By Neil Patel

For online stores, increasing conversions is the key to long-term success.

After all, if visitors don’t buy, then you’re not making any money! And with $7.31 trillion dollars projected to be spent on e-commerce retail by 2025, you want to make sure to optimize your CRO so you can receive as much of that spend as possible.

That said, optimizing your e-commerce store can be confusing.

Even if you’ve done everything right, from driving traffic to your website to running digital ads, you might still see low conversion rates. The average conversion rate for US e-commerce stores was 2.8 percent in the second quarter of 2021 (which is the most recent data available).

So what gives, and how can you push past a three percent conversion rate? E-commerce optimization is all about making it easy for your visitors to buy from you.

How do you do that? It starts with diving into your analytics to see where visitors are getting stuck. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry—I’m going to walk you through it.

First, however, let’s talk about why CRO is different for e-commerce websites.

How Is Conversion Optimization Different for E-commerce Stores?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) for e-commerce stores is different because e-commerce stores sell physical products, which can be more complex and time-consuming to purchase than, for example, a service – which has an average 9.3 conversion rate across the industry.

The difference in average conversion rates is partially because a service website might have one or two steps in the checkout process, while an e-commerce store could have five or six – meaning it’s all the more important for you to optimize your CRO.

This means e-commerce stores need to pay more attention to the purchase process, from product pages to the checkout page.

E-commerce stores have unique friction points, such as shipping and returns, which can impact purchase decisions.

Because of this, e-commerce owners need to take a holistic approach to optimizing their stores.

This might mean looking for opportunities to increase customer confidence through social proof and streamlined checkout processes.

Ultimately, e-commerce owners should focus on creating a frictionless purchase experience to boost their conversion rates.

E-commerce CRO Strategy #1: Add Recommended Products

Adding recommended products to your e-commerce store is a great way to increase conversion rates.

When someone visits a product page, they want information about the product and how it can meet their needs.

If you suggest additional products that might be of interest, you can help guide their purchase decision and increase your conversion rate.

Invespcro found that 37 percent of shoppers clicked a recommended product during their first return visit to a site.

Similarly, shoppers that click on product recommendations are four and a half times more likely to add items to the cart and complete a purchase.

Amazon, for example, recommends products based on previous purchases or items you looked …read more

Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog

Author: Aaron