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LEARN ABOUT HOW CONVERSION RATES HELP PRINT-ON-DEMAND SALES

October 22, 2021

Conversion rates can be a complicated thing to explain. We’re going to do our best to teach what a conversion is, how to calculate your conversion rate, and how to optimize your conversion rates. It will take time to understand and learn, but once you do, you’ll be surprised how much conversion rates can affect print-on-demand businesses.

What is a Conversion?

A conversion is basically when someone does something you want them to do. For example, buying one of your products, but there are all kinds of conversions. Conversions can be as small as just visiting your site or as large as making a giant purchase.

Create Conversion Goals

It’s important to make conversion goals. Don’t be afraid to start small and work your way up to larger goals. A good set of goals are:

  • Getting a certain number of visitors
  • A certain number of people signing up for email campaigns/newsletters
  • Customers putting items in their carts
  • Customers making a purchase

How to Figure Out Your Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is the percentage of people who convert based on how many visitors you have.

A conversion rate is calculated by dividing your number of conversions by the number of store visitors and multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.

So for example, you have 100 people visit your store, and 25 people bought something. So your conversion rate would look like this:

Chalkboard background with "25 / 100 X 100 = 25%" in white

That’s a great start for a small business, but what if you want to get bigger? You could hope that you get 200 visitors and 50 people buying things, but that’s not a guarantee. You could get 200 visitors but still only have 25 people buying. That would look like this:

Chalkboard background with "25 / 200 X 100 = 12.5%" in white

Meaning your conversion rate is cut in half.

This uncertainty is why you want to optimize your website to get more conversions. It can be easier to try to get more conversions from your current audience than relying on new visitors.

Knowing how conversion rates help print-on-demand businesses understand how successful their store is, what needs to change, and what needs to be scrapped completely.

Conversion Rate Optimization Techniques

Similar to search engine optimization (SEO), conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about getting the highest conversion rates possible. It’s a constantly changing science that takes time and practice. Once you understand everything, it will be an invaluable tool for your business.

You can use a few different CRO techniques to encourage customers to explore your store and make purchases.

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.

2 different images of the same pillow as an example of A/B testing

Let’s continue using the photo example. 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Each generation has different expectations on shipping, so depending on your audience, free shipping may become essential. Baby Boomers expect free shipping the most, 88% of them want it. Generation X is 77%, Millennials are 61%, and Generation Z is 76%.

Infographic showing how much of each generation expects free shipping

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.

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. We have a whole video about how to create promotion codes.

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.

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.

Image of a pillow, one side is clear, the other is blurry showing good and bad quality photos

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.

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.

Use Social Media

Social media is a great way to show off products, get reviews, and grabbing 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.

Which Website Pages to Work On for Better Conversion Rates

Another important aspect of CRO, it’s how your site runs. If it doesn’t load properly or takes too long, then you’ll probably lose a customer to a site that performs better.

Homepage

Your homepage is what your customers see first, so make sure it looks good. You want your home page to entice people and encourage them to explore the rest of the site.

It’s best to keep things simple because no one wants to work hard just to navigate a website or store. Use visuals to grab visitors’ attention that way they stay long enough to see what your store is all about.

About Us

Creating an About Us page will change you from a faceless, generic store on the Internet, to someone that customers can feel like they know. Make sure to tell your story on your About Us page, why you opened the store, and what you hope your future will be like.

If you need an example, check out our About Us page!

GearLaunch's About Us page

Product Pages

Each product page has to be easy to use, show what the product is/does, and entice customers to buy. As mentioned before, make sure the images of your products are clear and highlight the best aspects of that product. If possible, show products from every angle and people using them.

Product pages should have the price, delivery time, and stock of the product stated plainly and in an easy-to-find place. If you don’t state things clearly, customers may abandon their cart when there are surprise charges.

Check Out Page

You need to make the final step, checking out, as easy as possible. One wrong move and a frustrated customer will leave and not come back.

The main way to make things easier is to make sure you show everything that’s in their cart, that way it’s easy for them to double-check their purchases. It will also remind them that they have things in their cart as they’re browsing.

Screenshot of a checkout page

Contact Us

Customer service is key to keeping your conversion rate high. People want to be able to contact you fast and easily. There should be at least 2 ways to contact you on your contact page.

You can include an email address or contact form, your social media links, or even a phone number (if you want to).

Luckily for you, GearLaunch helps you with customer service through many different channels including phone, email, and social media.

Tools to Help with Conversion Rates

The Internet is full of tools that can assist you while you work on improving your conversion rate. Here are a few of our favorites:

  • Google Page Speed Insights: Make sure your store is running fast and smoothly with this free Google tool. If your website is slow this tool will offer suggestions to make your site speedy.
  • Active Campaign: Active Campaign is full of different options when it comes to plans and prices. Their plans range from $9.99 to $229.99. They’ll help with marketing, sales, service, and overall support.
  • Similar Web: This company will help you with gathering data about your customers and store. They offer 2 plans, one that’s free and one you’ll have to talk to a consultant about to find out the price.
  • Lucky Orange: For $10 a month, this company will give you all the information you need to know about your customers. They offer a dashboard that will compare statistics, keywords, and locations that are driving traffic to your site.
  • Google Analytics: This free tool will help gather and analyze all the data you need to optimize your conversion rates. It’s free to use and easy to understand. Perfect for someone just jumping into this new world.
  • HubSpot: This free tool will help you make an exit-intent popup CTA and sync with your website to learn more about how your customers look through your store.

Are You Ready to Jump into the World of Conversion Rates?

Now you’ve got the basic idea of what a conversion is, how you can calculate the rate, and gain more customers. It’s time to put all this knowledge to the test and try out some of these techniques. You’ll be surprised at the changes it will make in your numbers.

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