What high-converting websites do differently

Whatever you sell – from shoes to shirts, cars to cakes – your website has one job: to convince customers to buy your products.

At every step of the customer journey – from the moment visitors arrive at your website to the final step of checking out – your website needs to persuade customers to purchase. Improving this process is known as conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

What’s your conversion rate?

The first step to driving more sales is to identify your current conversion rate. The formula for this is simple: Conversion Rate = Total Number of Conversions / Total Number of Sessions x 100

For example, let’s say that 200 sessions resulted in 10 orders. The equation for your conversion rate is: 10/200 x 100 = 5%

What’s a good conversion rate?

Conversion rates vary dramatically between industries, marketing channels and even countries. However, the average conversion rate across all industries generally ranges from 2.5 to 4 per cent.

Here’s what high-converting websites do differently:

1. They have great navigation

When customers land on your homepage, it’s crucial that they can find what they’re looking for quickly.

Your website should feature easy-to-use, intuitive navigation and clear information architecture (or hierarchy) so that all products are only ever a few clicks away from the homepage. If you have thousands of products, consider featuring a search bar prominently so your customers can navigate directly to the product they want, rather than trawling through categories.

And keep it simple: rotating banners, flashing graphics and video might look impressive, but if they distract from the purchasing process, they could be costing you sales.

Global retailer ASOS creates a superior customer experience through well-designed navigation – despite having many thousands of products. 

“[On ASOS] important pages are no more than two clicks away, discounts are displayed clearly incentivising purchasing, and there are almost unlimited filters to find exactly what you need,” says SEO Works team leader Bradley Webster. “ASOS’s URL structure also adopts an approach that reflects the site hierarchy, having folders for previous categories e.g. /mens/shirts/check-shirts/.”

2. They load fast

Every second counts when it comes to increasing website conversions – in fact, every millisecond counts. 

Decreasing mobile site load times by just 0.1 of a second lead to an 8.4% increase in conversions with retail consumers, according to Google-commissioned study Milliseconds Make Millions.

“Customers’ attention spans are continuously shortening, and they want answers to their queries quicker and more efficiently. And with customers often opening several tabs to compare prices, products, etc. if your page doesn’t load instantly it may be dismissed completely,” says Webster.

“You want to aim to get your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5s for a good user experience” advises Webster.

How to improve your site speed load time:

• Compress images and text 
• Lower average page weight to be less than 500KB 
• Lower average request count to fewer than 50 
• Implement lazy loading (also known as ‘on-demand loading’) so you only load the relevant parts when needed 
• Consolidate CSS and Javascript files and code 
• Preload fonts 
• Minify CSS, Javascript and third party scripts (third party scripts often bump up your load time)

To determine your page speed: test your site and get an individualised improvement report for your developers. 

3. They make checkout easy   

Shoppers are most sensitive to speed when moving from product pages to cart, according to the Milliseconds Make Millions report. This means that your checkout pages need to load quickly and the payment process should be painless.  

“There is one thing a retailer should focus on – simplicity. Users want a quick and easy checkout process,” explains Reed. “Slow site speed and complicated checkout processes will cause huge drops in conversion rates – people will leave for another site that is easy to use.” 

Reduce friction at checkout by:

• Asking only for necessary information
• Offering guest checkout (without having to create a customer profile)
• Allowing customers to auto-fill details such as name and address
• Offering Afterpay
• Ensuring checkout works well on mobile

Adidas is a great example of a checkout process that’s simple, fast and painless and works well on mobile.

4. They are mobile-optimised with responsive design

M-commerce (mobile commerce) has been on the rise for years, and it’s predicted that the number of consumers shopping via their mobile phone will double by 2025, when it will account for more than four in 10 US purchases by 2025. 

That’s is why mobile-first website design – where we pages are designed with mobile phone users, rather than desktop viewers, in mind - is no longer optional, but imperative.

“Making sure the layout is optimised for each device is important,” explains Arken Digital managing director Richard Kennedy.

This means keeping design elements and navigation simple, prioritising key information and avoiding disruptive pop-ups.

Take global beauty retailer Sephora, which is optimised for mobile, with easy access to search, simple, drop-down menus and fast load times. 

5. They offer social proof

Nine out of 10 customers read reviews before buying a product, according to TrustPilot, which is why featuring reviews, testimonials, badges and ratings on your site is such an effective way to drive conversions. There are a range of social proof tools available to e-commerce retailers, which pull in live reviews and ratings, such as Yotpo, Fomo and TrustPulse.

Another way to build social proof? Highlight any mentions – from reviews to inclusions and founder interviews - in major media outlets.

Beauty brand Bangn Body has thousands of reviews on their products, as well as award badges.

6. They cross-sell

Cross-selling is a tactic that’s often employed in brick-and-mortar stores, where sales staff will suggest other, related items to purchase. Today, cross-selling can be employed online, too, with “suggested products” or suggestions of “frequently bought together” items.

Cross-selling usually works best on the product pages or at checkout and when related products are shown with clear, enticing visuals. There are a range of widgets and tools, such as Rokt, that employ artificial intelligence to suggest product recommendations.

Webster also suggests using a sense of urgency to encourage conversions. “Suggesting products that you may like, having information such as ‘Selling fast!’; ‘Only 1 left’; and ‘3 people have it in their baskets’ to encourage conversions, and displaying similar categories.”

A final tip on conversion optimisation

Struggling to understand what’s impacting conversion rates? “Look at Behaviour Flow in Google Analytics to analyse where users are dropping off,” says Webster. “Or consider CRO software such as Hotjar to see heatmaps of your users' interactions on the site.”