How to increase Shopify conversions – 7 tips from a Shopify expert

With cart abandonment rates now at a shockingly high 69.89%, improving your eCommerce store’s conversion rate is high on the agenda for any Shopify merchant. But with so many tips and tricks out there, how do you know which ones will work and which ones will burn a hole in your pocket? We’ve enlisted the help of Shopify Plus developer & designer Liquify to separate the facts from the fiction for you to increase your Shopify conversions efficiently and effectively in just five simple steps.

1. Conduct a page speed audit

Slow websites lose customers. Simple. Conduct a page speed audit using Pingdom, Google Pagespeed Insights or Google Analytics to see how fast your homepage, collections, product and cart pages are performing. Anything above 1.5 seconds is slow, especially when mobile landing pages can easily be under one second.

If your Shopify store is slow, speak to an experienced Shopify developer who can identify any issues with your theme, back it up and complete spot tests using Pingdom or Pagespeed Insights. You may need to ditch some poorly performing apps and re-code some functionality into your theme, but in exchange for more sales, it’s a small price to pay.

2. Run a browser and device audit

The next audit on your hit list is a browser and device audit – in other words, can customers access your eCommerce website on all major browsers and devices? Because, if they can’t, they’ll go somewhere that they can.

Run a browser and device audit to find and resolve problems on all major browsers and devices, and to add fallback code for older browsers. The simplest way to do this is to go to a device lab to use real devices and browsers. Another option is to use emulation tools and Google Analytics to track errors. Alternatively, enlist the help of an experienced Shopify developer who can conduct an audit and fix any issues quickly.

3. Quit adding those front-end apps

Very few front-end apps increase sales. Instead, they’re slowing your website down, causing conflicts within your code and reducing your conversions. Even worse, adding an app on the front-end adds a server dependency to the store – if the app server goes down, your website might go down too.

We often see stores with 10-20 apps on the front-end, resulting in considerable downtime and lost revenue (most of which you’re not aware of). Keep it simple and get rid.

4. Offer true value

People shop around. Fact. Your customer is going to be visiting most, if not all, of the eCommerce stores on the first page of their Google search and their Amazon search. If you’re not competitive on price and delivery, you’ll lose out.

Online shoppers are searching for value in the form of price, delivery and quality. If you can’t offer this, find new products and suppliers and keep on top of your value using price tracking software.

5. Let people pay locally

Shopify Plus allows multi-currency transactions. Use it to attract and convert international customers – opening up a whole new audience for your Shopify store. Oh, and if you have a currency picker on the front-end, delete it. It’s confusing and probably slowing your website down too.

6. Increase your social proof

Customers love reviews, making product pages with reviews more successful than those without. People trust people so use an automated review system to incentivise your customers to review your products and your eCommerce business.

Plus, if you have the correct schema markup, your reviews will appear in the search results on Google, which can increase click-through rates dramatically.

7. Drive quality traffic

And, our final tip for improving your Shopify webstore conversion rates is to focus on quality traffic. One of our recent clients suffered a significant drop in conversion rate and, after a little investigating into the analytics, we realised that they’d been buying huge quantities of cold clicks from the Google Display. These convert terribly and filtering them out gave our client back the starling conversion rate they had before.

Quality traffic is the final ingredient for a healthy conversion rate so avoid bulk buying clicks and, instead, start with Google Shopping and Facebook, and then progress from there.

Final thoughts

I’ve been working as a Shopify developer for a long time (no comments please!), working on some large-scale projects and achieving some outstanding results. Follow these steps, and you’ll improve your conversion rate in no time.

Conversion rate checklist

– Quick website
– Cross test on major devices and browsers
– Remove front-end apps
– Competitive pricing and delivery options
– Multi-currency payments
– Product reviews
– High-quality traffic

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About the author

Joe Dempsey is one of the first official Shopify experts. He heads up Liquify Web Design’s Shopify developer and design team and has worked with big eCommerce names including Tesco, Kerry Foods, Izabel London and UrbanExcess.