7 Ways Ecommerce Sites Can Optimize Conversions

A user-centric CRO strategy can help you both improve the user experience and boost your sales, long-term. We’ve compiled 7 actionable steps to improving your conversion rate—and delighting your customers. 

7 ways to increase conversions on your ecommerce website

By designing and optimizing your site with your users in mind, you can move website visitors through the customer funnel towards conversion, and encourage existing customers to come back again and again.

Use this list of 7 key CRO best practices to understand your customers more deeply and increase your ecommerce conversions.

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1. Understand your customers 

A recent survey on 111 failed startups showed that 35% listed 'no market need' as a top reason for their inability to get conversions. Clearly, they didn’t understand their audience and what they were looking for.

Prioritize discovering your customers’ pain points, what they want, and what makes them convert—then shape your pages and product around what you learn. 

To gain valuable customer insights, use techniques like:

• Running focus groups either with new potential customers  or loyal existing customers

• Asking customers for feedback after a live chat, email, or interaction with customer support

• Asking customers discovery or follow up questions using Surveys

Implement Hotjar’s Surveys and Feedback tools to ask users key questions about their experience in real time, and discover whether your website is meeting their needs. 

You can set up Surveys to appear: 

• Immediately when a page loads (a good option for getting general feedback or first impressions) 

• After a specified time delay (if you want to ask users a question once they’ve already spent some time on your site) 

• When the user abandons a page

• When the user scrolls halfway down the page

2. Optimize your checkout process to reduce cart abandonment

A customer just added an item to their cart and is one step away from converting. They arrive at the checkout page and... they click away. Sound familiar?   A recent study showed a whopping 74.52% card abandonment average in ecommerce.

Ouch.

So what causes card abandonment? In many cases, it's down to a lengthy or complicated checkout process that requires customers to fill out long forms, create an account, or click through several steps before seeing key information like shipping, taxes, and fees.

Optimize your checkout process and make it more user-friendly by:

• Reducing the number of steps or pages in your checkout flow

• Including progress indicators to show customers how far they have to go

• Automatically filling in customer information where possible (e.g. an autofill for shipping address)

• Making it easy for customers to change or edit their order

• Displaying shipping, taxes, and fees at an early stage.  

In the case of a one-page checkout process, all the elements (e.g., progress bar, form fields) should be “above the fold” so users see them.

Website analytics tools help you see where dropoffs happen on key checkout pages. Maybe you see that customers are exiting a checkout process late in the game—which indicates that while they want to make a purchase, they’re getting blocked or frustrated along the way, or changing their mind due to some new information.    

Use Hotjar Session Recordings to see how users interact with your checkout pages across a full session. Filter to view Recordings for users who’ve dropped off the purchase process to understand what went wrong. Maybe you see they’re getting frustrated clicking on a form field that doesn’t work, so a quick bug fix will solve the issue. Or they could be growing impatient with multiple form fields or pages, so adding an autofill feature will help.  

3. Collect user feedback with on-page forms

On-page feedback forms let you directly ask your website visitors how they felt about their website, a product they purchased, and anything else related to your brand and business. This helps you optimize conversions by removing blockers and tailoring your site and products to what users want to see.

Add feedback forms to key ecommerce pages—your product pages, landing pages, checkout page, and/or post-purchase pages—to hear what users are thinking ‘in the wild’ as they interact with your site. Make sure they’re short, streamlined, and easy for users to address in a few clicks. 

Consider these on-page surveys and feedback options across your site:

Survey popups

Set timed, targeted surveys to pop up at certain points in the customer journey on your site, or in response to certain user actions. Design short, compelling surveys that will attract users to take the time to respond. Avoid popups that seem 'in your face' or block key content—Hotjar’s unobtrusive Survey tools are a great choice.

For example, you can use Hotjar exit-intent Surveys to understand why visitors are exiting your site, so you address their issues and make future visitors more likely to convert.  

Use the following questions as starting points:

• Quick Question – if you decided not to [action e.g. signup/buy] today what stopped you?

• Quick Question – What is your biggest concern or hesitation about buying our product?

• Quick Question – What is missing on this page?

Inline or embedded forms

An inline form shows up as part of your actual content, similar to a contact form. Inline forms are a good option for engaging with visitors on specific pages. For example, you could place an embedded inline form on the page customers see once they’ve successfully completed checkout to get feedback on their purchase process.

Feedback widgets

Subtle Feedback widgets that show up as side tabs or floating buttons, are a great way to let users tell you their opinions or issues as they browse.  With the Hotjar Feedback widget, users can rate their experience, answer questions, and add screen captures of website elements they had problems with. 

For example, a Feedback widget on a product page might ask customers, "How likely are you to buy this product?" with answer choices ranging from "Very Likely" to "Not Likely", and a followup question for users to explain why or why not.

This type of feedback gives you valuable context on what users are thinking and feeling as they consider making a purchase, helping you to quickly remove any blockers to conversion before they affect more customers.

4. Identify barriers in your customer funnel

Your customer funnels are important paths that lead your prospects towards conversion. 

A simple ecommerce customer funnel might look like:

Homepage > Product Page > Cart > Checkout

It’s important to identify specific barriers in your funnel where you’re losing potential customers, so you can focus your ecommerce funnel optimization on areas of friction. 

Use website analytics to identify which pages users  are visiting, how long they’re spending, and where you’re losing them. 

Then, use Hotjar to collect qualitative and quantitative data on customers’ experiences throughout the funnel, and use it to improve their path.  For example, you could watch Session Recordings of customers who exit or bounce to see what happened on their journey. Maybe they’re rage-clicking or u-turning because of a broken link or a bug—and a quick fix will decrease dropoffs. If they were clicking around in confusion and couldn't find what they were looking for on your site, you may want to optimize your site navigation and search features. 

You can also ask users directly what's blocking them using Feedback and Survey tools. Perhaps they’re losing interest on key pages because your copy and images aren’t conveying the value of your products—so refreshing your content could boost conversions.  

5.  Understand how customers respond with A/B testing

 Use A/B testing to try out different versions of a page or feature, and see which performs better in terms of conversion rate and user engagement. You can also ask users to give you feedback on test pages and check for website bugs through your A/B experiments. 

A/B testing is great for checking how real users respond to new page elements like headings, sales copy, and calls to action  (CTAs), and helping you understand which changes will bring your customers closer to conversion. 

For example, you can run an A/B test to compare headline options: split users into groups and either show them a page with a "New arrivals for the season" headline or one saying "End of season sale – Up to 50% off". 

Then, check sales conversion rates for both groups across a certain timeframe. Once you’ve established which variation leads to stronger conversions, use Hotjar Recordings, Heatmaps, Surveys and Feedback tools to get deeper, more granular insights from your A/B tests. Hotjar also integrates with A/B testing tools like Optimizely, Omniconvert, and Google Optimize.

6. Invest in high-quality product images

Product images help customers visualize what a product is like and how it could fit into their lives, making them more likely to convert. Compelling graphics are also a great way to capture users’ attention as they scroll through pages.

People who search and shop on their smartphones at least 1X per week say product images are the feature they turn to most, so using relevant, high-quality images is a key CRO strategy.

Make sure your product photos are high-quality, clear, and bright. Showing the product in use gives visitors a better idea of what they're looking at. 

Think like your customers. What would they want to see before buying? What kind of presentation would catch their attention? For example, a shot of a coffee mug placed on a table with a laptop, books, and other items that suggest productivity and creative thinking might be more effective than a picture of the same mug against a plain white background.

7. Include compelling CTAs

Your product pages should have a compelling CTA that clearly conveys the value of your product and encourages visitors to take action. 

Your CTA placement can determine how effective it is at getting users to click. Place your CTA prominently on the page, above the fold where possible, and make sure it stands out from the rest of the page content. Design the CTA button to draw visitors’ attention with a bright color or an eye-catching shape.

Use tools like Hotjar Heatmaps to see whether users are clicking on your CTA, or whether it’s being overlooked.

Effective CTA design is about finding and testing the right combination of size, color, placement, and wording. 

A great CTA makes sure shoppers know what to do—and feel confident doing it. 

CTAs are also an opportunity to add additional key messaging or paths to information users might need, like:

• Special offers details 

• Product trends information

• A link to your delivery and returns policy

You can also use CTAs to create a sense of urgency, by adding a countdown timer to avail of a special offer or using product testimonials as a nudge.

3 common ecommerce CRO mistakes—and how to avoid them

Anticipating common pitfalls in ecommerce CRO can make a big difference to your conversion rates and overall sales. Make sure you're on the right track by avoiding these three mistakes.

1. Not having clear KPIs for your CRO project

Jumping into your CRO project without setting clear objectives, benchmarks, and KPIs sets you up to lose focus and team alignment.You won't have a way to measure the effects of the changes you're making, and it will be difficult to show the impact of your efforts to stakeholders. 

To avoid this, set clear KPIs from the start, both for macro-conversions (like the number of visitors who make a purchase) and micro-conversions (smaller actions like a user watching a promotional video or adding an item to their cart or wishlist). Set clear targets for each, like a 5% increase in macro conversions over a six-month period.

Establishing a baseline is especially important before starting experiments, so you can accurately test and track improvements.

2. Testing without a roadmap

If you run CRO tests without a clear plan, you risk getting inaccurate results. For example, if you don’t think about timing, you may end up running ecommerce tests during the holiday season, when page variations tend to show no difference from the control simply because people are already in a spending mood. 

Avoid this by creating a clear roadmap for your tests. This will help you plan ahead and track your experiment’s timelines and progress every stage for more reliable results.

3. Changing too many design elements at once

Page changes, updates, and optimizations are important to improving customers’ experience on your site. But too many changes can confuse visitors—or confuse your tests.

For example, if you're testing two different designs and both have entirely different layouts, colors, and images, it can be hard to determine which design is performing better. In most cases, it's best to make small changes and test them one at a time. This way, you can isolate the change and see how it affects your conversion rate.

Unless you’re doing a complete rebranding, it’s a good idea to avoid sudden, dramatic design changes. Small, incremental changes are less likely to disrupt customer loyalty and brand recognition, so you can optimize your site without sacrificing your brand identity.

Take your first steps towards great ecommerce CRO 

Conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process. As your business grows and changes, your CRO strategy should evolve. By continuously testing and making small improvements, you can optimize your site to its full potential and turn more visitors into customers.

By understanding your visitors, identifying where—and why—they drop off, optimizing key checkout and product pages, and running high-quality experiments, you can make informed design decisions that drive more conversions.