Check it out
Increase your online store's conversion rate: 9 checks for a Shopify store
You can keep sending more people to your online store. But if they can't find their size or only see delivery costs at checkout, the opportunity might lie elsewhere. I'd start by looking at where the buying experience becomes harder than it needs to be.
Follow the journey from collection to product, cart, checkout and order. Compare mobile and desktop, and look at where visitors come from. If you suddenly attract a very different audience, your overall conversion rate can change even when the store itself hasn't been updated.
1. Check that your measurement is accurate
Compare recorded purchases with your order records. Are any orders missing, counted twice or actually test orders? Agree which visits you'll include when calculating the conversion rate, too.
One tool may count things slightly differently from another. Use the same source to track your trend and find out where differences come from. Note major campaigns and promotions as well. Otherwise, you might end up looking for a design problem that isn't there.
2. Test navigation on a phone
Ask someone to find a specific product on their phone without explaining where it is. Are the categories clear? Do the filters stand out? Do their selected filters stay in place when they go back?
Use the words customers search with. Your own collection name might make sense to fans, while a new visitor simply needs a particular type of product. Create logical routes and keep the menu easy to follow.
3. Help visitors compare products
A product card needs to tell people enough to decide whether they want a closer look. A clear photo, name and price are the starting point. Which features help them tell the products apart?
Show available sizes and colours early enough, too. It's frustrating to discover after several clicks that your variant is sold out. Offer a suitable alternative if you have one, with a clear explanation of the difference.
4. Answer the most important product questions
What does someone want to know before buying this product? For clothing, it might be the fit; for a lamp, the dimensions; for a technical product, compatibility. Give that information a clear place on the page.
Look at customer service questions and reasons for returns to find missing explanations. Use photos that show details, scale or the product in use. Those often help a customer more than another general promise.
5. Make delivery and returns easy to understand
When will it arrive, what does delivery cost and how do returns work? These questions are part of the purchase. Make the answers available before someone starts checking out.
Make sure the information matches what you can actually deliver. An attractive delivery promise you can't keep mainly leads to disappointment and support requests later. Check differences between delivery areas as well.
6. Give people real reasons to trust you
Reviews, clear company information and accessible customer service can help remove doubts. Put them where they'll be useful to the visitor.
A review of the relevant product with some context says more than a big score on its own. Look at how reviews are collected, too. And only use scarcity or urgency when it's real. You still have to earn people's trust.
7. Investigate the cart
Try changing quantities and removing an item. Are the price, colour, size and discount still correct? The customer should be able to see what's in the cart at a glance.
An extra offer can be useful if it fits the purchase. But the cart doesn't need to become a second shop. Look at completed orders and margin, rather than just how many people click on that extra product.
8. Test checkout with realistic scenarios
Go through an order on mobile using the payment and delivery options your customers use. Try a discount code, an incorrect address and an empty required field. When testing, make sure the order won't accidentally be fulfilled.
Which parts of checkout you can customise depends on your setup and Shopify plan. Start with things that demonstrably don't work or are unclear. That will often give you plenty to work on already.
9. Choose one improvement and evaluate the result
Prioritise the problems: how many visitors are affected, how certain are you about what's going wrong, and how much work will the fix take? A broken size selector comes before a discussion about button colour.
Write down what you expect the change to achieve. Better guidance on fit might help customers choose the right size, for example. Then look at orders, but also returns and support questions. A few extra purchases aren't solid evidence on their own; give your measurement enough time and data.
Want to know where to start? Discuss conversion optimisation with BORING. We'll look at your store data and what it's like for your customer to find and order a product.
