Best Practices For Conversion Rate Optimization – Part 2 of 6

This is the second article in the series of 6 articles focusing on the Best Practices for Conversion Rate Optimization. You can read the first part here.

Before we dive deeper into the Best practices for CRO, I would like to mention that the following content is based upon the learnings that I did during the Second Week of Conversion Optimization, my nano degree course at CXL Institute, led by Peep Laja & team.

I have divided this article into six parts to ensure maximum readability & thorough understanding.

In the last article, we discussed

• Web Forms
• Buttons & Call To Action
• Fold & Page Length

In this article, we will discuss,

• E-commerce Category Pages
• E-commerce Signups
• Incoming Phone Leads & Call Tracking.

Let’s get started.

E-commerce Category Pages

The objective of every e-commerce category page is to help visitors find something they like, want, or need. We can help potential buyers with the following strategies.

Narrow Down Choice

Every e-commerce store offers a variety of products. Let’s start with filters. Filters are an essential component. Based on your store, you can either put the filters right on top or on the left-hand side.

Along with the filters, you can put product badges to help some products stand out. These can be the ones you have a higher margin on, or maybe in large quantity. Sometimes you go to a restaurant, and you are unable to decide anything. So you just look at Staff Pick for Today, because that sounds like a safe option. That is precisely how Product Badges work.

Sort Products

Just like filters, sorting is an essential component of an e-commerce store. Organized products are always better than clutter. Usually, the sorting choices are by price, customer rating, newly added & so on. Make sure this sorting feature is right in front of the customer.

One of the best examples of Narrowing down the choice & sorting can be seen at J. (Junaid Jamshed) online store.

“Is it for me?”

Three essential factors back every buying decision.

1. Product photo — must be bright & large enough.
2. Product name & description — concise info about the product always increases the sales.
3. Price — make it prominent.

There have been several instances, where a store experienced a hike in sales just by updating the photos of the page. Visitors want to see the product by every angle, give them the highest quality photos with a feature to rotate & zoom.

Focus Of The Page

If your page has anything that distracts the customers from buying the product, evaluate & eliminate it. Some of them (MIGHT BE) are

• Cluttered sidebars
• Banner ads, Google AdSense
• Email opt-ins
• Random clutter

Apart from the above, you should have breadcrumbs on your site. They enhance the usability of the website. Make sure the Call To Action is prominent & clearly defined.

When optimizing category pages, don’t think specific tactics or implementation. Instead, use a structured approach to evaluate whether the page helps people

Ecommerce Signups

How many times it happened that you added a product to your cart, proceeded to checkout. And you were asked to signup as a necessary step? Too many times.

1 in 4 abandon online purchases due to forced registration.

The approach to force registration is part of Greedy Marketer Syndrome that I mentioned in my last article. There is a myth that if a person signs up to an e-commerce store, that will start a never-ending loyal relationship — absolute bad practice.

So, what are the best practices?

1. Use better terminologies such as New & Returning customers, instead of register.
2. Only ask for their email on checkout, this would ensure you can email them even if they abandon the cart.
3. Introduce Guest Checkout, and give them the option to register, if they want. (Associate a benefit with registering an account)
4. Use social logins, such as Google & Facebook. Highly recommended and widely implemented now.

Incoming Phone Leads & Call Tracking

Many business rely on phone calls for their everyday operations. If you look at the Real Estate industry, it’s an essential step to talk with an agent over the call. There can be several use cases where businesses prefer calls over emails.

Phone Calls = Conversions!

If you want people to call, you have to work similarly as you work when you want them to buy something from you. Likewise, phone calls can be increased when you optimize your flow to achieve that.

Optimizing For More Incoming Calls

As we talked about optimizing the website for increased conversions, likewise, optimization for phone calls follow similar principles.

Add Phone Numbers Into Your PPC Ads

One of the ideal places to put the phone number is in the ad itself. Seeing a phone number encourages the customer to call, as they know they can directly communicate with a human.

Carefully analyze your audience, craft the ad copy & design, and test what works best for you.

Give Them A Reason To Call

The need drives every action by the visitor. Create a list of benefits that you are offering. Test them one by one, maybe put them in groups too. Analyze which reason triggers more visitors to call.

You can come up with a unique offer to increase the phone calls too.

Put The Offer In The Right Places.

As we talked about the most critical content in the top fold, you should be putting the phone number where the customers can see it easily.

Try putting it in the top half of the content, & in the footer. You can even put a decent popup that gets trigger if the customer scrolls down to the bottom.

Set Up Phone Tracking With Google Analytics

Tracking phone calls has multiple benefits.

1. Which page is triggering the most calls?
2. What was their previous action before the call? Did they scroll to the bottom? Or made the call from the popup?
3. You will also know which strategy is getting you more calls, very useful.
4. You can also see which PPC or SEO keywords they used.

Adding an analytics event or tag for phone calls will get you very reliable data, & it is easy to implement.

So, are you ready to implement some of the best practices for the conversion rate optimization that we discussed?

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