Are you struggling with converting your site visitors into paying customers?

Most e-commerce store owners face this issue.

You prop up your virtual storefront, showcase your products, and people actually start dropping in. You get excited for a minute—then the sales report comes in. 

“Total sales: $0.00.”

Don’t worry, no one expects 100% of their traffic to convert into paying customers. 

But there are ways to convert MORE of them.

Here are seven easy ways to maximize your e-commerce conversion rates and boost profits:

1. Create referral programs

Turn your site visitors into salespeople with a referral program. 

Look for affiliate marketing platforms with features suited to your goals. 

Tapfiliate, for example, lets you create white label referral programs. ClickBank, on the other hand, is popular for its large database of products and affiliates.

Referral programs let you leverage word-of-mouth marketing to increase buyer confidence. It also lets others handle the promotional heavy lifting while you focus on improving your products and running your e-commerce business.

2. Promote limited-time deals

Limited-time deals let you leverage the audience’s fear of missing out (FOMO) to spur conversions.

To heighten their sense of urgency, keep the promo’s duration short and send email alerts as it expires. Publish announcements on social media posts, stories, website banners, and so on.

In the days or weeks leading to your promo, build hype on social media with subtle hints on what’s coming. 

For example, run polls on Instagram or Facebook asking users what makes a “perfect deal” for them—be it freebies, huge discounts, or free shipping. Use your findings to fine-tune your limited-time promotion before the planned date.

If that doesn’t work, use viral hashtags on Instagram to increase the visibility of your posts and be able to gather even more data. The more visibility your posts get, the more feedback you can get from your audience.

3. Turn past customers into brand ambassadors

Encourage past customers to submit user-generated content to win the trust of new customers. 

User-generated content or UGC is a type of content bucket published by the online audience. It can refer to a customer review, testimonial, or social media posts that feature your product or brand. 

An easy way to encourage UGC is to automate review requests via email. 

Email marketing solutions like Mailchimp and Sendinblue have ready-to-use automation workflows for this. Just use their follow-up email template, write your message, and watch the reviews pile in.

You can also use social media listening platforms to look for UGC that’s already there. Alternatively, use the built-in search tool of social media websites to look for brand mentions or hashtags.

4. Use chatbots and serve customers 24/7

Chatbots allow e-commerce customers to have self-guided experiences on your website. They can be programmed to answer frequently asked questions, provide self-service support options, and accept requests for a live agent. 

Some chatbot software like Formito can also integrate with project roadmap software like Monday.com to turn internal information into chatbot scripts. 

Most importantly, chatbots can provide assistance to site visitors 24/7—and they won’t ask for overtime fees. This is perfect for e-commerce brands catering to international shoppers with varying time zones.  

5. Send birthday offers 

Most people are in a buying mood on their birthdays. 

Take advantage of this by automating birthday offers via email. 

Use email marketing platforms to implement the necessary automation workflow in no time. Just be sure to offer something better than your usual promos to make the occasion extra special. 

While you’re at it, create share-worthy content and slide them into birthday emails as “must-reads.” This strategy can be used in other email marketing campaigns as well, including monthly newsletters, re-engagement campaigns, and cart abandonment emails.

6. Show scarcity 

Other than launching limited-time deals, you can also trigger your audience’s fear of missing out by displaying the number of items left for a product. 

E-commerce platforms like Shopify support plug-and-play inventory counter apps that achieve this effect. If you’re handling low sales volumes, you can also manually adjust the available number of stocks each time you make a sale.

This strategy banks on the intrinsic value of scarcity, which encourages potential customers to check out “before someone beats them to it.” 

You can take this strategy to the next level by launching special edition products with limited stocks. Use it as a selling point to convince more visitors to convert and do it fast.

7. Borrow content inspiration from top-selling competitors

Advertising and special offers may provide your e-commerce business with short-term results. 

But your endgame is your content marketing strategy.

Content marketing ensures your e-commerce store gets recurring, high-quality traffic in the long run. It allows you to pull in site visitors from unpaid channels, primarily search engines and social media. 

The problem is, content marketing takes time to deliver results. 

Your first challenge is conducting content research, which involves understanding your target audience and discovering content topics that reel in prospective buyers. 

You can skip this part through competitor content analysis. 

The game plan involves three simple and repeatable steps:

• Step 1: Identify your top competitors
• Step 2: Look at their top-performing content 
• Step 3: Create something better

By spying on competitors, you capitalize on the time, effort, and resources THEY invested to create content pieces that sell. 

To make competitor research easier, consider using tools like SpyFu, Semrush, and Ahrefs.

E-commerce conversion rate optimization: FAQs

Why is conversion rate optimization important in e-commerce?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)  increases the likelihood of e-commerce website visitors to convert into paying customers. With CRO, you could be wasting thousands of dollars on traffic generation tactics that don’t affect your bottom line. 

How to increase your e-commerce conversion rate?

Top tactics to improve your e-commerce conversion rate:

• Use referral programs
• Promote limited-time offers
• Leverage User-Generated Content
• Use chatbots
• Send birthday special offers
• Show the number of stocks left
• Use competitor analysis

What is a good conversion rate for e-commerce?

A conversion rate of anywhere between 1% and 4% is considered good in the e-commerce space. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but remember that successful e-commerce websites generate tens of thousands of visitors per month. 

Conclusion

The tips above should be enough to help any e-commerce brand convert website traffic into loyal customers.

Just don’t forget that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in e-commerce.

Before implementing a strategy, make sure it aligns with your goals and audience’s preferences. 

Add your brand’s identity into each campaign to make the experience more compelling and memorable to your would-be customers.