The Power of Microsoft Clarity: Key Feature Overview

Microsoft Clarity is all about understanding user behavior. The platform offers a suite of features that can transform your approach to UX design and conversion rate optimization (CRO). Here’s a closer look at how each feature plays a role in improving your site’s performance: 

Heatmaps: Visualizing User Engagement

Heatmaps are one of Clarity’s main and standout features. They offer a visual representation of where users click, scroll, and linger on your site, helping you better understand which areas capture attention and which might need better optimization. Clarity offers four types of heatmaps, each designed to track different user behaviors:

• Click Heatmap: This shows where users click the most (and least) on your site and landing pages.

• Scroll Heatmap: Reveals how far users scroll down a page, helping you asses whether key content is being seen.

• Area Heatmap: Measures clicks within specific areas of a page for a more targeted perspective. 

• Conversion Heatmap:  Pinpoints the elements that drive purchases, this tool requires Shopify integration). 

These heatmaps are invaluable for identifying navigation issues, optimizing content placement, and improving form completion rates. They also help you segment users by behavior, so you can tailor the experience to different audience needs. 

Session Recordings: A Window Into User Journeys

Session Recordings in Microsoft Clarity provide a high-level view of how users interact with your website. Rather than capturing every detail, these recordings focus on aggregated, anonymized data to help identify patterns and trends. You can gain insights into how users navigate your site, where they encounter difficulties, and where they tend to drop off. This helps optimize the user experience by highlighting friction points and areas for improvement, all while ensuring that no personally identifiable information is tracked or recorded.

Key Benefits of Session Recordings include:

• Discovering Pain Points: Spot rage clicks, hesitation, or unexpected drop-offs. 

• Summarized Recordings: Clarity utilizes Copilot AI to generate session summaries to highlight key moments or confusing navigation

• Real-Time Fixes: View live user interactions to address frustrations like non-responsive elements or confusing navigation.
• Dynamic Insights: Pause recordings to view heatmap data for specific states, like when a dropdown menu of pop-up is active. 

This feature is an innovative tool for understanding how specific user groups interact with your site and identifying areas for immediate improvement.

Insights Dashboard: From Data to Action

Clarity’s Insights Dashboard consolidates key metrics in one place, allowing you to pinpoint friction points and debug errors quickly. Some of the key metrics include: 

• Rage Clicks: Where users rapidly click in frustration.

• Dead Clicks: Instances where users click but nothing happens.

• Excessive Scrolling: Moments when users scroll more than usual, signaling potential content placement issues.

• Quickbacks: When users navigate to a new page but immediately return, suggesting dissatisfaction. 

Clarity offers over 40 filters, so you can drill down into specific user segments–by browser, session duration, or campaign–and uncover actionable insights.  

Smart Filtering and Event Tracking: Focus on What Matters Most

Clarity’s filtering and tracking capabilities simplify data analysis. With customizable filters, you can segment users by behavior, source, or technical details like browser types. Event tracking automatically tracks interactions like button clicks or URL visits, pairing them with heatmaps and session recordings for a holistic view.  

For example, you can discover where users drop off during checkout or whether they engage deeply with your blog content. This feature makes it easier to spot patterns and take action.

Integration with Google Analytics: A Powerful Pairing

Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics are a powerful duo for understanding user behavior. While Google Analytics excels in providing quantitative data—like the number of visitors, traffic sources, and conversion rates—Clarity dives into the qualitative aspects of user interactions. With features like session recordings, scroll-depth analysis, and heat mapping, Clarity allows you to see how users navigate your site and why they might be dropping off at certain points.

For instance, while Google Analytics can tell you that a specific page has a high bounce rate, Clarity can show you what users are doing on that page—whether they’re scrolling halfway down and leaving, struggling to interact with elements, or encountering usability issues. This qualitative insight fills the gaps left by GA, providing a fuller picture of user behavior and helping you make more informed optimization decisions.

Microsoft Clarity is a practical tool for identifying and addressing UX challenges that impact conversion rates. By leveraging its features, you can uncover user pain points, optimize content placement, and refine your site’s navigation. With its ability to provide actionable insights across devices and user segments, Clarity supports a continuous process of improvement, helping you create a smoother and more engaging user experience.

Using Microsoft Clarity for UX and Conversion Optimization

Microsoft Clarity isn’t just a tool for tracking user behavior—it’s a powerful resource for driving improvements in your site’s UX and conversion rates. By asking the right UX questions, you can leverage Clarity to identify friction points, optimize content placement, and refine your user journey.

Are Users Struggling with Key Steps on Your Site?

Every website has friction points where users get stuck. But how do you pinpoint them? Heat mapping tools like Microsoft Clarity can help answer this question by identifying where users are struggling through metrics like rage clicks and dead clicks. These behaviors highlight areas where users are frustrated or encountering problems.

For example, if you notice a high drop-off rate during form submissions, Clarity’s session recordings and heatmaps can provide insight into why users are abandoning the process. Are the instructions unclear? Is the form too long or confusing? By analyzing the data, you can make targeted improvements, such as simplifying the form, fixing broken links, or providing clearer instructions—ultimately reducing frustration and boosting conversions.

Is Your Content Placement Optimized for Engagement?

Do your visitors see the most important content on your page, or are they missing it? Clarity’s scroll heatmaps provide the answer. By tracking how far users scroll, you can evaluate whether your key content or calls to action (CTAs) are placed too far down the page. If they are, they might be overlooked.

For instance, Clarity can show you where users stop scrolling, which may indicate disengagement with content further down the page. With this knowledge, you can reposition high-value content—like CTAs or product highlights—closer to the top of the page, experiment with shorter page lengths, or reorganize layouts to keep users engaged and naturally guide them down the page.

Are You Optimizing for Mobile Users?

With mobile traffic often surpassing desktop, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly is more important than ever. But how can you identify specific mobile UX issues? Clarity’s filtering options allow you to analyze user behavior across different devices, helping you uncover mobile-specific pain points, like difficult navigation or misaligned elements.

For example, Clarity can reveal if mobile users are struggling with navigating a dropdown menu or interacting with a misaligned button. With this insight, you can optimize your site’s layout and content placement to improve the mobile experience. Whether it’s adjusting button sizes, simplifying navigation, or refining mobile-friendly forms, Clarity helps you create a seamless experience for users across all devices.

By asking the right UX questions and using Microsoft Clarity’s features, you can gain valuable insights into how users interact with your site. Whether it’s identifying friction points, improving content placement, or optimizing for mobile, Clarity helps you understand user behavior in a more actionable way. With this understanding, you can make informed adjustments that improve the user experience, reduce drop-offs, and create a more seamless journey for your visitors.

Clarity vs. Other Analytics Tools: Why It Stands Out

What makes Microsoft Clarity truly stand out is its cost—it’s entirely free. Unlike paid tools like Hotjar or Quantum Metric, which often come with hefty price tags, Clarity offers robust features like heatmaps, session recordings, and filtering capabilities without any subscription fees. While paid tools might offer advanced features like customizable reports and real-time analytics, Clarity delivers essential insights that are perfect for businesses on a budget or those just beginning to explore user behavior analysis.

Here’s a quick comparison of Clarity with some other popular analytics tools:

While paid tools like Hotjar, Heatmap.com, and Quantum Metric offer advanced features suited for enterprise needs, Microsoft Clarity stands out as a free, accessible option that delivers essential insights for understanding user behavior. Its combination of heatmaps, session recordings, and filtering capabilities makes it an excellent starting point for businesses looking to improve their UX without a significant upfront investment. Whether used independently or alongside tools like Google Analytics, Clarity provides a strong foundation for data-driven optimization.

Transform Your Website with Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity serves as a valuable tool for ongoing improvement, helping businesses refine their user experience and boost conversions over time. With features like heatmaps, session recordings, and filtering options, it provides actionable insights to address pain points, optimize layouts, and improve user journeys. Using Clarity regularly can support a cycle of testing, learning, and enhancing your site to meet evolving user needs.

Microsoft Clarity isn’t just a tool—it’s a partner in the ongoing process of refining your website. As you explore heatmaps, session recordings, and filtering options, you begin to uncover the nuances of your users’ experiences. These insights help you address pain points, optimize layouts, and make informed decisions that improve your site over time.

By using Clarity regularly, you create a continuous cycle of testing, learning, and adapting to meet the evolving needs of your users. It’s not about quick fixes; it’s about making gradual, meaningful improvements that build a better, more intuitive website. So, if you’re ready to take your website’s user experience to the next level, start by exploring Microsoft Clarity. With each insight you gain, you’re one step closer to delivering a seamless experience that drives conversions and keeps your users coming back.

Website Heat Map Tool: Microsoft Clarity, The Ultimate Tool for UX and Conversion Success is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

The most successful designs are crafted to appeal to the subconscious mind, where the real decisions happen. Research shows that up to 95% of our daily decisions happen beneath the surface, influenced by subtle cues we’re unaware of. 

In the world of digital design, these subconscious influences are critical to conversion success. Color, shape, and whitespace on a page aren’t just for aesthetics—they’re carefully crafted to evoke feelings, guide attention, gain trust, and encourage action. The key to higher conversions lies in understanding how good design can tap into this subconscious processing.

Let’s explore how design speaks directly to the subconscious mind and how you can use principles like visual hierarchy, color psychology, and cognitive biases to build a website that not only looks good but also drives meaningful action.  

How the Subconscious Drives Decision-Making in Design

Human brains make decisions on a subconscious level before we’re even aware of it. The subconscious mind processes vast amounts of sensory information quickly and makes decisions based on patterns and prior experiences. This is crucial for designers to understand because it means the majority of decisions users make are automatic, emotional, and based on intuition rather than rational analysis. Research has found that subconscious stimuli like colors and shapes can influence emotions and behavior, often without users realizing it.

Design elements like color psychology play a significant role. Warm colors such as red or orange evoke urgency and excitement, while cooler tones like blue create a sense of trust and calm. Similarly, symmetry and balance in layouts communicate stability and professionalism, while asymmetry can suggest creativity or dynamism. 

Another critical point is that usability is key in guiding decision-making. Simple elements like arrows, icons, and micro-interactions make navigation effortless by subtle guiding users. Arrows, for example, direct attention toward calls to action, and icons reduce cognitive load through visual communication. Clear spacing and grouping also improve usability by organization-related elements, making it easier for users to follow steps without thinking too hard. Small micro-interactions, like buttons changing their color while hovered over, reinforce positive feedback and encourage further interactions. 

Understanding the connection between the subconscious and decision-making is key to creating more effective, user-centric designs. By aligning with these subconscious behaviors, businesses can create digital user experiences that are intuitive and engaging and will likely drive more conversions. 

Subconscious Design Principles

To create designs that look appealing and drive action, it’s essential to understand how the subconscious mind works. Leveraging principles like visual hierarchy, color psychology, and cognitive biases, businesses can use their digital assets to subtly guide users toward conversions.

Leveraging Visual Hierarchy for User Guidance

What does visual hierarchy mean? It’s how design elements are arranged to guide a user’s attention in a deliberate order, helping them understand the page structure without overthinking it. When done effectively, visual hierarchy reduces cognitive load and ensures that users focus on important elements first.

There are different tactics to create a visual hierarchy:

• Size: Larger elements naturally draw more attention. For example, headings should be bigger than the body text, and key elements like call-to-action (CTA) buttons should stand out visually.
• Contrast: Higher contrast between elements, like a brightly colored button on a muted background, directs focus toward the most important actions. 
• Placement: The most critical elements should be placed where users are likely to look first, often the top-left or center of the page. 

Example:

On effective landing pages, visual hierarchy leads users naturally toward the CTA. For instance, Drobox does a great job of using the visual hierarchy principle on their homepage. In this screenshot, we can see the large, bold headline “Find anything. Protect everything,” with supporting images and a contrasting CTA button. The user’s eye is guided step by step from the headline to the button, making the desired action—clicking—feel intuitive and effortless.

Color Psychology: Influencing Emotions Through Design

Ever wonder why “red hot deals” grab your attention faster than a “cool blue offer”? That’s not just clever marketing—it’s your subconscious at work. Colors aren’t just for decoration; they’re quietly influencing how we feel and behave without us even realizing it. Colors have a profound effect on emotions and behavior. The subconscious mind associates colors with feelings and actions, making color choices crucial in design.

For example, Warby Parker, an e-commerce glasses company, uses a color palette that promotes trust, simplicity, and luxury. Warby Parker prides themselves on their mission to create glasses that are fun, affordable, and accessible. They emphasize their commitment to providing high-quality eyewear at a reasonable price.

Blue for Trust and Stability: Warby Parker’s website and logo prominently feature shades of blue, conveying a sense of trust and reliability. This is crucial for their business to come off as reliable, as most of their customers are ordering glasses online, a relatively new innovation in the eyewear industry. The use of the color blue establishes a stable, professional tone, making the brand appear dependable and reinforcing that customers are making smart, trustworthy choices when buying glasses online. 

Gold for Luxury and Quality: Warby Parker uses subtle gold accents across their website to evoke a sense of luxury and quality. As gold is often associated with elegance and high quality, these touches elevate the overall aesthetic of the website. By adding the gold, Warby Parker creates a brand offering affordable eyewear that is still luxurious and high-quality. The gold also adds a refined contrast to the calming blue, showing that the brand is both approachable and upscale. 

White for Simplicity and Clean Design: Warby Parker also uses a lot of white to create a website that feels clean and minimalist. White is often linked to transparency, simplicity, and ease of use, which are all important qualities in creating an intuitive online shopping experience. This balance of white also ensures focus on the products and makes browsing an enjoyable experience. This blend of colors reflects Warby Parker’s mission to offer an eyewear experience that is both high-quality and accessible.

Cognitive Bias: The Subtle Art of Persuasion in Design

Another effective design practice is utilizing cognitive bias techniques. Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts that influence how we think and make decisions. In design, incorporating biases like scarcity and social proof can help nudge users toward conversions. 

• Scarcity Effect: When people perceive that a product or service is limited, they are more likely to take action. Designers utilize this tactic by adding components like countdown timers or stock alerts to create urgency. Have you ever found yourself always pressing on an ad for a certain product that you really want but never commit to? If you opened the product again and found that it was almost out of stock, you’d probably be more likely to finally buy the product. It’s similar to procrastinating for a test in school. You know you have the test for two weeks, but you feel this sense of urgency to study three or two days before (or the night before for some of us). The scarcity effect is tapping into that feeling of urgency and need for action. 
• Social Proof: Social proof is a powerful driver of human behavior, especially in today’s social media-driven world. People naturally follow the actions of others, especially those they relate to or trust. This is why reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content are essential in building credibility for products or services. When potential customers see others—whether influencers or everyday users—having positive experiences, they feel more confident in their own choices. Influencers showcase relatable product use, while customer reviews provide real feedback that helps ease doubts. Simply put, when others validate a product, it becomes more appealing and trustworthy, boosting conversion rates.

When it comes to web design, the key to improving conversion rates lies in understanding and leveraging this subconscious behavior. By implementing design elements that appeal to how users instinctively think and behave, businesses can guide them toward taking action more effectively.

The Subconscious Formula for Higher Conversions

The connection between subconscious design elements and conversion rates is direct and measurable. Simplicity and clarity in design help reduce cognitive overload, allowing users to focus on the action you want them to take, whether it’s filling out a form or making a purchase. Visual hierarchy guides the user’s eye toward key elements, such as call-to-action (CTA) buttons, helping them complete tasks with minimal friction. Familiar layouts make navigation feel intuitive, reducing hesitation or confusion, which leads to smoother user journeys and, ultimately, higher conversion rates.

When users interact with a site that “feels right,” they’re more likely to act without second-guessing. Subtle design cues, like micro-interactions or color psychology, can nudge users toward a decision, ensuring their experience is both engaging and instinctive. The less effort required to make a choice, the more likely users are to convert.

Metrics to Track

To monitor the effectiveness of subconscious design strategies, companies should focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Click-through rates (CTR): This metric indicates how effective CTAs and visual hierarchy are in driving users to the next step.
• Conversion rate: This is the ultimate indicator of success, showing how many users complete the desired action.
• Bounce rate: A high bounce rate may indicate poor usability or overwhelming design, while a lower bounce rate suggests users are more engaged.
• Time on page: If users spend more time on the page, especially on key products or landing pages, it suggests they’re engaging with the content.
• Form abandonment rate: If forms are too complicated, tracking the drop-off points can help improve usability and guide users more effectively.

By analyzing these metrics and making iterative changes, businesses can optimize their designs to appeal more directly to the subconscious, ultimately leading to better user engagement and higher conversion rates.

Conclusion

Effective design transcends mere aesthetics—it’s about crafting user experiences that are intuitive, emotionally resonant, and instinctively actionable. By tapping into the subconscious mind, good design reduces cognitive load, guides user attention, and evokes the right emotions. When you align your design with how people naturally think and behave, you create seamless experiences that feel effortless and engaging, ultimately driving higher conversion rates.

From visual hierarchy to color psychology and cognitive biases, every element in your design should work to create an intuitive journey that speaks to the user’s subconscious. By optimizing your design to appeal to these instincts, you not only enhance user satisfaction but also create measurable improvements in your business outcomes.

UX Design for the Subconscious: How to Craft Experiences That Boost Conversions is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Sales mean everything for eCommerce sites

This is where conversion rate optimization services are important. Converting general traffic into consumers is of the utmost importance. Tracking how many site visitors make a transaction and testing out changes to your website will help you build a store that becomes a money-making machine.

Related Content:

• Ecommerce SEO Agency
• Shopify SEO Services
• Conversion Rate Optimization Services

This guide provides you with the ten best tips that you can use to improve your online store’s conversion rate, which will lead to more money in your pockets. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents:

1. What is eCommerce Conversion Rate?
2. How Do You Find Your Site’s Conversion Rate?
3. What Is The Average Conversion Rate For eCommerce?
4. What is a Good Conversion Rate?
5. Tools For eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization
6. 10 Tips To Increase Your Conversion Rate
7. Final Notes

What is eCommerce Conversion Rate? 

eCommerce conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who have made a purchase from your online store within a set period of time. In short, it is the percentage of visitors that turn into a customer.

Here is a quick example: If your online store receives 10,000 visitors and 100 conversions over the same amount of time, that means your store’s conversion rate is 1%.

A conversion occurs when you get a visitor to take action on your site, which means conversions can be more than just sales. 

An eCommerce conversion can be:

1. A sale of a product
2. Signups for newsletters or memberships
3. Adding products to the cart or wishlist
4. Social media shares from your site

Now that you know what it means, let’s discuss how to improve your eCommerce conversion rate. Tracking this information can help you find where you could improve your store to lead more site visitors to become consumers.

How Do You Find Your Site’s eCommerce Conversion Rate?

To find your conversion rate manually, divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors to your site during the same time. 

You can also set up goals within Google Analytics to track your conversion rate.

• If you are using a Universal Analytics property, you can use this guide.
• If you are using a GA4 property, you can use this guide. 

Once you have your goals set up, you can find the conversion rate for the specific action within Google Analytics and begin tracking your rate over time. Then, when you get a good conversion rate for your site, you can jump up from your desk and scream, “Booyah!” Or sit back and watch your revenue increase over time. The choice is yours.

What Is The Average Conversion Rate For eCommerce?

So, now that you’ve figured out your current eCommerce conversion rate using the great information from the previous section, I bet you are asking yourself, “How does my conversion rate compare to other eCommerce conversion rates?” 

The average conversion rate for eCommerce sites around the world was 2.86% in 2020. The average conversion rate for the U.S. was 2.63% during that same period.⁽¹⁾

When discussing eCommerce data, I like to remind owners that no two stores are the same. You could use the average conversion percentage across all eCommerce sites as a general guide for what to aim for, but it would also benefit you to focus on your industry’s specific rate.

According to Growcode, the average conversion rate ranges from 0.99% to 3.79% for the most popular industries in the eCommerce industry.

This graph, based on data from IRP Commerce, shows recent conversion rates across a range of markets. Average conversion by industry: Sports and Recreation: 1.75%; Arts and Crafts: 3.79%; Baby and Child: 0.99%; Cars and Motorcycling: 1.55%; Electrical and Commercial Equipment: 2.23%; Fashion Clothing and Accessories: 2.44%; Food and Drink: 2.37%; Health and Wellbeing: 3.62%; Home Accessories and Giftware: 2.16%; Kitchen and Home Appliances: 2.48%; Pet Care: 3.28%; ⁽²⁾

What is a Good Conversion Rate?

That is a great question, and the answer is: it varies. Some industries strive for conversion rates in the 30% range while others are pleased with 2%. 

The key is to locate your industry’s average rate and benchmark your performance against it. Start by researching what your industry average is for conversion rates via a quick Google search. This will help you to understand what range you should set your target rate within. To have a good conversion rate, you want to set your target above the industry average, aiming for the upper 25 percent. Being par for the course is not considered good for an eCommerce conversion rate. 

If you find that your site’s conversion rate is at or below the industry average, don’t fret. The ten tips in this article can help you improve your rate and land more sales.

Tools For eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

Before we go any further, I wanted to give you a list of tools to help you with your Conversion Rate Optimization. There are several programs and websites that you can use to help you locate some of your current conversion pain points. The following analysis tools should be on your radar while working on conversion rate optimization. 

Google Analytics 360 Suite

Compared to the regular version of Google Analytics, the 360 Suite gives you greater details for you to track every step of your conversion process through event measurements, such as clicks on your CTA buttons. 

When using the 360 suite, you are no longer limited to tracking conversions based on URLs. You can measure the difference between CTA button clicks and completed conversions. Your data is also updated every 10 minutes instead of every 24 hours with regular Google Analytics. Further, you can create custom funnels to analyze your customer’s journeys more accurately. 

hotjar

hotjar is a fast and visual way to understand your users more and make any changes necessary based on what is important to the user. This web-based software provides instant visual feedback, and you can see how people are using your site to make changes accordingly. There is a big difference between how you expect people to use your website and how they actually use it based on their needs. To help you understand these differences, hotjar uses heat maps to show you what your customers want, care about, and do on your site based on their visit patterns.

Shoppimon 

Shoppimon is a secret shopper tool for eCommerce conversion optimization that monitors, tests, and analyzes issues relating to your eCommerce website that can hinder the user experience and negatively impact your conversions.

These issues can include but are not limited to responsiveness, visuals not loading, broken links, server issues, site crashes, payment gateway issues, and much more.

VWO

VWO is a platform for eCommerce conversion optimization that provides solutions for visitors to research, design optimization roadmap, run A/B testing and experimentation with their eCommerce platform.

10 Tips To Increase Your Conversion Rate

1. Give Customers Confidence In Your Site

“Look good, feel good, do good.” 

That is my personal motto that I have used for over a decade when approaching big presentations. I usually get dressed up for presentations and have a hearty breakfast, so I tell myself that I look good and I feel good; therefore, I will do good!

You can also use this motto for your website. If your eCommerce site looks good and feels good to the customer, then it will do good things for your business. 

How to make sure your website looks good:

1. Use a small number of fonts that are easy to read.
2. High-quality images are a must.
3. Your website should load quickly.
4. Use colors that are easy to read and ADA compliant.
5. Clean is usually better than clutter.

When a website looks mediocre or has a poor user experience, the customer is not likely to stick around, which is why many eCommerce websites struggle with their conversion rate.

This leads me to my next tip.

2. Product Authenticity Helps Build Customer Loyalty

Returning visitors are far more likely to purchase your product. You need to build trust with your customers when they come to your website to encourage them to view your product or service. 

Social media is a great way to boost your eCommerce presence, but it can also be incredibly harmful. If your products or services you deliver to the consumer are not the same as what you have listed on your website, you will lose trust and brand loyalty.

As an eCommerce business, it becomes your responsibility to ensure that authentic products are delivered to the customers. Authenticity will build your eCommerce reliability and trustworthiness, a significant aspect that consumers consider while shopping online.

If previous consumers are happy with what they received, they are likely to tell others via word-of-mouth or social media. 

Helpful Hint: You can use their posts to showcase your product on your website. 

Letting others provide authentic positive feedback is a sure way to improve your eCommerce conversion rate. 

3. Use descriptive Call-To-Actions (CTAs)

“Click Here” does not give a customer any reason why they should follow your call to action. 

Why should I click there? What purpose is there to click there? What happens when I click there? 

Your call to action should be informative and conversational. You should read the call to action without any other context and know what will happen when you click the button. 

Take the following CTAs for example:

• “Check Out Our Fall Collection”
• “Enjoy Our Monthly Newsletter”
• “Let’s Go To Checkout”

Without any other information, you can understand where each of these CTAs will take you. They also sound like a friend that is talking with you instead of a robot spitting out commands. Users want to feel like they are being guided on a journey and not simply told what to do.

If you clicked on the link at the beginning of this tip, I just have to ask, why did you click there? Feel free to answer that question in the comments below.

4. Make it simple to check out

Simplicity can make a big difference for eCommerce sites. If you want visitors to purchase your products, you need to have a simple and obvious check-out process. 

Here are a few things to consider when simplifying your check out process:

1. Remove surveys from the checkout flow. Surveys are a great way to gain insight from your visitors, but it derails them from making a purchase. Save surveys for the thank you email or the purchase confirmation page.
2. Make sure you can always view your cart from anywhere on your website. 
3. Remove as many clicks as possible from your checkout process. The fewer clicks it takes to purchase an item, the more likely a customer will finish the purchase.

5. Run A/B Tests often

A/B testing (also known as split testing) is a method of comparing two different versions of a webpage against each other to determine which one performs better. This allows you to continuously test different versions of your website to see which drives more visitors to your chosen destination. 

Major online retailers are constantly running A/B tests on their websites, whether you realize it or not. These tests can be significant design configurations like changing the homepage structure (which would be very noticeable). It can be a minor change like switching the color of the checkout icon from white to light grey. 

There are several tools that you can use to manage A/B testing and view the results. Before diving into A/B testing, you may want to learn more about when you should run an A/B test and how to set up an A/B test.

6. Free Shipping is mandatory in present-day eCommerce

Gone are the days of including a fee for shipping. You will see cart abandonment decrease sharply by having free shipping as an option (whether for all purchases or limited to purchases above a specific value). eCommerce sites that still have consumers paying for shipping see higher numbers of cart abandonment because it raises the total price higher than they were expecting. 

Look for ways to include the price of shipping in your product pricing. You can also offer deals for visitors to obtain free shipping by signing up for your newsletter or sharing your site on social media, etc.

7. Be Transparent, Not Scammy

The fastest way to lose a potential consumer is to make them feel uneasy on your site. Creating an air of transparency where they feel comfortable can help increase your conversion rate. 

Here are a few ways to be transparent with the consumer:

1. Include important shipping information on the product page. If there is a long lead time, tell the consumer why the lead time is that long.
2. Use product images that depict the actual product you are selling. 
3. Include a thorough description of the product on the product page. 
4. Include an “About Us” page on your website that lets visitors know your business on a more personal level. You do not need to include personal information, but understanding how the company got started and why it is in business helps consumers feel more comfortable.
5. Offering deals or price reductions on products can be useful, but avoid reducing every price on your website. This makes the consumer feel like your product is sub-par. 

8. Payment Security Is A Top Priority

Have you ever gone to checkout on a website and not feel secure in the process they used? Did you provide your credit card information or leave the site?

Most consumers will leave a cart full if they don’t feel safe providing their banking information.

Providing credibility and security to your payment process is a great way to increase your conversion rate. Be sure to showcase your Information Privacy Policy, provide trustworthy payment options like PayPal, have virus and hacking protection software, install an SSL certificate, etc.

9. Offer Incentives to Increase Time on Your Site

Consumers always appreciate a good deal and can be persuaded to stay on your site if they receive one. Providing a coupon or a special offer to your visitors has been proven to influence their purchase intention. Including seasonal discounts or one-time deals encourages the consumer to continue browsing your site. The longer a visitor remains on your site, the more likely they are to purchase an item.

You can also create contests that require user participation in buying a minimum amount of products to stand a chance of winning a unique product.

10. Optimize for Organic Traffic from Keywords with High User Intent

Not all traffic to your site is equal. Optimizing your search results to target keywords that have shown a high intent to purchase your product will increase your conversion rate.

Targeting specific traffic to your site ensures that you have visitors that want to see your products. If they want to see your product or service, then they are likely to purchase them.

If you are looking to optimize your eCommerce website for search engines, here are some guides you can follow:

• SEO guide for BigCommerce 
• SEO guide for Magento
• SEO guide for WooCommerce 
• SEO guide for Shopify 

Final Notes

After using these ten tips and running numerous tests on your site, you should begin to see your eCommerce conversion rate increase and purchases start flooding in. Large corporations are constantly testing out changes to their site to improve their rates continuously. This is a telling sign that it takes time and effort to improve your website’s conversions, even by a little bit.

At Go Fish Digital, we offer Conversion Rate Optimization services to our clients who want to increase conversion rates. If you would like to have a good conversion rate, you can contact us to learn more about how we can help.

Sources

1. https://www.invespcro.com/blog/the-average-website-conversion-rate-by-industry/
2. https://www.irpcommerce.com/en/gb/ecommercemarketdata.aspx?Market=3  

How To Improve eCommerce Conversion Rates is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

If you are exploring opportunities for conversion rate optimization (CRO) on your site, it’s a good idea to start with your homepage. With the user’s experience top of mind, there are a variety of ways you can ensure that you are making a good first impression and providing your audience with the information and calls to action they need to further engage and convert on your site. Continue reading for five actionable ways you can improve your homepage.

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Five tips to build a homepage that converts users 

1. Put your most valuable call to action front and center.

Ask yourself – when a user lands on your site, what do you want them to do? Whether it’s purchasing a product, requesting a demo, making a reservation, or creating an account, call out this next step front and center in your homepage hero. You want to ensure that this call to action aligns with your primary business goals, as it will be one of the most visible calls to action on your site. Keep the text on your call to action straightforward to let the user know exactly what they should do next if they want to continue to engage with your site.

2. Add a clear call to action in your main navigation. 

Your main navigation should tell a clear story about the structure of your site and give the user an opportunity to browse based on what interests them. It should also offer a call to action that’s distinct in design from the rest of the navigation labels. This call to action can use the same or different offer from the homepage hero depending on your goals. This call to action will follow the user around the site, so it should be actionable and relevant no matter what page the user is on. Common calls to action for this placement would include a lower-funnel goal like Contact Us, Get My Free Trial, Checkout, or Sign Up. It’s also a good idea to consider keeping this call to action sticky on your mobile site’s header.

3. Offer multiple calls to action throughout the rest of the page. 

Ideally, you already have your most important calls to action above the fold. But, a user may interact with the page more before they are ready to convert. As the user continues to scroll down your homepage, offer natural opportunities to engage or go deeper into the site. Add a link, button or opportunity for a user to engage with you at each section of your homepage. For example, list all of your primary offerings on your homepage with links to dedicated internal pages that include more detail. Or, create a section that features your latest blog posts for users to read. Whatever you provide, give your audience ample opportunity to learn more about your service or product so they can make the most informed decision.

4. Offer social proof and trust signals early and often.

Users are much more likely to engage with your site if they trust you. As the most visible page of your site, your homepage needs to build trust to ensure users feel comfortable clicking and engaging with your calls to action. Two ways to do that are through social proof and trust signals. There are many ways to add social proof to your page including testimonials, reviews, and quantitative metrics about your product or services. Use as many of these as you can throughout your page, as they will work together to establish trust with your user. Trust signals can include items like logos of partners or associations of your business, awards you’ve won, or visual representations of your products or services. Each of these additions will strengthen your homepage and improve the first impression you leave on users.

5. Keep a final call to action opportunity at the bottom of your page. 

If a user has taken the time to scroll through your entire homepage, make sure you provide them with an opportunity to engage with you at the bottom, just as you did on the top. You can include the same call to action you used in your hero as a button in the footer, for easy access. It’s also great to add an email submission sign up. For users that aren’t willing to commit to a lower-funnel call to action, this can be an easy, low-risk way for them to stay in touch. Usually, they only have to provide one piece of information and you gain the ability to interact with them through email and retargeting campaigns. This builds a great funnel to keep users coming back to your site to convert on future visits.

If you need more help improving your homepage, reach out to our conversion rate optimization agency to learn how we can help!

How To Improve Your Homepage’s Conversion Rate is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.