For ecommerce stores its nearly the most exciting time of year, with huge potential to increase your revenue during the holidays.
You have probably already lined up your offers and marketing campaigns for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.
But is your website good enough to convert much of this increased amount of traffic into the most sales possible?
You could be easily converting even more of these visitors with some quick CRO improvements to your website. Meaning higher revenues for you.
How? By fixing your conversion barriers that are confusing or annoying your visitors and causing them to leave without purchasing.
Luckily there is still time to make these CRO quick wins before the holidays. So let’s get started…
Clearly show your UVP on all entry pages
UVP = unique value proposition. In other words, why visitors should buy from your website instead of competitors.
Many ecommerce websites don’t explain this well, meaning that visitors will more likely go to a competitor website that explains it better.
The biggest problem is actually hiding it away on your website — don’t presume your visitors know your UVP!
That is why it’s essential to show your UVP on your entry pages to ensure visitors always see it, no matter what page they arrive on.
One of the best ways to do this is by adding a UVP bar below your navigation menu with some key benefits/risk reducers, with engaging icons. AO.com do this very well.
Always mention your UVP on your homepage above the page fold, either in the form of a headline or bullet points with icons. Satya.ca do this well.
And if you aren’t sure what your top entry pages are, you can check this in your ‘Landing Pages’ report in Google Analytics.
Don’t forget to promote UVP in your Google Ads and Facebook Ads too, as that will increase click through rates, and improve message continuation.
And lastly, don’t be satisified with your current UVP. You should always try to improve it to beat your competitors, for example by offering a 110% price match guarantee or a longer warranty.
Improve your filters on categories/search results
Category pages and search results are very important for visitors to help them browse, particularly if they don’t know exactly what they want.
And having poor filters on them often mean 100’s of products for visitors to scroll through and check, paradox of choice, and much higher exit rates.
That is why its essential to improve your filters on category pages and search results so visitors can easily drill down and find exactly what they need.
This is what you need to do before the holidays:
- Don’t hide them away — make them always present at side or top
- Ensure you can choose multiple filters at the same time
- Check that your filters are easy to use on mobile
- Add more filter types — not just brand, price, but also use types, etc.
JohnLewis.com understand how important this is in particular, and they have excellent filters, with many different useful ways of filtering.
There are many good Shopify Apps that will improve your filtering in time for the holidays. One of the better ones that I have used with clients is this one: https://apps.shopify.com/product-filter-search
Promote your shipping and returns incentives
Not only does free or low cost shipping really help increase your converison rates, but many of your competitors are offering it.
And now many smarter ecommerce stores are also offering free returns to make it easier for visitors to try products with lower risk.
But don’t just improve your shipping and returns incentives…
Many ecommerce stores make the mistake of hiding their shipping and returns promotions or not making them clear enough.
Therefore this is what you need to do as soon as possible:
- Promote them better by showing near your add-to- cart buttons, on your homepage and in your UVP bar. This ensures they get noticed.
- Simplify long and confusing shipping and returns policy pages.
- Always include links for shipping and returns in the footer.
Everlane.com do this very well by promoting their free shipping and returns promotions among their product photos so its hard to not see them.
Improve your product imagery and include videos
It’s obviously essential to show photos of your products. But the bar for quality and number of product photos is now very high.
If you only have 1or 2 pictures, or they are low quality, you are going to lose sales to competitors who have more.
Before the holidays arrive its essential you do this:
- Get more photos taken of your most popular products — at least 3 per product, and include photos of them being used or worn.
- Increase the quality and resolution of your photos — this also means that your zoom will work better. Consider getting 360 photos created too.
- Create short videos of your most popular products in use — a video is worth 1000 photos! These should be under 1 minute and highlight your product being used and the features and benefits of it.
- Get customers to include photos with their reviews. To get this quicker you should email your customers and give anyone a gift that submits a photo.
- Ensure your image carousel works well on mobile, including swiping. Very important with such a high percentage of users now on mobile
Vashi.com does a particularly well for showing many images from different angles and being worn by different people, and also include video.
Use urgency and scarcity for your holiday sales
People don’t like to miss out lower prices or products due to the fear of missing out — FOMO
You can take use this priciniple by letting visitors know that your holiday offers are ending soon, and to let them know when stock is running low.
To convert more visitors for your holiday offers you should do these:
- Use sale-ending countdown timer in sticky header, and on product pages
- Mention this urgency in your Google Ads and Facebook Ads
- Send email reminders the week before and day before sale ends
- When less than 10 products, prominently show the number remaining
Nectarsleep.com prominently highlight that their offer is ending soon, and indicate low stock.
Fix your hidden ‘broken shit’
It doesn’t matter how well you improve your website if it has ‘broken shit’ on it that you haven’t noticed before.
And I’m not talking about 404 issues/broken links — its less visible things impacting user experience that you may not have checked very well.
Like your Shopify App breaking your filters on some devices or not showing correct search results. Or your cookie banners blocking CTA buttons.
Here are some of the other most common ecommerce broken shit:
- Broken layout on small width devices like iPhone SE 2019
- Broken or not understandable field error validation in checkout
- Mega menus that cover important content and CTA buttons
- Very slow loading images on mobile product pages
See more examples of common ‘broken shit’ to fix
The best way to discover this hidden broken shit is by using a tool like BrowserStack.com to check your website in the most common browsers and devices. You should also be doing regular user testing with a tool like Userfeel.
Fixing these has a huge positive impact on your conversion rate and sales.
Capture more visitor emails with a good incentive
Around 98% of your visitors won’t buy, even during the holidays. And new visitors will buy even less.
Therefore you also need to improve your website so that it captures more emails of your holiday visitors and converts them in the future.
The best way of doing this is by offering your visitors a more compelling email capture incentive, and promote it better.
- Don’t use entry popups — they often annoy visitors who often close them. Exit-intent popups or ones after 60 seconds usually convert better.
- A/B test different incentives, like a new customer discount, a related buying guide, or a contest or giveaway. You should also test the imagery and wording you are using in them to engage visitors better.
- Optimize your follow-up emails too — as they are just as important as your website. In particular you should set up email automations to give your subscribers useful content and guides, not just offers and discounts.
Bonobos.com have an great email capture incentive that offers 15% off discount for the first order.
So what are you waiting for? You don’t have long to make these improvements before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You will certainly increase your conversion rate and generate much greater revenue from your holiday traffic!
These fixes and improvements also act as a great CRO foundation for you to continue building on after the holidays are over.
