CONVERSION RATES

June 24, 2021

When it comes to creating a successful store, understanding your metrics is key. It will help you understand which products and campaigns are performing well, where your customers are finding you, and help you make important marketing decisions.

A good place to start is your main GearLaunch dashboard where you can get an overview of how your store is performing. You can check for purchases, your profit, store visits, and conversion rates, which we’ll be discussing below.

What is a Conversion Rate?

The conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. For example, if your online store receives 200 visitors in a month and you have 50 sales, the conversion rate would be 50 divided by 200, or 25%.

Another example is, let’s say you ran an ad campaign on Facebook that reached an audience of 5,000 people. Out of those 5,000 people, a total of 100 users clicked on the ad (which is the conversion event). Therefore, the conversion rate for this campaign can be calculated as follows:

100/5000 = 0.02, or a conversion rate of 2%

Simply put, your conversion rate is the percentage of your store’s visitors that do what you want them to do. A conversion can be anything depending on your business goals, here are a few examples:

  • Making a purchase
  • Submitting information on a form
  • Signing up for a subscription
  • Registering on your website
  • Downloading something like a book or an app

Your conversion rate will be indicated in your seller’s dashboard as follows:

To calculate it, divide the 67 “Unique Orders” by the 2,257 “Unique Store Visits”.

Why Your Conversion Rate is Important

Tracking conversion rates allows you to measure the performance of your store. Understanding what percentage of users are completing the goals that drive your business lets you understand the success of your page and where you can improve. Improving your conversion rate allows you to get more sales with the same amount of traffic.

Let’s say you’ve made a few changes to your store based on customer feedback. You still have 200 people visiting your store, but now 100 people buy something. You’ve now doubled your conversation rate (from 25% to 50%) with just a few changes. You’re now making more money than ever before!

How to Improve Your Conversion Rate

The process of identifying conversion goals, calculating conversion rates, and optimizing your store to improve conversion rates is known as conversion rate optimization or CRO. CRO is done by making guesses for why visitors aren’t converting and figuring out how you can fix it.

It’s a constantly changing science that takes time and practice. Once you understand everything, it will be an invaluable tool for your business.

Here are a few different CRO techniques to encourage customers to explore your store and make purchases:

1. A/B Testing

A/B testing is an essential tool when it comes to CRO. A/B testing is one big experiment. You take 2 versions of the same thing, like a picture, and see how customers react to each version. It can be as small as changing a product’s name or as big as changing a product’s picture. Whichever version performs better is the winner and stays.

Let’s say you’ve created your product page for a t-shirt and have one image of just the t-shirt and a blank background. You share the new page on your social media to get people to look at your page.

The next day you keep the product page the same, but change the image to someone wearing the t-shirt instead. You do the same thing and share it on your social media to get people to look at it.

Now, you look at the numbers. If you notice one version doing better than the other, that means you should use the winning version. You’d be surprised at how doing small changes have large ripple effects.

Of course, to do A/B testing, you have to have enough visitors to actually give you helpful info. Having too small of an audience won’t help you figure out what’s better.

If you don’t have a big enough audience, you can ask people you trust which version they think would do better. You can also try other techniques until you have a big enough audience.

2. Using Analytics

Data is going to be your best friend while you work on conversion rates. See how many people visit your store, how long they stay, and if they put things into a cart, etc. By having all this data, you’ll be able to see where you should make your next moves.

A great place to start is your GearLaunch dashboard:

3. Creating More CTAs

We’ve talked about the power of CTAs (Calls to Action) before, and we’re talking about it again. There are many ways you can create CTAs: buy buttons, links, email headers, and text-based CTAs. Make sure you strike the right balance between attention-grabbing and not being obnoxious.

4. Paid Ads

Paid ads are an easy way to reach people if you have the money for them. Of course, ads have to be well-written and engaging. You can put ads on Google or on a variety of different social media platforms.

5. Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping is a great way to convert people into buying your products. A lot of times shipping fees will be a deal-breaker and they’ll abandon their cart. According to the National Retail Foundation (NRF), 75% of customers now expect free shipping on orders, even if they’re under $50.

To offset the free shipping, make sure you create a minimum purchase threshold, like spending $50 gives customers free shipping. 65% of consumers look up free-shipping requirements before adding anything to their cart, so make sure you display your threshold boldly.

6. Discount Codes

Similar to free shipping, discount codes are an excellent incentive for customers to make a purchase. It can also help you increase your email audience if you ask them to put in their email to get their discount.

Here’s how you can add a promotion code to your GearLaunch store:

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7. Reducing Cart Abandonment/Retargeting

If you reduce cart abandonment, you’ll increase your conversions. Using software like Klaviyo, Rejoiner, or Keptify will give a customer a little nudge to come back and finish their purchase.

Retargeting is similar to reducing cart abandonment, but it’s for people who visited your store or clicked on a product page. It’s a great way to increase your conversion rate without gaining new visitors.

With retargeting software like Aimtell, you track people who’ve visited your website and deliver online ads to them as they go to other sites. You can also use ads on social media and email campaigns to grab their attention.

It’s a gentle reminder that they looked at your store and had an interest in you.

8. Have Good Quality Images

This cannot be said enough, good quality images are key to any successful business. No one wants to look at blurry or pixelated photos. Make sure that all your pictures are clear and interesting to look at. Humans are visual creatures and many people will buy based on images alone.

9. Prove to Your Customers Your Store is Safe to Shop at

Security is always a concern for people online shopping. Make sure to highlight that your site is secure on product pages and checkout. You can do this by offering more than one payment method and showing commonly used credit card images in the payment method section.

10. Product Reviews

Product reviews are a great way to build trust with new customers. New customers are far more likely to trust other customers than the store itself. It also helps them know how clothes fit or how colors look in real life. We have great tips on how to get product reviews for your print on demand store.

11. Use Social Media

Social media is a great way to show off products, get reviews, and grab new potential customers. You need to ensure that your social media profiles are interesting and engaging with customers. Making your store more accessible will increase visitors, which will hopefully increase purchases.

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