The 4 Quick Fixes to Boost Website Conversion

Happy Sunday! I hope if you’re reading this, you’re sitting back with a beverage in hand, and you’re excited for a quick email on conversion.

If you were forwarded this email, join 25,000 CMOs, CEOs, VCs, and marketers on this email list by clicking here. It’s free, it comes weekly, and there’s always something different I dive into.

For today's email, I want to keep it shorter than usual and to the point, since I know most people are treating tonight as a Saturday night (as you should!). 

I want to dive into a few things I like to think about when it comes to conversion rate optimization for an eCommerce website. I'll do my best to break it down into a few easy categories (if I miss anything, please reply!). But first, here's why I think it's important.

One of our past clients, Cuyana, has a beautiful store in Soho, Manhattan, and when someone walks in, they can quickly ask 1-2 questions, look at what she might be carrying in her hands, what kind of style she has, and quickly begin to assume what to show her as she gets familiar with the brand. It becomes a personalized shopping experience, and as a result, it increases the likelihood of her buying something as well as her perception of the brand.

With eCommerce, you are selling to someone you've never met IRL, and it's your job to help them get through your store without ever meeting them, knowing who they are, or why they came to your store. With the cost of showing ads to consumers going up, it's even more critical to ensure that you are doing the best you possibly can to maximize each visitor's web experience with you.

We've launched over a dozen sites through Sharma Brands, and with each one, there are 4 main things we think about to build our more technical user experiences across the website. Whether it's the homepage, the PDP, the post-purchase page, or the blog, it's on you, the merchant, to make sure you do the best job of building a true experience.

Journey / Merchandising

When people come to your site, just like if they had walked into your store, you need to help point them in the right direction. It's much easier for brands that focus on a hero product or have a single product to sell — companies like Buffy, Cadence, and Jolie do this really well.

If you're selling multiple categories with a variety of SKUs, like Italic, you can see how they focus on getting you in with a journey. On the top, they have a handful of rotating banners that focus on pushing both new products, as well as what they see to have the highest sell-through rate. Underneath that, you'll see they make it their mission to get you into a journey — either from what's selling fast, categories, or new arrivals. 

You should have a good idea of what combination of product(s) has the highest sell-through for a new customer — focus on that. If you're JuneShine, that might be a variety pack. If you're Snif, that might be a candle variety pack. If you're COVEY, that might be The Routine.

While you want to make sure your site is optimized for new customers coming into try something, make sure it's also just as straightforward for someone who's coming back to get in, get their stuff, and get out.

Social Proof

Social proof comes in all types of ways, and in my opinion, it really depends who your audience is. For example, with brands that have an older customer demographic, they respond better to old-school publication quotes — places like Town & Country, New York Times, Good Morning America, etc. If the customer is a bit younger, you might switch those logos to publications like POPSUGAR, Refinery29, VOX, or Business Insider.

As you get younger, but even with an older demo you should focus on this, consumers want to hear from other consumers' honest reviews and feedback — even the 1 and 2-star reviews. Customer reviews can't be paid for, can't be faked, and they truly show the reason someone bought and the benefits they got out of it. Brands that focus on collecting, displaying, and amplifying reviews across their website (like Caraway with 30,000 reviews) naturally see a much higher conversion rate.

The natural thought is, "If this has a 4.8-star rating with 30,000 ratings, the odds of me NOT liking it MUST be really low."

Focusing on review collection should be one of the top priorities, always. When displaying reviews on PDPs, try to focus on a few different customer POVs — different benefits, different use cases, different reasons to buy, etc.

You can use a simple reviews widget, but I would also recommend finding the top 20-30 websites in your niche and doing your best to get on there. When potential customers Google for reviews, you want to make sure there is legitimate content there.

Messaging / Creative

Just like you think about your website journey, you want your messaging and creative to also stay relevant to who's coming in. If you're guiding them to buy a pillow, instead of a "Shop Now" CTA, use "Get Snoozing →".

Instead of product imagery of your blanket on a bed or draping over a couch, use it in action, showing how it would look if someone was underneath it. This is actually something I learned from the best apparel and alcohol brands — they do an incredible job of immersing you into the brand’s lifestyle through imagery and messaging from the get-go. It isn't just pretty studio shots, they make you imagine you were on that yacht drinking a beverage, or going out in Soho with the best-fitting denim. 

Find ways to use visual assets to immerse someone into what it's like using the products, not just what they look like when photographed.

Technology & Tools

Tech and services to make your site better are my favorite — because once you install something once, there's an entire team that works 24/7 to continue improving that product, which makes your own site experience better. Here are 8 vendors I personally love incorporating:

ReBuy. ReBuy is like a gift from the heavens if you operate on Shopify. Check out the demo store here. With one single app at $4.49/month, you can add up-sells on the PDP or cart, gift with purchases, or AI-based product recommendations. Highly recommend adding!

Microsoft Clarity. It probably sounds like I'm beating a dead horse talking about how incredible this app is. It's free, and lets you see user heat maps, scroll-depth maps, and user site recordings across desktop and mobile. 30 minutes of reviewing per day will help you increase your conversion rate and make sure you're saying the right things at the right time.

Affirm. I'll speak more on Affirm below, but Affirm just takes away a customer's worry of "Do I need to see if I have enough in my account" or "How can I order everything I need now, without having to come back later?". Affirm also doesn't charge the customer any interest when they pay in 4 payments, which is their most common loan, anyways.

Oddit. This company changed the way we design websites. Their UX designers do the best job finding gaps in design and figuring out how to better convey the messaging. They even built out a Sharma-discounted pricing page for you here.

Certainly. Certainly is like having an AI be your customer's helper on the site. If you click the FeastyBot on the bottom right of the Feastables site, you'll see Certainly in action, which solved 96% of customer service inquiries on its own.

On to some fun stuff...

Software of the Week

Affirm — My favorite BNPL Software, For Good Reasons

One of the best tricks in the book for increasing the conversion rate on your eCommerce site is to use a tool like Affirm, a BNPL (buy now, pay later) financing tool for shoppers.

From working with our brands, we've seen that whether you're selling with an average order value (AOV) of $50, or $800, Affirm helps increase the conversion rate in the cart, the spot where most online shoppers drop off. Affirm doesn’t charge hidden or late fees to customers who use its bi-weekly payment option, and as a result, it also helps increase the AOV of the cart.

Another benefit is Affirm does a lot of marketing on their own, and because of that, they also add social proof to your landing pages, product pages, and checkout flow, as a BNPL provider. Similar to how Amazon Pay or Apple Pay in your cart helps increase conversion rate, Affirm is beginning to have a similar effect, especially for higher AOV baskets.

DTC Brands like JUDY, Tradesy (which saw a 75% increase in AOV), MadHappy, and Good American, all use Affirm or Shop Pay Installments, which is Shopify's branded BNPL tool, powered by Affirm.

Affirm has generously offered to onboard brands who use this special link and fill out the information at the bottom of this page.

In my opinion, there's no downside to Affirm. The conversion rate goes up. AOV goes up. Affirm also has a shoppable marketplace with an Alexa traffic score of 4,342, which becomes another channel of customer acquisition for you, too.

Enter your info on this page, and get started with Affirm.

Brand of the Week

AmberJack — Stylish men's shoes, made simple

When it comes to selling products to dudes, it's usually tough. AmberJack does a great job selling a better version of a product that hasn't been innovated in a long time, and with keeping their messaging and customer journey simple, and straight to the point.

I recently bought the Cobalt Slate shoes and they're extremely comfortable to wear for hours.

Pick a style you might like here!

That's All for this Week

I hope you still plan on getting your 9 hours of sleep tonight, even though technically it isn't a school night. Have an incredible upcoming week, and I promise very soon, all my past emails will be available on my website, which launches soon!

Have a great Sunday evening!

It's not you...it's me Unsubscribe