Conversion Rate is one of the most important metrics for growing your business. It measures the % of views of your products that result in a order. Ultimately it is a measure of how well you have listed your products and also how palatable your shipping options are for customers.
To provide you with more granular understanding, your shop statistics provides Conversion also split into your listing conversion, and checkout conversion.
WHAT IS A GOOD CONVERSION RATE?
A "good" conversion rate looks different between different sellers, and varies based on categories and also seasonality.
As a broad guidance you should expect to see at a range of at least
- 3 to 3.5% overall conversion,
- 6-8% listing conversion,
- 50-60% checkout conversion
Anything below these ranges and there is almost certainly room for good improvement. Think of it - a listing conversion of say 3% means you have high potential to at least double your sales just by improving your listings!
Even if your conversions fall within these ranges there is still also likely room for optimisation, particularly if any of the below fundamentals are not in place.
TIP: Have a look at the products page of your stats dashboard to see if the issue with conversion is consistent across your range, or a problem for specific products. This will help you pinpoint what could be improved.
HOW TO IMPROVE LISTING CONVERSION
Your product listing page is where the dance is done. You need to make sure your product looks and sounds as wonderful as it is, and gives customers all they need to make a purchasing decision. It literally pays to spend time listing well.
In Stock and Available to buy. The first step is to make sure your listings can be purchased! Very high views and low listing conversion usually indicates a fundamental issue with product availability - lots of customers landing on your product pages to find they are out of stock. Check the Quantity field in your listings often and keep popular products available to buy year round.
Multiple listing photos. Your main (first) listing image gets you the click to view, but the additonal images that follow help get you the sale. Listings with multiple images consistently see higher conversion. Each additional image you add gives shoppers more information about your product. Our photography guide covers the best practice for product photos.
Good descriptions. We suggest keeping your descriptions short and informative, but still engaging. Give the customers the key info about your product and why it is special, and a bit about your brand story. Don't miss out on basics like shelf life if your item is perishable (so they know when to order), or how it comes presented if it is a gift.
Well formatted descriptions. Make it easy to read and scan. Most online shopping is happening on small mobile devices. Short succinct paragraphs, bullet points for lists, bold sub-headers. Avoid large chunks of text.
Gift message option. Gift buyers often send directly to gift recipients and so understandably want a way to add gift message. On Yumbles this is NOT done at checkout enabling each seller to have control over what kind of gift message they want to offer. For example, some sellers like to offer separate hand written gift cards and even enable customers to choose the design of gift card. Some sellers may even want to charge extra for this. To allow you the seller this choice of what you want to offer, you therefore need to add gift messages as an option within your listings. If your poducts are for gifting and you have not added a git message option it will almost certainly affect you listing conversion. Find more about Options here.
Note: if you add a gift message option on your listings the Ymbles packing slip automatically prints it for you so you do not need to do anything more than add the option.
Well set-up, clear options. Your listings may have additional choices to offer customers like choice of size, or flavour or recipe. These choices should all be offered via clearly labelled, easy to select options. If you have mentioned in th descripton choices customers havebut not set-up the relevant options OR set-up the relevant options but perhaps not clearly enough, your listing conversion will be impacted. Make sure they are clear and easy to choose. Find more about Options here.
HOW TO IMPROVE CHECKOUT CONVERSION
Offer Various Shipping Options. Unless you are shipping chilled items or highly perishable items which should only ever be sent with tracked express delivery (which means delivered on a next day service once dispatched), then you should ideally be offering cusomers a choice of shipping options so they can choose between the inherent trade off of speed vs cost.
Minimise your Dispatch times. The # days to dispatch, and dispatch days that you specify in your shipping options determines the estimated delivery times customers see before they buy. This can have a big impact on checkout conversion. Customers typically want items as quickly as possible and delivery within 2-3 days is the established norm for online shopping. For made to order items, and very small businesses, 2-3 day delivery from point of ordering (i.e. dispatch within 1 day) can be a logistical challenge but the closer you can work towards that kind of timeline the higher your checkout conversion will be. Always be aware of the timescales you are showing customers and adjust your Shipping settings as needed.
Your dispatch times should always reflect reality. While overestimating and showing longer times than reality will unneccesarily harm your checkout conversion, underestimating might yield higher checkout conversion but your cusomer service merics and repeat rate will take a hit to impact future sales.
Your Shipping Charges. In addition to your item price, shoppers factor in what you charge for shipping when deciding whether to make a purchase. A shopper who loved your listing could be turned off by expensive shipping. Of course shipping costs are a reality but if your checkout conversion is low you may want to experiment with shifting some of your shipping costs into your item price while keeping the total order price the same. This can work well for some product ranges. We would particularly recommend you consider this if you see checkout conversion below benchmark and your shipping costs are £5 or more for Standard Delivery and £7 or more for Tracked Express Delivery,
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