makes it difficult to find an item and causes 21% of users to leave your site.
- Obscure site navigation, which can include everything from site placement to graphical elements such as icons and invisible links.
- Slow loading times. Slow loading times not only lower your engagement but also frustrates 52% of consumers.
- Mediocre product pages with lackluster pictures and insufficient product details.
2. Not mobile-friendly store
A mobile-optimized site is vital for your ecommerce business to be successful and boost your ecommerce conversions. Approximately 30% of mobile shoppers leave their carts, especially if navigation is difficult to perform on mobile.
That’s why, if you don’t want to lose your customers for this avoidable reason, your site should be easily used on mobile as well as on desktop.
3. No product reviews
There are a lot of scams that are prevalent online, and sites have become more deceptive.
Let’s say that a company may tell its customers that their order will be arriving in a few days, but the truth is it takes several weeks for the product to arrive. That company would be getting raked over the coals by reviews – so hiding reviews automatically looks suspicious. By gathering product reviews from your previous customers, you can leverage them to gain the trust of your prospects, especially if they see positive reviews about your products and services.
You can install a product review application or plug-ins so that you can gather reviews from your customers.
4. Bad checkout experience
A bad checkout experience is one of the main reasons prospective customers may leave your site without buying anything. 87% of shoppers will leave a site if the checkout process is too complicated.
Make an effort to enhance your checkout process, making it more customer-friendly. Make sure that you request only the most important information, such as their email address, and make sure that you get rid of any distractions.
5. Not enough payment methods
Ecommerce platforms like Shopify always have their own payment system. So, to accommodate shoppers who may want to pay in different ways, then all you have to do is activate any of the available payment methods like Shopify payments, payments done by credit card, as well as third-party payments like PayPal.
6. Mandatory account creation
Another study by Baymard Institute shows that 37% of consumers abandon their shopping carts because of mandatory account creation.
If you force customers to make an account before they can even complete a purchase, this may eventually kill your conversions. Thus, you need to ensure that your site offers your customers an option to buy as guests without having to register.
7. Long and boring sign-up forms
Nothing will irritate your customers more than having to fill out field after field of information before they can fully make a purchase. Most customers, as soon as they have made up their minds to buy something, just want to grab it and go.
So, ensure that you make your sign-up forms short and sweet. Make sure that these include relevant dropdowns, indicate optional information, and radio buttons. More importantly, make sure that you keep field labels simple and clear so that customers can easily fill out what they need.
8. Slow loading speed
Slow loading speed is one of the main reasons why users abandon your site without even browsing it properly.
In fact, 1 out of 4 customers will quit a site because of long load times. Ideally, your site should load in less than three seconds because 40% of users won’t want to wait that much longer.
To give you a better understanding of why this is important, sites with loading times of less than 2 seconds get a bounce rate of approximately 9%. Meanwhile, sites that load in about 5 seconds experience their bounce rate skyrocketing to up to 38%.
9. Poor UX/UI
Have you ever visited a physical store where you need to have a map just to locate the items you’re looking for?
If you experienced this, then chances are, you just wanted to leave as fast as you can. This is the same thing that pops into the mind of your visitors when they encounter a store that’s difficult to navigate – and it’s just as true for online shops as it is for brick-and-mortar stores.
Fortunately, there are ways that you can enhance your UX/UI design:
- Make your aesthetics simple
- Not using intense colors
- Using high-quality photos
- Building highly functional buttons
- Categorizing products
- Having intuitive navigation
- Asking customers for feedback
10. Extra costs during the checkout
Imagine adding a product worth $20 to your cart. Once you get to the checkout, you’re told that you need to pay an additional $5 checkout fee, to say nothing of a further $10 in shipping charges. Wouldn’t you be more likely to abandon your cart and just buy the product in a physical store?
This is precisely how you can drive away prospects if you’re not upfront with your pricing. Thus, you have to ensure that you show all the costs right on your product page. This makes the customer experience a lot better.
11. Lack of trust
Every aspect of the entire ecommerce experience needs to instill trust in the customer, especially during the payment stage. While tech advancements have gradually evolved over the years, many customers fear their information or identity will be stolen.
To make your customers feel safe, you need to provide them with different payment methods. Apart from payments via credit card, you can also accept other popular payment methods like Google Pay, PayPal, or Apple Pay – as previously mentioned, these options also make it more convenient for shoppers.
As much as you can, you should also add security and trust badges. Placing card badges like Mastercard and Visa helps your customers find which payment options you take. In the same way, security badges like Shopify Secure and McAfee Safe also indicate that you are committed to keeping your customers’ financial and personal information secure.
12. Ineffective calls to action
A poorly designed or written call to action (or CTA) is one of the most commonly overlooked conversion killers in your business.
Because CTAs are meant to encourage your site visitors to move from browsing to buying, they should be 100% optimized for efficiency. Ideally, this means two things:
- Your words should be action-oriented. Generally, experts suggest that you write a CA copy using the active voice, using strong action words, and aiming for a positive emotional response. You should also stick to two to five words. Don’t be too long-winded!
- Your CTA should also stand out visually from the rest of your page’s content. You can achieve this by using both color and contrast so that your CTA will easily be noticed. The size of your button is also one way you can draw the attention of users, as is the placement.
13. Insufficient product information
You can’t expect someone to buy from you if you don’t have a compelling and highly detailed description of your product. The only way that you can draw a potential buyer in is through your words and amazing product photos.
If you haven’t been working on your product copy, then make sure that you do so immediately. Make sure that you publish high-quality photos from multiple angles, include videos and testimonials, and highlight any extra shipping and delivery charges. Have everything sorted out.
Moreover, writing poor product descriptions can lead to lost opportunities to entice prospects into purchasing your product, since you lose your chance to tell your story and make your product stand out from its competitors.
The only solution is to come up with a better product description – make sure you sell it, don’t just describe it. In the same way, good product descriptions help your SEO better and improve your search engine rankings.
Final Thoughts
Running a business, your goal is not only to get more visitors to visit your site but also to convert them into paying customers. Getting rid of these massive conversion killers can make that more successful.
If you’re struggling to raise your conversion, go back to basics. Think of how people browse the web and what they’re looking for. Think about how consumers pick brands that they want to support.
That’s why the strategies we’ve rounded up on this list work so well. Not only are they easy and fairly cheap to implement, but they also go a long way in enhancing the overall customer experience.
