10 E-Commerce Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics that you can implement for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just a month away. Are you ready?
Did you know that e-commerce sales now represent nearly 50% of all retail growth? Not surprising in our current environment.
In 2018, consumers bought goods worth $2.9 trillion from online retailers, and this number grew exponentially to reach a staggering $4.28 trillion in 2020. According to McKinsey & Company, the industry experienced a ten-year growth in three years, thanks to COVID-19.
The pandemic has resulted in almost 150 million new online shoppers. Despite the shift to online shopping, the average conversion rate for e-commerce stores remains under 3%.
And this begs the question; What can e-commerce store owners do to boost conversions?
The answer is to up your conversion rate optimization game.
Here are ten conversion rate optimization tactics you can use to take advantage of the biggest retail day of the year.
1. Address Shopping Cart Abandonment
Did you know that e-commerce cart abandonment could be the sole reason your store is experiencing low conversions?
Studies have shown that 7 out of 10 people will abandon their shopping cart during the checkout process. Whoa! That number is quite scary. But there are tactics you can employ to decrease e-commerce cart abandonment and increase conversions on Black Friday.
But to address shopping cart abandonment, you’ll first need to understand the top reasons shoppers abandon their carts.
Common reasons for shopping cart abandonment include:
- Lack of preferred payment options
- High shipping costs
- Technical problems
- Complexity
- Pricing issues
- Lack of trust
To understand precisely the critical friction points, you’ll need to be able to observe your shopper’s behaviour on your website. This can be easily accomplished using a conversion optimization platform with website heatmaps and visitor recording features. Once you know the reasons for shopping cart abandonment, it becomes easier to address the root issues by testing your hypothesis and boost conversions.
For instance, if consumers leave your store because of the limited payment options, you can test integrating more payment options on your website.
Sending abandoned cart reminders is another excellent way to reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase conversions.
The idea is to send abandoned cart emails to shoppers, reminding them of the incomplete order. Does it work? Studies show that 10.7% of consumers who receive these emails return to make a purchase.
2. Provide Strategic Discounts, Offers, and Coupons
According to Adobe Analytics, last year, online sales on Black Friday hit a staggering $9.03 billion—a 21.6% year-over-year increase from 2019.
One of the top reasons for the dramatic increase in sales is that many retailers offer incredible discounts on Black Friday. That said, if your store is experiencing low conversions, you could recover the lost sales on Black Friday by offering discounts, deals and coupons.
Discounts can be essential to conversions, but you don’t want to overuse this tool.
Relying on discounts too much can ignite price wars with your competitors and eventually hurt your bottom line. In addition to discounts, you can also test offer coupon codes and limited offer deals.
If you play your cards right by testing these different methods, this approach can be a powerful tool for increasing e-commerce conversions.
3. Leverage Social Proof
Studies show that 98% of visitors leave your site without taking any action.
And about 70% of those visitors never return because they don’t trust your products or brand.
Adding social proof to your website is a quick conversion rate optimization tactic that can help to solve this problem.
So, what exactly is social proof?
In the marketing context, social proof is evidence that other people have purchased and found value in a product or service offered by your business.
It’s an online equivalent of word-of-mouth. Social proof is based on the idea that a buyer will decide based on the influence of other consumers.
Now that you understand what social proof is, how can you use it to increase your site’s conversion rate on Black Friday?
The trick is to gain customers’ trust with online reviews and trust badges. You’ll want to showcase customer or expert reviews, award badges, trust symbols, publications in which your products have been featured, and social media following on your website.
If done right, social proof can do wonders for your business
According to Spiegel’s research, the purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% higher than that of a product with no reviews.
Guide: Get a bounce in your sales, not in your recipients list…
Here are the things that you need to do if you are hoping to raise your sales during Black Friday without being blacklisted.
4. Optimize Your E-Commerce Checkout Experience
It takes quite a bit of work to get a shopper from the products page to the checkout stage. You’ll need a plan to ensure that shoppers will complete the purchase after they get there.
Here’s what you should do to ensure a seamless experience that will lead to purchase.
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Set User Expectations
Show a progress bar and explain clearly what each step entails. You could use specific labels to explain what each step involves.
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Limit Distractions
Distractions can bar the shopper from completing a purchase. You can limit distractions by reducing the number of elements that appear on the checkout screen.
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Be Clear with Pricing
High pricing and hidden charges are some of the leading causes of shopping cart abandonment. Always be transparent with your pricing. Surprising the customer late in the game can make them back out of the purchase.
5. Optimize Your Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
The call-to-action (CTA) button is perhaps the most critical part of a product landing page. If you create persuasive CTAs and put them correctly on your landing page, you’ll undoubtedly increase conversions.
But please, don’t just sporadically place CTA buttons on your website.
You’ll need to monitor how visitors behave on your site, how they navigate through the pages, and the pages they visit most.
Using these insights, you’ll be able to strategically place your call-to-action buttons in the sections where customers are most likely to take action.
6. Offer Free Shipping
With e-commerce growing steadily and Black Friday around the corner, you’ll want to delve deeper into what piques consumers’ interest when shopping online.
While needs and preferences vary from customer to customer, one incentive attracts virtually all consumers across industries.
Free shipping!
According to a recent Future of Retail study, 90% of the respondents said that free shipping was the number one incentive when asked what would make them shop online more often. Another study found that 24% of consumers would spend more to qualify for free shipping.
With staggering stats like these, it’s clear that offering free shipping is key to increasing conversions on Black Friday.
7. Improve Your Store’s Navigation
Anything that causes friction to a shopper’s journey lowers the possibility they’ll convert.
That said, your site’s navigation should be smooth, intuitive, and seamless.
Most importantly, it should help shoppers discover products and services with ease. Yet, according to a Baymard Institute report, 18% of websites don’t display product categories, which results in serious navigation issues for users.
The faster the customers discover the items they’re looking for, the better their chances of purchasing them. For this, you need to improve your site’s navigation.
But how do you do that?
First, you’ll need to add a search bar to make it easy for customers to search for products. Ensure the search bar is in a prominent position where buyers can easily find it.
Next, sort the products or services into different categories and make it easier for customers to find them. Your goal is to minimize the number of clicks required to reach the products. Sorting items into categories can also help to improve your site’s UX.
8. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
With more than 50% of the internet traffic coming from mobile devices, ensuring your site is optimized for mobile viewing is extremely important.
Not only are more users accessing the internet from a smartphone or tablet than a desktop; they are also using these devices for online shopping. For instance, in 2019, a third of all online purchases came from a smartphone.
Not even Black Friday was immune to mobile fever—a whopping 40% of online sales on this holiday came via a mobile device. And with the rise in the number of online shoppers due to COVID-19, you can be sure mobile sales will even soar higher come Black Friday.
So, how can you be ready for mobile?
You can start by building a responsive website. A mobile-friendly website can also boost your SEO, especially now that Google is using mobile-first indexing.
In addition to building a responsive website, be sure to create a corresponding mobile app to make it easier for consumers to buy from you right within a smartphone app.
9. Improve E-Commerce Website Speed
A one-second delay can make conversions drop by 7%.
So, if you’re serious about conversion optimization, you’ll want to pay more attention to your website’s loading speed.
Aside from increasing conversion rate, fast loading speed is excellent for user experience. Plus, it’s fantastic for search engine optimization (SEO). A website’s speed is a ranking factor for SEO because it’s a sign of quality user experience.
Analysis by Walmart has found that conversion rates drop sharply with load speeds greater than one second. Considering that your e-commerce store will likely experience an influx of visitors on Black Friday, you’ll want to make sure your site’s loading speed is excellent.
But, how do you achieve that?
First, ensure that you’re using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Also, manage the number of plugins and tracking scripts on your website.
Most importantly, only upload low file size images.
Big file images slow down your website and increase the page’s weight, which increases the cost of viewing the page on mobile networks.
10. Spark Excitement with Countdown Timer
Last but not least, spark excitement with a Black Friday countdown timer. Including a deal countdown timer on your landing pages can help to boost e-commerce conversion rates.
You could set the timer to count down the time to Black Friday, how much time is left to grab the current deals, or even how long it will be before the next offer commences.
The thing with countdown timers is that they create FOMO, causing those on the fence to pull the trigger before it’s too late.
Wrapping Up
These detailed strategies will give you insights into how to increase conversion rates for Black Friday. You don’t have to implement all these tactics for your e-commerce store.
Take your time to find out the e-commerce platform areas that need improvement, then work on increasing conversions. By implementing these tactics, you’ll undoubtedly increase your sales on Black Friday.
Guide: How to get started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
This will provide you with the CRO framework we use together with our amazing customers, some of which are among the top e-commerce brands in the world. Check it out!
