This guide provides an easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach to improving your sales conversion rate in order to maximize revenue. Read it today and follow it in your business!
Table of contents
Success in ecommerce is measured by high sales conversion rates. However, the industry is super competitive, so keeping this metric high might be challenging. But it doesn’t have to be the case!
Today you’ll learn what factors influence conversion rates and the strategies for maximizing your sales performance. Whether you’re a seasoned sales professional or starting out, you’ll find this guide useful.
Low sales conversion? No worries, there are some steps you can take to have more leads converted!
What is the sales conversion rate?
Conversion rates are an essential sales metric that shows how many people convert while browsing your website. So they not only go through the pages but also take action - convert into qualified leads, sign up for a newsletter, fill in the form, add to the cart, or others. However, the sales conversion rate refers to the people who take actions that bring a company closer to increasing revenues**.**
How to calculate sales conversion rate?
The sales conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of sales by the total number of leads and then multiplying by 100 to get the percentage.
Sales conversion rate = (total sales / total leads) * 100
For example, if there were 100 visitors to your website, and 2 of them bought an item, your sales conversion rate would be 2%.
If you want to calculate sales conversion rate, Google Analytics could be helpful. The tool tracks session and user conversion rates.
What affects the sales conversion rates?
In other words, what makes people purchase? A few factors encourage visitors to click the add to cart button and then proceed to checkout. Let’s take a look at what these aspects are exactly.
01 User-experience
The confusing user interface may be why visitors give up on buying and taking other shopping-related actions. When:
- customer journey is unclear,
- the webpage loads slowly,
- a user has trouble finding the products,
no surprise that converting leads into customers is tough.
To prevent that, take some time to find what makes buyers the most struggle. No idea how to check it out? Try video recording. It is an effective tool for tracking website visitors’ sessions and it provides valuable data to include in your product discovery process. This way, you’ll know exactly what improvements are most relevant for your users and which ones to tackle first.
To build a website with a clear customer journey, start by choosing a theme that appeals to your target audience and allows you to easily add content and make design tweaks.
The other solution is to contact a UX designer to upgrade your website from a user experience perspective. However, not every company can afford it.
If your budget doesn’t allow for an outsourced designer, there are a number of other things you have control over that can improve your site’s user experience, from guiding visitors with breadcrumbs to assessing your website’s responsiveness.
02 Prices and products
When shopping, price is the most decisive factor for some people. In that case, review the prices and look at your competitors’ price ranges. If yours are too high, consider adjusting them to stay competitive.
On the other hand, if the prices are too low, this could lead to lost revenue, which is the opposite of what you want to achieve.
Along with competitive prices, offer value-added services or features that your competitors don’t have - it helps to justify higher prices and set your business apart from other companies.
03 Marketing and advertising
Your sales conversion rate is low maybe because people don’t know your brand yet. And to raise brand awareness, it’s crucial to use the media your target audience uses. For instance, when you sell clothes online, it’s a good idea to find out what way of advertising is the most effective for your buyer persona. If your target group is young adults, engaging on social media is a must!
source: Statista
Keep in mind that targeting B2B customers is rather different then B2C ones. While the latter might spend their time mostly on social media, many businesses are still receptive to cold-calling using landline phone services, cold email outreach, and other channels. In order to target them effectively, start by creating a B2B-specific ideal customer profile. With the data at hand, research methods to target this client group.
04 Customer trust
If customers don’t trust a brand, the sales conversion rate will suffer. Before making a purchase, sales ready prospects often check other users’ opinions on the product and services. And review websites are definitely worth following. It’s a mine of knowledge about what your users think of your service.
To gain consistent customer trust, security plays an important role. To achieve this, an SSL certificate is a crucial part. It is therefore wise to buy SSL & install it on the website to assure customers that they are on the right website.
Determining customer trust might be challenging, but keeping an eye on reviews is a good start. You’ll get information on what improvements the users are looking for, what they like, and what needs jazzing up.
How to maximize conversion sales conversion rate?
If you are struggling with a low conversion rate, go through these points, and check if you miss any of them. Also, don’t miss the checklist for enhancing your sales strategy!
#1 Provide excellent customer service
Customer service is incredibly important, and it plays the first fiddle in building relations with customers and prospects. Ensure that the marketing and sales team’s priority is to provide high-quality customer service.
What’s better than serving customers in real-time, offering them personalized assistance? Hard to find anything comparable. That’s why you should consider implementing such a solution.
#2 Capture qualified leads
Since the lead quality is really important for nowadays businesses, Capturing qualified leads means identifying and attracting prospective customers. They are willing to invest money in your services or products. You need to know who they are, their budget, and their preferences for the product. Therefore, make sure to ask the right qualifying questions.
💡 It’s worth launching a live chat. It is one of the ways of generating leads.
Setting up sending automated messages is just a matter of minutes with a chat solution. Use pop-up messages on your website to offer incentives in exchange for a customer’s email details. By doing so, you increase the number of qualified leads.Take help of robust CRM solutions to manage your leads efficiently.
#3 Engage prospects in social media
Social media is a fantastic medium for marketing freelancer to attract new customers. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms offer targeted marketing, which makes it easy to reach the audience you wish to appeal to. Find out what your audience is interested in by sharing different types of content, like Instagram guides, a Reel summing up your blog article, Q&As over stories, poll on Facebook, etc. To cut down your efforts on sharing, you can always use an app for social media posting for better results.
Let’s say that you manage multiple Instagram accounts. You can publish a series of stories with polls, asking for feedback, on some of the accounts. On others, you might focus on getting feedback via DMs. And your largest account should be used here for general posting and engaging in the comments section.
Besides, social media platform is the place where you can connect with followers directly - ask for opinions*, reply to comments, organize giveaways, and collaborate with influencers.*
All those actions, including a well-crafted sales presentation, help reach prospects interested in your services and products and improve sales CR and lead generation.
#4 Use marketing to your advantage
Today, most marketing efforts take place online. Some companies rely on online advertising 100%. Not a surprise since the number of online buyers grows gradually every year.
Moreover, the number of online users reached 5.3 billion in 2022. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Use social media marketing to make sure you don’t fall behind.
#5 Build customer loyalty
There are a few things that you can do to build customer loyalty. Some of them are pretty clear-cut, for example:
- providing possibly the best customer service (live chat is super effective in that matter),
- staying in touch with customers using multiple channels,
- products of high quality, or offering personalized experiences,
and more.
Small things, however, can make all the difference.
The language that you use when communicating with your customers and perspectives has an impact. Your audience is more likely to stay with you if you use friendly language and a tone of voice that resonates with them. And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time.
Additionally, one-on-one assistance is critical- then, building a customer relationship is seamless.
#6 Offer incentives such as discounts and free items
A well-thought-out discount, prizes or rewards such as swag like a t-shirt or sticker might improve your sales conversion rate metric notably. If you follow the trends, meaning what and when customers buy from you, it’s possible to create a really compelling offer.
For example, when you see the Christmas season coming, special offers such as buy three pay for two could work perfectly. However, it’s essential to check what are the favorite items at your store, so you can offer discounts on the products people are looking for.
#7 Support the sales team
Do you want your company to be successful in sales and marketing? Well, a marketing and sales team must know its audience and use data to its advantage, along with technology, to enhance the strategies. But… how to achieve all of that?
Sales managers should support their teams, offering them development opportunities at the very beginning. Moreover, a supportive work environment is essential. Maybe tweaking up the onboarding process will help?
Take a step back and look closer at the details - do your sales and marketing teams get enough training? Are they satisfied with their job? If answering these questions is hard, but you can evaluate the situation by doing regular employee surveys. Do some research on the best sales apps, and provide one to your team; not only will it increase productivity, but it will also improve employee satisfaction.
You can also develop content strategy that helps not only achieve your marketing goals, but also supports your sales team. While TOFU pieces of content might be more helpful for general purposes, MOFU content brings potential customers down the funnel, and with BOFU, you can close seal the deal.
#8 Go through the reviews regularly
Don’t skip this task if you want to succeed in conversion rate optimization. Users’ reviews are a fantastic source of insights! Based on them, you determine if your marketing efforts work and if customers are happy with the products or services. Aside from that, review forums show where a company lacks.
And there’s one more thing about review websites - they’re great places to show your customers how much you care. By answering their opinions (both positive and negative), you signal that you value your customers’ feedback. Regardless of the opinion, always use a friendly and professional tone and language.
#9 Make tracking key metrics a habit
Consider tracking other sales conversion metrics as a part of your daily routine. Keeping an eye on them gives you the space to react before something goes wrong. Moreover, they hint at why the sale conversion rate metric is low.
Not sure what metrics to track? Here are the crucial ones:
- cart abandonment
- customer acquisition costs
- average order value (AOV)
- time on site
- bounce rates
- marketing efficiency ratio (MER)
- return on ad spend (ROAS)
Observing these metrics will give you a bigger picture of how your business performs. If setting up a robust embedded dashboard seems daunting then consider seeking help from a qualified marketing advisor for guiding you through the process.
#10 Ask customers for feedback
Following customer feedback is super beneficial for a company. And sometimes, it may be time-consuming.
In the case of live chat or a chatbot solution, a quick survey will be displayed to customers after conversion. As a result, they can rate the customer service they receive.
Then, if you use a proper reporting tool, you’ll have all the reports on how users rate the experience. Feedback is about customer service quality, which you can use to get better.
#11 Stay updated with the competitors and the latest technology
Change is a constant in the e-commerce industry. New technologies may come to the market day by day. So… make the most of it! Recent trends and technologies can make you thrive and stand out from the competition. It benefits the sales process and converting leads as well.
Besides, not keeping up with the trends could leave you behind. The necessary minimum for companies is to look around and observe the industry benchmarks. On top of that, go through your competitors’ reviews as well. Why? This is how you can spot any issues they have (see what the users complain about) and do it better!
Maximize sales conversion rates with Smartsupp
Smartsupp is a customer care software that provides powerful tools like live chat, chatbot, and video recording. They can support you in streamlining your sales pipeline thanks to excellent real-time customer service.
What does Smartsupp special?
Find out how Smartsupp can help your sales and marketing team improve conversion rates.
Reliable tools
Smartsupp capabilities and tools make companies thrive! You can enhance many business areas by directly influencing sales with live chat, chatbot, and video recordings. With its solid set of features, things like:
- real-time customer support,
- building customer relationships,
- excellent service,
- asking customers for feedback,
and more, are a breeze.
Affordable price
Companies of any size and spending capacity will find something satisfactory in Smartsupp’s offer. There’s a free plan for businesses with very tight budgets and tailored packages for more prominent companies. Check out Smartsupp pricing details and find the best deal.
Simple user interface
With its simple user interface, Smartsupp is easy to use. Everything is quick to find, and, most importantly, the setup takes only a few minutes. Still, in case of any questions, Smartsupp customer support representatives react in the blink of an eye and are at your disposal the whole time.
Useful video recordings
Use video recordings to boost your sales team’s productivity and increase conversion rates. How? In the admin panel, choose a user session to check how they navigate the webshop. It’s a unique feature that barely any customer service provider offers.
The tool gives huge insights into customers’ behavior. You can catch the exact moment a customer leaves your website, even though they have added items to the cart. Apart from that, video recordings make it easier to pinpoint where the website falls short and what performs well. You’ll see where the visitors struggle, and it’ll be much faster to determine what needs improvements.
Various integrations
Smartsupp allows integration with many e-commerce platforms. You are only a few clicks away from connecting with Shopify, Prestashop, WordPress, Shoper, and more. Plus, the Shoptet integration lets orders be automatically tracked, and customers get updated about every step of the delivery via chatbot! A solution like this saves you a great deal of time and effort.
Now you know everything about increasing sales conversion rate!
Now it’s just a matter of getting started! Analyze your current situation, and figure out what lowers your sales conversion rate. No idea what to begin with? Improving customer service might be a worthwhile first step. Create an account and start a free trial to check how Smartsupp can actually bring you more revenue and marketing qualified leads.