13 Ways to Increase Conversion Rates on Your Shopify Store
In this article, we'll share some of the best tips to increase conversion rate for your Shopify store.
Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for any online store. Anything you can do to boost conversions will have a direct impact on your bottom line and profitability.
Increasing your conversion rate is doable with some careful planning and thinking. Keep reading to learn our top 13 ways to increase your Shopify store's conversion rate.
Three Things to Know About Conversion Rates
Before you start reading into your conversion rate, make sure you know what a conversion is, how conversion rate works, and a little context around conversion rate.
A conversion can be anything you want it to be; sometimes an email signup or a form submission can count as a conversion. But with ecommerce websites, a conversion usually means a sale.
Aside from knowing what a conversion means for your business, here are three more things you should know in the context of your Shopify conversion rate.
How to calculate your conversion rate percentage
The formula used to calculate conversion rate is:
Conversion rate = (number of orders / visits to your ecommerce store) * 100
So if you have 2000 visits to your ecommerce store and 75 of them buy something, then your conversion rate is (75/2000) * 100 = 3.75%
Conversion rate is based on visits, not users
Generally, conversion rate is based on visits (meaning each time someone lands on your site), rather than users (each unique visitor to your site).
One user can record multiple visits to your Shopify store. If you take calculate it by user rather than visit, you can end up with an inflated conversion rate compared to the average.
Unless you specifically want to calculate how many users (i.e. unique website visitors) convert into customers, make sure you take the number for "visits" in your analytics when calculating your Shopify conversion rate.
Even a good conversion rate is still relatively low
The average conversion rate for ecommerce is 1.89%. This is important context to know when looking at the conversion rate on your Shopify site.
You might think, for example, a 3% conversion rate is low. But this would actually be significantly above average.
Also understand that the average conversion rate varies depending on industry and many other factors. Check out this post to find benchmarks on conversion rate by industry, device, traffic source and more.
13 Ways to Increase Conversion Rate for Shopify Stores
Now let's dive into some of the best ways to increase conversions on your Shopify store and get more sales from your traffic.
1. Make sure your store is mobile-friendly
More than half of the US population have made at least one purchase using their phone. And mobile commerce in the US is projected to be worth more than $710 billion in 2025.
Today, your store needs to be mobile-friendly. You're leaving too much money on the table if you give a sub-par user experience to approximately half of your potential customers.
To really optimize your store for mobile, take it one step further and create your own mobile app. Only 12% of consumers think shopping on the mobile web is convenient; mobile apps make it much easier for shoppers on mobile devices.
Mobile apps boast even higher conversion rates than mobile websites. An app icon on a user's phone screen is a constant reminder of your ecommerce store. It also is far easier to use than a mobile website and lets you send push notifications and offer other things, such as exclusive mobile coupons.
To learn how you can turn your Shopify store into a mobile app (without development experience or a huge budget), click here to book a demo of MobiLoud, together with an interactive preview of your site as an app.
2. Get email signups
Email might seem old-fashioned, but it is still extremely powerful.
One important stat to note is that the average conversion rate from email is 5.20% - significantly higher than the overall average of 1.89%.
The more traffic you're able to send to your site from your email list, the higher your conversion rate should be, as you'll have more warm, familiar customers coming to your site.
Using emails, you can send exclusive offers, remind shoppers of what you offer, and keep your brand at the front of your customers' minds.
3. Personalize everything
Another great way to boost conversions is to personalize the shopping experience for your customers.
Taking what you know about your customers and using that info to target content directly at them can help deliver huge benefits. It's particularly useful for existing customers. Once someone creates an account on your store, you can take advantage of their shopping habits and past purchases.
Use this info to recommend additional purchases, target your audience more closely by offering different products to different groups, or send customized emails to your biggest customers. The possibilities are endless, so start brainstorming what data you have and how you can use it.
4. Show shoppers what other people are buying
Social proof is a powerful way to boost conversions. And the simplest way to show social proof is to give an idea of what other shoppers are doing on your site.
A "best sellers" or similar section in your app and website is a great way to take advantage of this. If space is at a premium, even a "best seller" badge attached to a product can make a difference.
5. Make your call to action (CTA) clear and concise
It should be simple, quick and obvious for anyone to add a product to their cart from any product page.
This could be a "Buy Now" button or "Add to Cart". Whatever wording you use, make sure it's clear and stands out on the page, leaving no confusion for shoppers.
6. Make checking out easy
Keep your checkout simple and hassle-free. A complicated checkout experience is sure to end up with frustrated customers and high cart abandonment rates.
You can do a few things to avoid this and ensure your checkout experience always meets a certain bar.
That includes accepting multiple payment options, simplifying text inputs (saving information for repeat customers), and keeping your whole checkout flow on one page.
7. Offer guest checkout
As mentioned earlier, a great way to get data on your shoppers is by having them create an account with your Shopify store. However, forcing them to do this can hurt conversions.
Offering a guest checkout option will increase conversion rate and reduce cart abandonment by capturing potential customers who don't want to create an account.
8. Have accurate product descriptions
This might sound basic, but make sure you describe your products accurately. That means their names, what they can do, and how they could benefit buyers.
Don't exaggerate—this often turns people off. Instead, be clear and direct about what a product does and how it could help someone if they purchased it. Remember to clarify why the product is unique to you and why they should buy it from you and not elsewhere.
9. Display high-quality product images
Images are the first thing people look at on your product pages, and they do a large part of selling the product.
Make sure you include relevant lifestyle images along with more standard product images. These help shoppers see the product being used in real life, and gives a better idea of the size, shape and dimensions of the product.
10. Reviews and social proof
Customers trust other people, not brands. That’s why displaying customer testimonials and reviews is an essential part of conversion rate optimization.
Product reviews should be clearly written by real users and available on all your product pages. Make sure the reviews on the page match those specific products, too.
Don't curate your reviews; showing a mix average or negative reviews alongside good reviews helps make your best reviews feel more trustworthy.
11. Use urgency and scarcity
Play on human psychology to boost conversions by using urgency and scarcity.
This makes the customer feel like they have to act immediately to take advantage of a time-sensitive discount, or a product that's running out of stock.
Try indicating low stock numbers, time-limited coupons, or offers that only apply to the next 100 shoppers. These tactics are widely used by ecommerce sites and proven to deliver higher conversion rates.
12. Make it easy to find things
Make it easy for shoppers by providing clear navigation and a smooth search experience.
Searching for products on your website should be simple and fast. A universal search bar on every page is a good start. Also, ensure it offers methods to filter search results, such as by price, rating, or other attributes.
Make sure your product hierarchy makes sense and that your categories are relevant. This helps people dig around and find what they're looking for in your Shopify store, which will translate to a higher conversion rate.
13. Clear and honest pricing
Unexpected fees or add-ons are a major driver of abandoned carts in ecommerce. It dissolves trust and hurts your conversion rate if your Shopify store shows one price upfront and another upon checkout.
Shipping is a common offender. Offer free shipping to reduce sticker shock; clearly state your shipping charges in product descriptions if you can't.
Include relevant fees like taxes in the product's price, instead of hitting the customer with unexpected fees once they reach checkout.
Final Thoughts on Conversion Rate Optimization for Shopify Stores
Increasing Shopify conversion rates is big business. Shopify store owners pay a lot of money for agencies, marketing professionals or apps that claim they can increase conversion rate for their store.
Yet doing so is not rocket science; it doesn't require four years of college, or a special set of skills. It only requires you to understand user behavior, and apply this, along with some best practices, to your Shopify store and product pages.
If we were to pinpoint one thing to do right now to increase conversion rate for your Shopify store, it would be to provide a better mobile experience.
The average conversion rate for mobile is about half that of desktop. Many ecommerce businesses are not mobile friendly. If yours is, you're ahead of the curve.
Building a mobile app is the best way to mobile-optimize your business. And it doesn't take a huge investment or a specialized team of developers to build one, if you use MobiLoud.
Get started with a free preview of your app, or schedule a free, personalized demo to find out how easy it is to create a mobile app based on your existing website with no coding required, and get a higher average conversion rate, along with improvements in many other key metrics for your Shopify site.
