Converting site visitors into paying customers is the goal of every online shop owner. But it can be tough with all the competition out there vying for your same target audience.

After all, there are plenty of eCommerce sites that see lots of daily traffic, high engagement rates, and email campaign activity, yet still don’t have many sales.

In fact, it’s estimated that the average cart abandonment rate hovers around 69.89% for all online stores, regardless of industry.

And chances are your mobile eCommerce conversion rates fare even worse since the average is a meager 3.3%.

But don’t lose all hope. There are tons of successful online shops out there overcoming these sad statistics and generating lots of revenue.

You just have to know how to boost your store’s conversion rates in the right way so that people coming to your site are not only engaged with your content but want to buy from you too.

So, read on to learn some of the best strategies for increasing conversion rate so you can continue to grow your business into the success you always hope it’d be.

1. Optimize for Speed

Your eCommerce site’s speed and performance play a significant role in how successful you’ll be.

After all, the speed at which your website loads not only affects the overall user experience, it affects how high you’ll rank in search results.

Unfortunately, many online shop owners fail to see the correlation between site performance and conversion rates and don’t take the time to optimize their sites.

If you want to break the mold and push ahead of the competition, start by seeing just how fast your website currently loads for site visitors using a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights.

Once your site has been analyzed, you can follow the suggestions for making improvements, and do some of the following to increase your site speed (and your conversion rates!):

• Enable browser caching
• Use a reliable web hosting provider
• Minify CSS, JS, and HTML files
• Decrease server requests
• Compress image files to reduce server strain
• Use a CDN to deliver content across the globe fast

Your slow website may be costing you more than you think.

With 40% of people abandoning a site that doesn’t load within 3 seconds and a 1-second delay decreasing conversions rates by as much as 7%, you can’t afford not to speed things up.

2. Create a Sense of Urgency

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to boost your conversions rates, whether you want to encourage people to subscribe or buy, urgency is a great place to start.

When you put a time limit on something, such as a special sale price for a best-selling product, is pushed people to take action. After all, no one wants to miss a great deal.

Secondly, creating a sense of urgency invokes what is called FOMO, or fear of missing out.

This feeling gives people the urge to complete an action, such as sign up for your newsletter so they can grab an exclusive coupon because they don’t want to miss out on something others are getting.

One of the best ways to create urgency on your website and kickstart conversions is to create a countdown timer using a tool such as OptinMonster.

You can customize all elements of the countdown timer, such as color schemes, time limit, CTA button, and special deal, all within an intuitive interface.

Perfect for eCommerce shops trying to boost sales, a countdown timer can be used to highlight exclusive deals, promote time-sensitive offers, and even showcase seasonal offers.

And the best part is, when you convince people to sign up so they can get a special deal, you can then use their contact info to build a long-lasting relationship with them and turn them into repeat customers.

Related Reading: Landing Page Optimization Best Practices

3. Offer Free Shipping

Of course, you don’t get into online retail to give stuff away for free. You’re in it to make a profit. But the thing is, one of the biggest reasons people don’t convert as customers is shipping costs.

And, since most online stores offer free shipping to their customers, if you’re in the minority and still charge to ship items, you’re likely to see less than stellar conversions rates.

Offering free shipping to customers can boost your conversion rates by as much as 25 to 40%, offsetting any shipping costs you have to absorb.

Related Reading: How to Offer Free Shipping without Losing Profit Margins

4. Do Your Keyword Research

Getting your website into the right search results is the key to driving high quality leads to your site that will convert.

But if you don’t take the time to optimize your eCommerce shop for SEO, you’re leaving things up to chance when it comes to search results, which can be harmful to your brand.

Think about it.

If someone finds your website in a search result, clicks on your link thinking you have what they’re looking for, and finds out you don’t have what they’re looking for, what happens?

The site visitor immediately abandons your site causing your bounce rate to rise, your engagement rate to tank, and your search rankings to suffer.

Plus, you don’t get a conversion or a sale.

The best way to land in the right search results is to optimize your site’s content for the right keywords.

Luckily, you can use a tool such as Ubersuggest to find excellent keywords that not only relate to what you have to offer, but are being actively searched for in search results.

You can get estimates on search volume, SEO and paid difficulty, and the cost per click for PPC advertising to see if the keyword you’re trying to rank for is worth it.

And of course, you’ll see alternative keywords you can integrate into your content marketing strategies so you can rank higher, drive more traffic to your site, and secure more conversions.

5. Add a Search Function

When people land on your website, whether they know exactly what they’re looking for or have idea, they want to be able to find it fast.

Rather than have people exploring your navigation menus and hitting dead ends when they don’t find what they need, consider adding a simple search bar for people to use.

If you use WordPress as your content management system, the free Ivory Search plugin lets you place a search bar anywhere on your site using a simple shortcode.

Making things as easy as possible on your site visitors once they arrive on your website is the number one way to guide them through your funnel and get them to convert.

6. Set Goals and Monitor Them

Lastly, if you want to really give rise to your conversion rates and generate more sales, you should take a little time to set some goals for yourself and monitor your progress over time, so you can make changes as needed.

For example, let’s say you have a revenue goal you want to hit, but aren’t sure realistically how many site visitors you need to hit that goal.

Try entering your goal into the Traffic Calculator to get an estimated number of site visitors needed to hit your monetary goal.

You’ll then know approximately how many visitors and sales per day are needed to achieve your goal.

Of course, these calculations are based on pre-set conditions, so you’ll need to adjust as necessary.

But you can get a good idea of what it will take to grow your business as well as have something tangible to work toward while boosting your conversion rates.

Is one of your goals how to make money from home?

Add that into your list of goals to hit and research ways to better monetize your website such as:

• Starting a YouTube channel or podcast
• Get into affiliate marketing
• Create an online course and teach others using your expertise and skills

All of these are great ways to boost your monthly income.

And if what you’re doing resonates with your target audience, you’ll see a bump in conversions as people begin watching your video content, buying your recommended products, and even signing up for your online course.

Final Thoughts

If you want to build a successful eCommerce site, you’re going to have to focus on your conversion rates and how to increase them to generate more sales.

Luckily, no matter what kind of store you have, how limited your budget is, or what your overall goal is when it comes to scaling your store, there are easy ways to encourage more people to buy.

So, start optimizing your online store for more conversions now, and watch as your competition becomes a thing of the past.