How to Increase Conversion Rates and Sales with Zen-Cart
Your conversion rate will tell you how many visitors are taking a certain action - it could be completing a purchase (obviously, the ultimate goal) but could also include completely a contact form, signing up for the newsletter, etc. You can measure this by setting up goals within your analytics program, if you're not running Google Analytics, you should be. This will give you valuable statistics and metrics which we can measure against and help you improve business. Contact us for Zen Cart Help
You need to optimize the functionality of the cart. The more clicks you make a visitor perform in order to get to the end result, the more likely they are to leave without doing anything. "Abandoning the process" is a big problem in e-commerce.
Below are ways you can optimize and improve the cart and shopping experience for the customer:
- Simplify the login / registration page
- Rephrase blocks of text to make the user think less
- Remove unnecessary information at sign up (DOB, Phone, etc)
- Reduce the amount of clicks necessary to signup, increase white space and create a better flow to the process
- Remove the create an account success screen
- Just adds another click. After signup, take the user directly to the next screen they were expecting to visit
- Make the Add to Cart, View Cart, Checkout, Continue and Submit Order buttons/links more visible, prominent and compelling
- Self explanatory. You want to make sure these important buttons stand out from the rest of the website. It will draw the users attention and make them subconsciously follow the process we want them to
- Clearly indicate an item has been added to the cart, and don't send them to their cart after adding an item
- By default the user will be taken to their cart when they add a product. You want to skip this and let them continue to shop and add more products
- Simplify the shopping cart page
- Remove unnecessary text, such as "Visitor carts being merged with member carts", etc. Just confuses people. Remove the estimate shipping button and add that section directly the page, reduces clicks and confusion
- Make changes to the checkout shipping page
- Change the language
- Add white space
- Display the checkout button prominently
- Make changes to the checkout payment page
- Same steps as mentioned above with checkout shipping page
- Reword the checkout confirmation page
- Change the language so the user is not confused. Make sure they're aware that one more step is necessary to complete the transaction
- Add the word "Edit" to the images
- Modify the layout of the credit card information screen
- Optimize the thank you page
- The one time that you have the users utmost attention is on the "thank you" page. It is one page that people not only read, but read carefully and take note of. Why? Because they want to find out what the next steps are for receiving the product they just ordered.
- With the above information at hand, this is the page you should ask them to refer friends and add incentives - Receive a discount if you refer a friend, etc.
- You could also provide a customer service survey at this page as well, so you can collect data that will help us to continually improve the cart
- Create an impulse offer - FREE SHIPPING
- Studies have shown time and time again that free shipping promotions are powerful offers which almost always result in an increase in sales
- Simplify navigation where possible
- Where possible you should reduce the amount of clicks it takes to find what the user is looking for
- Build customer confidence
- Prominently display secure and SSL images/certifications, return policies, phone numbers, etc.
- Add as many payment methods as possible
- CyberSource reported that retailers who offered three or more payment options saw an average of 14% increase in conversions. And Forrester Research contends that alternative payment methods help increase sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment
We recommend the following modules/add-ons:
- Amazon Inventory Loader
- This will allow you to export the products into an Amazon account where you can list and sell products
- Best Sellers Page
- This creates a page that will list best selling items
- Contest System
- By installing this, you can add a contest signup side box and offer the customer the chance to win something in exchange for their email address
- Google Froogle Feed
- Same functionality as the Amazon Inventory Loader, this adds the products to Froogle for sale
- Better Together
- Allows cross selling at a discount; a product can be linked with another specific product, another product from a specific category, or any other product, with an associated discount (in dollars or % off) if both are purchased together
- Order Steps
- Creates a graphical indicator of where your customer is in the checkout process
- Free Shipping Rules
- This shipping module allows you to offer free shipping when more than one requirement is set. These requirements include order total, total weight, and total items. For example, if the minimum order total is set to $1000 and the maximum weight is set to 5lbs, free shipping would only be given for orders that meet BOTH of these requirements
- Tell a Friend - Free Shipping
- This module will give the customer free or reduced shipping if they tell a friend using the form on the website