How to Increase Shopify Conversions Using a Holistic Strategy

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of developing and maintaining a strong conversion rate (CR) for your ecommerce business. Briefly, this measures the rate at which potential shoppers in your Shopify store complete a desired action. CR has a direct and meaningful  impact on the growth of your business. A low CR has an equally impactful, measurably negative result on your store’s financial health.

Importantly, conversion rates don’t necessarily relate solely to sale completion. A successful conversion can also mean that a consumer has decided to pursue a relationship with you: they may sign up to request further information about your services, download a free PDF asset, or provide information in order to secure a quote for future work, for example.

When ecommerce customers can complete their business swiftly and simply, this success is a direct reflection on both your marketing and the efficacy of your web design and user experience (UX).

On the flip side, we see the same abandonment issues on ecommerce sites as we do in the “real world.” Customers in brick-and-mortar establishments may abandon their shopping carts when their frustration level outweighs the benefits of finalizing the sale.

In your ecommerce store, your potential customers are even more likely to abandon their virtual carts—immediately lowering your Shopify store’s sale-related conversion rate—when the barriers to completion are too high. And, although the reasons for failure may be the same (too long, too confusing, forgot their credit card, etc.), virtual fixes can be somewhat more complicated.

To increase conversions, you need to first identify where (and why) customers are abandoning their purchases and/or engagement with your ecommerce site. We call these points of abandonment the holes in the “leaky bucket,” and they can quickly combine for some serious attrition to your conversion rate.

The conversion funnel is the path that your customers take from arrival at your store’s site to the final purchase point. Just as in a literal funnel, their options narrow as they go—from browsing a large range of product pages, to selecting a few wish list items, to adding one or more items to their cart, to reaching the checkout page, to completing the sale. Whew!

Analytics and integration can best provide an answer to this question. Purpose-built for the Shopify platform, Postscript is ideally suited to helping businesses analyze and integrate. Used properly, together these two tools can help you with the following tasks:

• Gathering and compiling customer data in real time;

• Identifying customer/order segmentations;

• Analyzing customer behavior over specific time segments;

• Tracking the results of your SMS marketing and messaging against leakage and conversion, and, crucially;

• Learning from these lessons, with the result of immediately increasing your conversion rate.

Source: E-commerce nation

People know when they’re being sold, sometimes quite literally. Impersonal, inauthentic and shady marketing techniques have both a quantifiable and unquantifiable cost, not only stopping customers from converting but also creating a less-than-stellar reputation.

Too often, marketers fall prey to the SEO demon of stuffing their messages with clunky, stand-out-a-mile-away SEO keywords. While the goal of rising up Google’s search ranks is admittedly mission-critical to brand positioning,  this practice alienates readers and potential customers, who often make the conscious decision to immediately avoid your brand and its poorly constructed messaging.

At Postscript we have figured out ways to achieve the results shop owners and marketers want in both these instances. Due to our deep integration with Shopify, the marketing efforts become not only truly personal, but also deeply effective. In fact, we know that stores using these tools are reporting earnings at over 10x their SMS marketing spend.

Knowing your audience is more than half the battle—it’s the key to the whole war. Learn about where they are, when they buy what (and why), how much they tend to spend and what behaviors they use online (see integration and analytics above). Having a sense of these things will allow you to market your Shopify products and tailor your product descriptions more effectively and personally.

Find out how to segment your customer base with Postscript.

The next step is campaign creation. Once you’ve used your SMS marketing tools to gain the customer understanding that you need, you can go to work. When a potential customer (called by a name they recognize!) receives an offer that makes sense to them personally, not only has the marketer gained their trust and their interest, but also very likely their business.

Here’s how to create a campaign.

It sounds obvious, but the most personal interaction you can have with a customer is an actual discussion. The ability to ask and answer questions, offer personal help on the fly, even possibly offer a special discount code or unexpected help of some kind is almost immeasurably powerful.

Postscript makes it easy to send messages for customer support. By providing quick answers to all sorts of random questions that are, oddly enough, often the real deal-breakers or -makers in a sale, you’re showing people that they have someone who is really, truly listening to them. And really, as marketers, isn’t that exactly what we’re here to do?

The key element here, regardless of the immediate CR outcome, is the development of a dialogue or relationship that could continue in the long term. In marketing lingo, successful conversion rates turn consumers into customers. Install Postscript on Shopify today if you’re ready, or schedule a demo first to learn more about how Shopify store owners can use Postscript to start connecting with soon-to-be customers today!