Shopify Traffic But No Sales? 14+ Conversion Tactics to Try



You’ve built an awesome store, worked incredibly hard on marketing, and you’re getting Shopify traffic, but no sales?

Every Shopify store owner understands traffic alone isn't going to pay the bills. So if you have been tirelessly putting in the work but haven't seen the sales graph move upward, then it's probably time to optimize for conversion.

1, What is Conversion Optimization

Conversation optimization, or rather CRO (Conversion rate optimization) is a process of improving a website’s page to increase click rate, sales, useability, and flow.

The outcome of the conversion optimization doesn't show up on a whim, but instead, it takes time before you start to notice the results.

Conversion optimization is crucial to getting visitors to click the buy button, or performing an action based on the optimization technique employed.

Since most websites are built to get discovered by targeted visitors, they must go through an optimization process to acquire leads and sales.

Below we’ve listed 5+ conversion tactics and 9+ optimization tactics to help increase sales.

2, 5 Conversion Tactics for Shopify Stores

2.1, Install a "Who's looking at this product" App

The glorious "Who's looking at this product" popup - a work of art! Not only for social proof, but to create a sense of urgency, and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Each and every time a visitor lands on a product page, a notification is triggered and displays a popup either bottom left or bottom right of the website.

Knowing that visitors around the world are checking out the same product, creates the illusion of missing out, thus the visitor typically ponders whether one should purchase.

At this point, the visitor will purchase or move on. This is an instrumental time to capture the lead.

The fear of missing out refers to the feeling or perception that others are having more fun, living better lives, or experiencing better things than you are. It involves a deep sense of envy and affects self-esteem. It is often exacerbated by social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.
- Source: Very Well Mind

Since you're trying to maximize your conversion rate, don't let the sales opportunity go to waste. Multiple apps exist already to leverage FOMO.

Apps to try:

2.2,Build an Email List to Send Out Discount Offers

Building an email list, is still the wasted opportunity, we’ve encountered many stores that still do not understand the importance of building an email list.

An email subscriber is a person that wants to listen to your updates or discount offers - this is a golden opportunity to convert the subscriber into a paying customer.

The best way to capitalize on an email list is by occasionally sending out discount offers, and valuable intentful content to your subscribers; it'll surely boost your sales along the way.

With many plugins/services around, MailChimp and ConverKit place heavy value on its features, and prides itself on quick onboarding, to get you moving quickly.

ConvertKit ConvertKit

2.3, Send Personalized Videos to Subscribers

Don’t miss out on the personalization revolution! personalization, customer retention, and video marketing is increasing at a rapid rate - don’t miss out on what the biggest eCommerce retailers are doing.

Make your subscribers feel special, engage with them, become a little more personal.

The age of pop-up shops, brandless, faceless shops is on the decline.

Personalization, Engagement is not as hard as it sounds. It’s a process of knowing your audience, gathering data, and creating personalized video content, or personalized emails for that one particular customer.

The aim is to ensure that the subscriber/customer feels connected to your brand, forming a long lasting relationship.

Currently, no out-the-box solution exists for personalized video in an automated, easy-to-use fashion.

Well, not yet! Kanteneo is currently in development to allow you to send automated and personalized videos direct to your subscribers' inbox with very little setup, but as we’re not quite ready, here are a few external platforms that may help you on your journey to utilizing video:

2.4, Give Away a Freebie

There is no doubt, that offering free products really drives engagement through the roof.

Don't think about the loss, you're not really losing out if you capture leads and building an engaged audience.

Like any marketing/conversion tactic, it's all about building trust and growing your brand.

You don't give away expensive products, but rather low-ticket gifts that compliments a larger product.

Examples:

  • If you're running a lingerie store, you could gift a branded chest tape measure.
  • For a shoe store, you could gift branded socks.

The power of offering freebies is a tried and tested marketing tactic.

Don’t think of giving away free stuff as a loss-making exercise. Think of it as earning an opportunity to reach out and build relationships with new and existing customers. Unlike traditional marketing and advertising, though, when you give away free stuff, you also build trust by delivering something of value to the customer first.
- Source: GoDaddy

2.5, Add an Affiliate Program to Your Online Store

Leverage the phenomenal skills of affiliate marketers! Experienced affiliate marketers are extremely talented at selling, typically in digital format.

If you’ve optimized your site, have a great copy and traffic, it’s time to harness the power of affiliate marketers - let the marketers sell, and you focus on running your business.

With that in mind, you don’t have to look too far to find an app that helps with affiliate marketing - below is a list of the best affiliate apps to get you started.

Shopify affiliate apps:

Once you’ve installed one of the affiliate apps, the next obvious question will be, well where do I find affiliates/influencers?!

Affiliates will need to scouted, firstly create an affiliate page, and promote it.

You’ll need join affiliate facebook groups, forums until you find the special one.

Or, try influencers over marketers - whilst affiliates have exceptional marketing skills, they do not have a massive engaging audience.

Influencer marketing with an affiliate process is a recipe for success, but like any the new process you onboard - proceed with caution.

Using services like influence.co easies the burden of finding the perfect influencer, which also includes safeguards/metrics to prevent scams.

Influencer Marketing Influence.co

3, 10 Optimization Tactics for Shopify Stores

Let's dig a little deeper into optimization by highlighting some of the most common optimization tactics to help with conversion.

3.1, Choose an Attractive Web Design for Your Store

Stop buying cheap themes! This will only serve to hinder the process of fluent checkout. Still to this date many new retailers simply place no value on a well-designed, cohesive, and fluent online store.

If your website design is unique, attractive, and seamless, it is more likely going to help with a sale or acquire that all-important lead.

Have you ever opened a website and immediately closed it because of the clunky layout, and poor design? Yes, we all have!

Shopify is a fantastic e-commerce solution with hundreds of thousands of templates on the market.

Pick a suitable, yet attractive design for your Shopify store, so that visitors don't bounce as soon as they land on your store.

Shopify Themes Shopify Themes

3.2, Add Multiple CTA Buttons to Your Online Store

If you’ve noticed a low click rate, try adding multiple CTA buttons strategically across pages.

Each page should have a single responsibility, and that responsibility is to get the visitor to the next page, and much closer to the check-out page.

Whilst the homepage is your brand and your voice, the aim is to get the visitor to a product page, but in a subtle, seamless manner.

The perfect place for a CTA button is above the fold - meaning the visitor should not need to scroll to click the first CTA button.

In most cases, the visitor will scroll to understand what you’re offering, this is the time to add a second CTA button.

The purpose of multiple CTA buttons is to direct the visitor to exactly where you want them, with minimal fuss, and effort.

"CTAs are the buttons throughout a site that tell your customers what to do, where to click, and what to buy. Having a clear call-to-action on every page allows you to steer the customer toward the most appropriate spot in your conversion funnel"
- Source: BigCommerce

3.3, Use the Colors Psychology Across Your Brand

When it comes to increasing the conversion rate on an e-commerce store, the colors of call-to-action buttons must stand proud, and not become too camouflaged with the rest of the design.

Over the years there has been much debate on the psychology of colors, especially around how colors impact the performance of website pages.

It's often said that green and yellow colors are the most suitable colors for call-to-action buttons.

"Color plays an important role in how your brand is perceived. Whether you’re a fashion brand trying to connect to a youthful audience or a medical supplies store trying to strengthen customer trust, you can study color meanings to help you better attract and connect to your ideal customer. Color psychology can be used to help build a strong, relatable brand. In this article, we’ll explain what color psychology is and educate you on the color meanings for the most popular colors used."
- Source: Oberlo

3.4, Page Speed - Make Your Shopify Store Faster

A website's speed doesn't only impact the performance, but it also affects the conversion rate. Users don't want to browse through a website that is slow.

Take the time to:

  • Compress/Optmize images
  • Remove unnecessary scripts
  • Minify scripts

With the above in mind, you must also consider how speed impacts search engine rankings. Google de-ranks, or worst, penalizes sites with poor page speed.

Official guidance on site speed, can be found here:

Below is a list of Shopify apps to help improve site speed:

3.5, Embed Related Products on Every Product Page

Related products are one of the best ways to cross-sell, and in some cases upsell.

Adding related products should not be considered as “just more content on the page”, or a “nice to have” fine tuning what products are shown will improve conversation rates.

The aim is to get your products in front of the visitor in a targeted fashion.

Examples:

  • If the visitor is viewing a “hammer”, you would promote “nails”
  • If the visitors is viewing a “hammer” you could promote a bundle “hammer” + “nails”

Don't shy away from trying out a couple of Shopify apps for related products - try until you find the perfect combination.

Check out the following "Related Products" Shopify Apps:

3.6, Improve Product Shots

We’ve got to be brutally honest, if your product shots suck, you simply not going to convert.

Your product images are one of the most important factors that determines success.

Whether you’re dropshipping or selling physical inventory, take pride in delivering the best photos possible.

Don’t be the Shopify store, that spends countless hours building a store, to then use poor product shots.

We’ve covered how to add a product to shopify that sells pretty extensively - go check it out

3.7, Shipping Cost Transparency

You have a great store, seamless flow, beautiful design, and great products, but yet you seem to fall out the last hurdle.

Shipping cost plays a vital role in securing that much needed sale, but if you are one of the many that calculates shipping at the very last point of the check-out process, you’re may lose the sale - especially if the shipping cost is far greater than the cost of the product.

Always give the potential customer complete transparency regarding shipping costs and delivery.

Most, in fact, all visitors want to know the cost of shipping before they hit the last step of check-out.

"As the ecommerce realm continues to grow and choices multiply, customers are able to be as picky as they want when it comes to what site they should buy from. One of the major factors that influences what site they choose: transparency. Customers want to feel like eCommerce shops and sites are being transparent and giving them all of the information, not playing a game of smoke and mirrors. And transparency isn’t just good for customers; it’s beneficial for businesses as well. Greater transparency leads to fewer abandoned shopping carts and more satisfied customers."
- Source: Clarity Ventures

If you absolutely need to calculate shipping cost towards the end of the checkout process, make it absolutely clear at the start of the process, with a guide on estimates.

3.8, Stop Making The Store About You

Ever wondered why most homegrown, personal brand stores fail?! because it doesn't work so much anymore, to be successful and become one of the major players, you need to become a brand, and align yourself with the customer from a brand perspective.

Most visitors don’t like the odd mission statement on the homepage, they don’t want to know if you have kids, or you’ve started a business to become financially free.

Think bigger! - become a brand!

3.9, Blog For Business

Blogging for business is one of the most underrated marketing channels used in the eCommerce world.

Most think blogging a laborious, irrelevant, and unnecessary, but apart from the significant advantage of acquiring significant traffic, It’s also a prime driver in establishing trust, and authority.

With organic traffic aside, and when you adapt to the mentality of intentful marketing, and providing value that aligns with your product, you truly become a thought leader, and an expert. This in turn increases a higher conversation rate.

We’ve covered blogging in a little more detail on our post: how to blog for business - go check it out.

3.10, Order tracking

By using order tracking apps, you are not only making customers more satisfied but also help in reducing the workload on your customer support team, leading to lower support costs.

Order status tracker apps allow you to:

  • Reduce common customer queries like "Where's my order?" by enabling self-service tracking.
  • See how often customers check their order status.
  • Keep an eye on where shipments are and when they'll arrive.

Feel free to explore Shopify order tracking apps, like the Hulk Order Tracker App, to enhance your store's capabilities.

How Would You Increase Shopify Store Conversion Rate?

We've shared a handful of conversion and optimization techniques and understandably, one can't implement all strategies at once. However, keeping multiple Shopify growth tactics in mind allows you to get a headstart on your competitors.

Let us know what you're taking away from this piece of content. If you got more Shopify conversion tactics, feel free to contact us via social media.

The Takeaway

Every Optimization, and conversion technique applied, is one step closer to building a successful ecommerce store.

To summarize we've briefly covered:

  • What is conversion optimization
  • 5 Conversion Tactics
  • 9 Optimization Tactics

What next:

Additional Shopify Resources

With Shopify being one of the largest eCommerce platforms on the market means you’ll never be short of resources to learn how to build a profitable eCommerce business.

Kanteneo aims to be the best Shopify blog on the market, but you may require additional resources to help you on that journey. Below we’ve listed a top-selling Shopify book by Veronica Jeans to help you learn how to launch a profitable business.





Author

avatar author

Terry Wingfield

A techy at heart, with over 10+ years of software engineering skills, and 5+ years experience in ecommerce, retention, and personalization.