Increasing the traffic to your eCommerce site is important.
However, if these website visitors are not converted to generated leads and then to paying customers, your marketing efforts will have little or no impact on increasing your business revenue.
With the increase in digital marketing costs (SEO and pay-per-click ads), eCommerce store owners must seek to make the best out of every resource invested in increasing their website’s visibility.
This is where conversion rate optimization comes in.
Conversion rate optimization involves increasing the rate at which web visitors complete a desired action while creating a positive experience for the visitor. Putting in conversion optimization efforts helps eCommerce marketing teams boost conversions across an eCommerce website, leading to a significant increase in revenue.
In this guide, we will break down conversion rate optimization techniques and share practical conversion rate optimization strategies you can apply to improve your website’s conversion rate.
Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- The first step to improving your conversion rate is to analyze your website performance and visitor behavior.
- If you observe that you have a high bounce rate, then you should check your web speed, user experience, and mobile optimization. If your cart abandonment rate is high, then you should streamline your checkout process.
- By applying these techniques to your conversion funnel and constantly applying split testing to see what works for your target audience, you can expect to see your conversion rate increase from what it currently is.
- Remember to leverage AI tools at any point of the journey where you can afford to, as this heightens personalization and hence increases conversion rates.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors that take specific actions on your eCommerce website.
Conversion rate optimization techniques increase the number of web visitors that convert while going through your conversion funnel, without increasing marketing ad spend or customer acquisition cost.
For instance, an eCommerce store owner may attempt to increase the conversion rate of an ad’s landing page by increasing the ad budget.
While she may be able to improve her site’s conversion rate on the landing page with increased exposure, the profits she can expect from the new conversions are reduced by the extra ad cost.
CRO and SEO
If you thought, ‘What about SEO?’ after reading the previous example, you would have thought right.
Search engine optimization is a marketing strategy that aims to drive organic traffic to a website. However, CRO differs from SEO in that it aims at increasing the percentage of web traffic that converts.
Our eCommerce store owner may use SEO strategies to get more website traffic to her landing page. However, increased website visibility does not always translate to more conversions.
The magic of more organic conversion happens when SEO and CRO strategies are combined.
This answers the question, ‘Why is conversion rate optimization important?’.
It is not enough to have great strategies for increasing web traffic. You must also have strategies that can convert those visitors to leads generated and then those leads generated to paying customers, all at a reduced acquisition cost.
Before we go on exploring conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies, we must first understand what conversion rate is and how to calculate your eCommerce store conversion rate.
What is Conversion Rate (CVR)?
Conversion rate is simply the percentage of website visitors that complete a desired action. This desired action may be to fill out a web form, make a purchase, or simply click a link.
Different pages of an eCommerce website have different calls to action that take web visitors further down the website conversion funnel.
The home page seeks to get visitors to explore other pages, the product listing page would want users to ‘view more’ about a product, while the product page elements work together to get users to ‘add to cart’.
eCommerce store owners can use website analytics tools to track conversion on the different web pages. This is then used to calculate the conversion rate of a web page.
To calculate the conversion rate of any web page, you use the formula below
Conversion Rate: (Number of people that take a specific action/number of visitors)*100
To calculate the total conversion rate of your website, divide the total number of conversions into your different web pages by the total number of visitors to your website. Then multiply by 100.
What Is a Good Conversion Rate?
According to a study by Speed Commerce, the average conversion rate for eCommerce stores ranges from 2% to 4%. While this varies based on the industry, it gives you an idea of how your eCommerce website is performing.
The study showed the conversion rate of industries to be:
- Retail (Fashion, Jewelry, Shoes): 1.9%
- Electronics & Home Appliances: 3.6%
- Home Decor: 1.4%
- Personal Care Products: 6.8%
- Cars & Automobile Parts: 2.1%
- Food & Beverages: 4.9%
- Pet Care: 2.32%
Your conversion rate falling way below the average conversion rate for your industry is definitely not a good sign. However, increasing the conversion rate does not happen overnight.
You would need to set specific conversion goals that give you a target and guide how you measure your conversion rate optimization (CRO) success per time.
Keeping your current conversion rate in mind, set realistic conversion goals. These conversion goals should then be reviewed from time to time and raised to meet up with or even exceed the average conversion rate of your industry.
Here is an example:
If the current conversion rate of my product page is 0.5%, and I run an eCommerce store in the home decor industry, my conversion goal will be to raise the conversion rate of my product page to 1% within 6 months. If, after 6 months I can achieve this, I can then make another goal to improve conversion by another 0.5% in 6 months.
Setting conversion goals this way ensures that the growth of your eCommerce store is gradual but steady. You get to learn what works for your audience by constant A/B testing and user feedback, then apply these lessons to increase conversions.
7 eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Strategies
Here are seven practical eCommerce CRO strategies you can start applying to your eCommerce store.
By applying and testing these proven strategies, you work towards improving conversions to achieve your conversion goals.
1. Create a personalized user experience
Let’s say you walk into a retail store, and the store attendant greets you with a warm smile, calls you by your name, and leads you to the store section with things you need at the moment and with some extras for the future. Will you make your purchase from that one store? Will you come back to the store to shop another day?
Research shows that 80% of shoppers will buy from a store that offers a similar user experience online.
Creating a personalized user experience in eCommerce is all about using a customer’s previous behavior data to create an experience that resonates with them. This increases the chances of more customers to take a specific action.
With CRM software like EngageBay, you can store important customer information like purchase history, preferences, demographics, and search queries in one place. This available data gives you a 360-degree understanding of your customer, allowing you to create a positive experience that converts visitors to take a specific action.
Actionable tips
- CRM software is an important CRO tool. Select and integrate CRM software that suits your business goals and budget to your website.
- Use insights from website analytics tools like Google Analytics, a free tool, and CRM tools like EngageBay to segment your audience based on demographics and preferences.
- Carry out surveys to get user feedback. This feedback directly from your users gives you tangible personalization insights that can be applied.
- On the homepage, use custom welcome messages and provide personalized product recommendations.
Source On your landing page, use images, headlines, or CTAs that clearly communicate the benefit of your value proposition to the user. The benefit should be relevant to your target segment’s needs/desires.
- On your product page, include personalized product recommendations and compare similar products to aid the users’ decision process.
- Set up automated workflows using CRM automation tools, ensuring the timely execution of personalized actions.
- Provide personalized email campaigns and blog post content for specific user segments.
- Carry out A/B or split testing and make adjustments based on your findings.
2. Optimize your website load speed
A website’s load speed is the measure of how fast the content on a website’s page loads.
A study by the Portent blog shows that eCommerce sites with one (1) second loading speed get a conversion rate 2.5x higher than other eCommerce stores that load in 5 seconds.
These statistics show how much a low website speed can hurt your marketing efforts.
Websites that take more time to load irritate the user and increase the bounce rate. This increase in bounce rate reduces your website’s conversion rate. Therefore, optimizing your website’s speed is an important CRO strategy that can help you keep more of your website visitors on your site.
Web speed optimization is all about reducing the time it takes for your website to load functional site pages, allowing your website visitors to interact with your page almost instantly.
This creates a positive customer experience for your user and promotes user engagement with your site pages. Here are ways you can do this.
Actionable tips
- First, identify your current website speed using Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Remove unnecessary images, style sheets, or plug-ins from your website. This is because every visual element sends an HTTP request to the server for it to load. A high HTTP request reduces your web load speed. Therefore, reducing the visual elements on a page can help improve the speed of your site’s page.
- Optimize the remaining image size by using responsive images that change their resolution to align with different devices. You can hire a specialist to do so or follow this guide to do so on your own.
- Use image compression tools to compress file size without reducing the image quality.
- Ensure that images with lots of colors are in JPEG format. Simple graphics can be left in PNG format.
- Make use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). CDNs are a group of servers distributed all over the world hence, they are closer to all of your end users. They host your website resources and make them easily accessible to end users near them.
- Enable Gzip compression on HTTP servers.
- Enable the browsing cache. This ensures that some files are saved locally for frequent site visitors, hence saving time.
- Implement pre-fetch and pre-render techniques. These techniques call up the website to store a certain page before the user calls it up.
- Upgrade your hosting plan if it doesn’t meet your website’s current needs.
3. Optimize your website for mobile devices
Google crawls the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. This makes optimizing your site for mobile an important strategy for SEO and CRO. If your website is not optimized for mobile, it affects not just your ranking on search engines but also your conversion rate.
Mobile optimization is the process of making your website easy to use on different mobile devices. An optimized website allows users to view and interact with the website on their mobile devices without facing any hitches.
Croplink predicts that 75% of eCommerce sales will come from mobile commerce in 2025. When this high percentage of traffic knocks on your eCommerce stores, they better find it mobile-friendly, or they will head over to your competitor’s store.
Actionable tips
- Ensure your website is designed first for mobile. Adapting the site for desktop can quickly be done after the mobile version is developed.
- Use user testing tools to evaluate your mobile website‘s ease of use.
- Every 1-second delay in mobile page speed can reduce the conversion rate by 20%. Therefore, apply the tips for improving website speed to your mobile website version too.
- Use clear and high-quality product photos.
- Use bullet points and short paragraphs to increase readability on various mobile devices.
- Make your CTA buttons on your mobile landing page large enough to be noticed yet well-spaced to prevent users from accidentally clicking on another CTA.
- Consider adding voice search to your mobile eCommerce store to make it easy for users to search on your store.
4. Use social proof to your advantage
Customer testimonials and user feedback are great ways of building the users’ trust in your eCommerce store. They are the small nudge your website visitors need to make a purchase, thereby increasing conversion.
Without them, 92% of customers have revealed that they are more hesitant to make a purchase.
Social proofs can improve your eCommerce site’s conversion rate because they follow a proven psychological principle: humans are influenced by the actions of others. Seeing users similar to them in some way and sharing good reviews gets users to take action faster than when the words come from you.
Actionable tips
- When including testimonials on your homepage, include the person’s name, picture, and company logo if available.
- If you have customer reviews, include a carousel of it on the home page.
- Use video testimonials on your website. This brings the user’s unique personality to the testimonial and can serve as user-generated content (UGC)
- Depending on your industry, you can include the number of people who have purchased a given product next to the product. This communicates that real people have bought and used the product they were considering purchasing. It spurs users to trust the opinions of others and make a purchase.
- Display customer testimonials right under the product, showing a picture and a name.
- Showcase the number of likes/stars a product gets on the product page. These likes are like an endorsement of the product from other customers and hence build trust.
5. Streamline your checkout process
The checkout page for most eCommerce websites is where the visitor is converted into a paying customer. Therefore, optimizing this page is crucial to achieving your conversion optimization goals.
Baymard’s user research shows an average cart abandonment rate of 70.19%. This means that only 29.81% of web visitors who get to the checkout page actually make a purchase.
With a conversion-optimized checkout page, you can increase the percentage of visitors that make a purchase.
Before we go into ways you can implement this conversion rate optimization strategy in your checkout webpage, look through the reasons why people abandon carts in the infographics below.
Mentally identify the one your checkout page may be guilty of and then look out for the tip to solve that.
Actionable tips
- Set up your checkout page such that it allows unregistered users to checkout as guests. The data shows that 26% of visitors who were ready to make a purchase abandoned their cart because they were required to create an account. This shows us that the checkout page may not just be the best place to ask users to create an account.
- Let your checkout process be simple and short. Users should not have to fill out long forms before they check out. Only include relevant information to the purchase form.
- Build trust by including customer testimonials and reviews. You can also include your refund policy if your business runs with one.
- Hidden fees like delivery fees are one of the major reasons people abandon carts. To solve this, offer extra value. Amazon’s strategy to offer fast delivery instead is an example of this.
- Optimize the loading speed of your checkout page. You can also include a progress indicator that lets people know how far they have gone and what is left. This gives them something to look forward to.
- Provide different payment gateways to meet the preferences of different customers, offering convenience.
- Set up an automated abandoned cart email campaign to target potential customers who do not end up purchasing after adding to the cart.
6. Make good use of technology
Conversion rate optimization is all about measuring your website performance, analyzing the behavior of website visitors on your site, and taking action based on the insights you get. Behavior-tracking tools enable you to do these effectively and accurately.
The following technologies are used by behavior tracking tools to record user behavior on your website:
Heat map
This tracking technology tracks the user’s mouse movement. Every scroll or click is indicated using varying color codes. This makes it easy to understand and analyze the data collected.
The data gathered informs you of the elements on your website that users engage with the most by clicking.
When this technology is used in A/B testing, your digital marketing team gets an idea of elements that work and those that don’t.
Scroll maps
This map records how a user scrolls through different landing pages on your website. It also records the conversion rate of each landing page.
Comparing these data, scroll maps suggest the ideal landing page length and CTA placement for an optimal conversion rate. This new insight can be applied to boost the conversion rate of your landing pages.
User recordings
This must be done in compliance with privacy guidelines. Behavior tracking tools let you record a user’s session.
A user session refers to the time when the user interacts with your website and what he does on your website within that time.
Seeing how a user navigates through your web page, the challenges he faces, and his response to those challenges help you better analyze your website conversion funnel and identify leaks.
Insight from user recordings helps you understand the different visitors that come to your website and how you could serve them better.
It is common to observe some high-intent visitors who move from the awareness level directly to the conversion level. Creating unique conversion funnels, using automation and personalized messaging for the different customer journeys, will help prevent the loss of potential customers and increase the store’s conversion rate.
Confetti maps
This is similar to heat maps in that it monitors the user’s clicks based on filters. It represents this in the form of charts.
Using these technologies, behavior tracking tools give accurate insights into user behaviors around your website.
Since customers’ needs are not constant and trends change with time, it is important to constantly look at your store’s data and test out strategies to figure out what works best per time.
A/B testing, also called split testing, simply involves comparing two versions of a web form, landing page, or email to determine which brings the most results.
eCommerce owners can test different CTAs, offers, and website elements by using A/B testing tools. However, before carrying out A/B testing, you must ensure that your website gets a good level of traffic to have a good sample size for testing.
Multivariate testing is another form of A/B testing that allows you to test multiple variables at once. While A/B tests inform you of the version of a web page that performs better, multivariate testing compares different elements on the web page and informs you how each of them performs.
Whether you use A/B or multivariate testing depends on your available resources. However, both give insights that can be used to make informed decisions on what strategies to implement.
7. Strategic use of pop-up form
A pop-up form is an overlay that appears on a website, prompting visitors to take specific action. This action may include signing up to get relevant offers or subscribing to an email newsletter.
They are mostly used to generate more leads and collect customer data.
Though pop-up forms may seem intrusive, they can bring tangible CRO results if the offers they present are personalized and relevant to the visitor.
For instance, a person reading through a blog post on ‘best dog food for growth’, will most likely respond to a pop-up form offering a dog feeding schedule template.
Brands like Campaign Monitor have used pop-ups to improve the conversion of abandoning users to leads by 10.8%.
This shows that there is a right way and a wrong way to use pop-up forms. Here are tips to follow to correctly implement this CRO strategy.
Actionable tips
- Keep in mind the specific target audience segment and apply personalization tips.
- Use pop-up forms in blog posts to offer more value to people who are already hooked on the product you want to promote.
- Ensure the forms contain only relevant and necessary information to be filled.
- Create visually appealing pop-up forms.
- Set up the pop-up forms such that they appear when the user shows signs wanting to leave the website (exit pop-up forms) or when they have spent a considerable amount of time on a web page.
- Use a clear CTA.
- Ensure that the pop-up forms are optimized for mobile without filling up the entire space of the smaller screens.
8. Craft compelling clear call-to-action (CTA)
Call-to-action (CTA) elements prompt users to take a desired action. Including CTAs across different site pages is a common practice for improving conversion; however, the majority of these CTAs do not increase conversion. This could be a result of a lack of clarity or personalization.
Another factor that could contribute to the ineffectiveness of CTAs, especially in a blog post, is the banner blindness phenomenon. This simply refers to the tendency of people to ignore banner-like information probably as a result of over-exposure to them.
Actionable tips
- Have a single and clear call to action that users can focus on. The presence of more than one call-to-action offers more options and this can be distracting for users.
- Use H3 or H4 text-based CTAs on blog posts. This solves the problem of banner blindness and encourages users to take action.
- Use urgent language that encourages users to take action immediately (‘buy now!’)
- Don’t be generic. Use clear words that let users know what you expect them to do. ( ‘Register for free today!’ not ‘click here’)
- Use a CTA button that is visually appealing and noticeable.
- Use words that provoke emotions and state the benefits of clicking the button. (‘get 10% off my purchase’ instead of ‘sign up’)
Emerging Conversion Optimization Trends
Two major conversion rate optimization trends are emerging in 2025, thanks to advancements in technology.
While the strategies already shared can set your eCommerce store up for success, understanding and adopting these two conversion optimization trends helps your eCommerce store remain competitive.
AI-driven personalization
AI is leaving its mark in almost every area of life, and CRO is not left behind. From its speed in processing a large volume of data to its predictive modeling, AI makes hyper-personalization possible.
It tracks a user’s behavior in real-time, analyzes the data, and makes product recommendations or unique audience-tailored content, all in an instant.
Think of the strategies we have shared so far. Each of their success depends on understanding, predicting, and meeting the users’ needs/expectations. AI helps brands achieve this almost accurately and in less time.
Brands like Netflix use AI to show highly personalized movie recommendations and content to their audience.
And in case you are thinking Netflix is way up, eCommerce stores like Stitch Fix and Sephora also do a good job with using AI for hyper-personalized user experience.
You can start small by using simple AI tools to collect and analyze data.
Voice search
Another trend we see emerging in 2025 for optimizing conversion rates is the use of voice search. Statistics show that over 142 million people currently use voice technology smart speakers, and about 1 billion voice searches are carried out each month. These numbers promise to rise even more.
eCommerce store owners can think of voice search in two ways. The first step will be to implement voice search engine optimization for your eCommerce site. This ensures that your online store shows up when more customers do a voice search.
The second aspect will be to integrate voice search features into eCommerce stores. This feature is predicted to increase conversions and revenue for eCommerce stores by 30%.
An additional advantage of voice search integration is that it boosts conversion by fostering conversational commerce.
Conversational commerce involves the use of AI-powered digital marketing tools like chatbots and voice search to further blur the distance between potential customers and the store owner. This strategy increases trust, improves the customer’s experience, and heightens the chances of conversion.
For small eCommerce store owners, this probably sounds like a lot. However, the rule is always to look at your available resources and start small.
Optimizing your eCommerce store for voice search engines mostly requires you to use conversational language in your content and optimize for long-tail keywords in your blog post, content, and product descriptions. This isn’t so hard, right?
The second part of integrating voice search into your eCommerce store is not so difficult either. You don’t have to develop a unique voice search engine or AI. You can simply integrate existing tools that enable voice search into your eCommerce store.
Key Metrics for Measuring CRO Success
Conversion rate optimization does not end with implementing the strategies above. Measuring success is as important as implementing.
By carrying out CRO tests and measuring the effectiveness of your CRO efforts, you can set better conversion goals and refine your CRO tactics to meet your users’ behavior. To do these, the key eCommerce metrics you need to measure are as follows:
Conversion rate (CVR)
This is an obvious metric to track, We can’t talk about conversion rate optimization without first measuring the rate at which visitors complete a set of desired actions on your online store.
Bounce rate
This measures the rate at which visitors leave your site immediately after viewing only one page. This suggests that your content does not meet their needs. Here is the formula to calculate this:
Bounce rate = (Single page sessions/total sessions) * 100
Customer acquisition cost
This refers to the amount spent to get a new lead, probably through ads and SEO. This helps you identify acquisition channels to stop using, optimize, or do more of. Here is the formula to calculate this:
CAC = (Total marketing cost related to acquisition/total number of customers acquired)
Average time on site
This refers to the time visitors spend on your website in a single visit. If this is high, it suggests that they find your content interactive and useful to them. Here is the formula to calculate this:
Average time on site = Total time spent on the site/Total sessions
Click-through rate
This measures the number of people who click a link in relation to those who see the link. This gives you an idea of the messaging or design that your target audience responds to. Here is the formula to calculate this:
Click-through rate = (Number of clicks/Number of impressions)
Pages per session
This measures the number of web pages viewed in one user session. If this is high, more time is spent on the website, which is a positive sign. Here is the formula to calculate this:
Pages per session = total page views/total sessions
Cart abandonment rate
This measures the number of people who start taking an action, like adding a product to a cart but leave without completing the purchase. Here is the formula to calculate this:
CAR = 1 – ((number of completed purchase/number of cart opened)*100)
eCommerce analytics tools are important CRO tool that helps you gather the data you need to calculate these important metrics from your CRO tests.
Conclusion
By now, we believe your mind is filled with strategies you are ready to start implementing! These seven conversion rate optimization strategies will help your online store thrive during fierce competition and increasing customer expectations.
Today’s Digital marketing rewards businesses and brands that can provide the fastest, highly personalized products and services.
To effect the CRO strategies shared in this guide and be a part of the top stores in your niche, you would need data. Integrate tools like EngageBay that can collect and analyze data for your eCommerce store and periodically review the data collected to make informed decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the average conversion rate for eCommerce?
The average conversion rate range for eCommerce is 2% to 4%. This varies depending on the industry. This global average range gives you a clue on how your eCommerce store is performing. Knowing this, you can set a conversion goal that allows you to improve on your current conversion rate.
2. Is conversion rate optimization important?
Yes, conversion rate optimization is very important for businesses. This is because it helps business owners get the best out of their website traffic, driving more revenue at reduced acquisition and marketing costs.
3. How often should I conduct A/B testing on my eCommerce site?
For large eCommerce stores with the resources, A/B or split testing can happen once every 1-2 months. However, for smaller eCommerce stores, A/B testing can happen when a need is identified.
The test should run for about two weeks. This time is long enough for your test to reach statistical significance and short enough to prevent sample pollution.
4. What are the best CRO tools for measuring conversion rate optimization (CRO) success?
To measure conversion rate optimization success, eCommerce store owners simply need to measure the conversion rate and determine if there was an increase from the last time. This involves measuring the key metrics we listed in the guide. Tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, ConvertBox, and EngageBay can help you measure these metrics and determine CRO success.
5. Can improving website speed significantly impact my conversion rates?
Yes, it can. Thanks to technological advancements, users expect websites to load faster. According to a study by Portent, eCommerce stores with 1 1-second load time get 2.5x more conversion than those with 5 5-second load time. Walmart also recorded a 2% increase in conversion rate for every 1-second improvement in load time.
6. How do I use social proof effectively to increase conversions?
Using social proof to effectively increase conversion involves strategically placing the social proof in your landing pages and product pages. Using pictures, displaying customer reviews/ratings, and developing case studies are common ways you can use social proof to ease the fear of your users.
