20 Shopify Experts Share Their Top Tactics for Boosting Conversion Rates

You built a beautiful store on Shopify with awesome products and launched a kickass ads campaign that draws considerable traffic. Your visitors come into your store, browse and…

Nothing.

A lot of merchants find themselves in the same boat. That is why we reached out to 20 e-commerce experts with the million dollar question: “What is your number one tactic for boosting conversion rates for online stores that can have the biggest impact?”

Here are their tips. Listen up!

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Make user experience your number one priority

Think back to the last time you bought something online. Why did you buy from that particular store? My guess is, you won’t be able to pinpoint the exact reason. That is because what really drives conversions is the overall experience the user has with your store.

But “improve user experience” is not an actionable advice. Here is what you can do though – start with optimizing the most crucial element of user experience  – your store’s navigation. Here is why it is so important:

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Kurt Estler

Host at The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, ShopifyPlus Partner, Founder at Ethercycle

“My number one tactic for boosting conversion rates is to make it as easy as possible to buy from your stores… revise your navigation and homepage to make your best-selling product one-click away at all times. Even if they don’t buy it, they may start browsing, and even if they don’t make a purchase, they’re in your remarketing funnel. It’s a simple tactic with far-reaching effects.”

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Ezra Firestone

CEO, SmartMarketer

“A fast loading mobile-optimized product offer page. You need an entirely different user experience for mobile. The site should function more like a mobile app than a website.”

Another crucial element of the overall customer experience is setting expectations regarding the shipping times and making all the logistics involved extremely clear.

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Tanner J Fox

Creator of the Amazon Seller Mastery course, YouTuber

“Converting visitors to buyers is all about having the right offer or incentive for them to purchase and making the process as smooth and easy as possible.”

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Copy and Content are not an Afterthought

It is easy to miss the obvious. Effective copy = conversions. When it comes to building a store that is optimized for conversions it is important to remember that your product is not going to sell itself. Copy is your top salesperson that should address your customer’s concerns and gently guide them to that checkout button! Here is what the experts say:

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Yousef Kalidi

CEO at Twozillas, Founder at Tasskickers, Ecommerce Expert
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“One tactic isn’t enough to make the big effect. However, sales page copy is what I focus on lately, as I saw a magnificent increase in conversions when I hired someone to write me a good copy!”

If your content is not optimized for social media sharing, boosting conversions is going to be tough. Visual content is your friend. Here is why:

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Ritoban Chakrabarti

Entrepreneur, Internet marketer, founder Flying Start Online

“The biggest impact on conversion rate for eCom stores, especially in the future will be because of Copywriting. Considering most prospects are already familiar with the visual and interesting way content is displayed on social media; it makes sense to incorporate visual copy that displays words, GIFs, videos, and images in the product description in an engaging and scrollable format.”

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Invest in your brand

People keep talking about branding, but is it something relevant for someone who is still struggling to make sales? The answer is: focus on branding especially if you struggle with conversion rates.

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Mike Vestil

Entrepreneur, author and YouTuber‍

“Most e-commerce merchants struggle converting visitors into customers because many fail to see what is actually behind each page view. And that is that each page view is a human being with dreams wants and goals and with a pain point that your product/service could potentially solve. If you want to boost your conversions.. you could focus on the little details like adding scarcity or a limited time promo. But what really increases conversions are: 1) building an authority brand 2) Caring about your customers. If you focus on those two, you can have the crappiest landing pages but it will still be high converting.”

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Building an authority brand sure sounds good. But how can you actually do this?  Here are some ideas:

Ronnie McKenzie

Founder, Storehacks

“These days we need to be focused on nurturing and educating our customers, building brands that our followers live and breathe. A brand that our evangelists build for us by word of mouth.

The best way to build a successful business is by creating an amazing shopping experience from first contact to repeat customers. A lot of this is done through email sequences, photo reviews and smart advertising.”

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Braden Wuerch

Serial Entrepreneur, YouTuber

“Focus on building a brand and utilizing a brand story. Many customers leave without purchasing due to a lack of trust. Creating and nurturing a community around your brand will only add to the value and trust of your brand. Think of the brand and it’s elements as the foundation for your business’s success.“

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Understand Your Customer

Are you thinking what your customers are thinking? If not, maybe that is what stands between you and stellar conversion rates.

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Amelia Castellanos

VP Digital Media + Marketing, Grass Monkey

“Our approach for boosting Conversion Rate? The first step, we get to know our clients’ customers – this is critical.  At Grass Monkey we take an anti-cookie cutter approach to website optimization and user experience by looking at our clients with brand tunnel vision. We dig deep into our clients’ data to identify their eCommerce strengths and weaknesses and work collaboratively with them to develop a focused strategy based on their consumers’ behavior.

The second step, shorten the funnel to checkout. For us, the golden rule is: make it easy for your customers to purchase and give them a reason to come back again and again.”

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Ebenezer Frimpong

E-commerce Entrepreneur, YouTuber

“Thinking like my customer! That’s my number one tactic for boosting conversion rates. The problem I see with new online store owners is that they build their store and make decisions based on their preferences. They want everything their way and completely forget that they’re not the ones buying their product…someone across the country is. What does that person like? Understanding your customer is the key to conversions.”

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Why should they trust you?

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Deb Hopkins

Shopify Expert & Chief Baker at Causeway 305
“The best way to boost conversions both offline and onsite is by building credible trust with your brand and your audience. Trust can come in many forms from UGC on social media posts, product reviews onsite or Google Listings to credible badges like BBB. Adding affiliations of being featured in articles on publications like Inc, Wired, NPR, Forbes, or other sources tells your audience that you are credible and of good quality. The end result is that people buy from people they trust so trust is a product’s best way to grab new customer’s attention.”

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Keith Matthews

Founder Milk Bottle Labs, Ireland’s No.1 Shopify Experts

“When you sell online you don’t have the same opportunity to establish a customer bond and create an experience for store visitors as you do in bricks and mortar business.  To overcome this you must establish yourself as a trustworthy business that the visitor feels safe in placing their business with you.  A professionally built store, quality photography, consistent typography and clearly visible policies such as delivery rates and returns all help to create a safe and encouraging environment for your online visitors.  Equally important is having verifiable customer reviews that reassure potential customers that you are a trustworthy business that sells quality goods in a timely manner.”

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Harry aka Beast of Ecom

E-commerce expert, YouTuber

“My number one tactic is two-fold, it comes down to trust and emotion. What I mean in simple terms is you need to instill trust on your website if you are advertising to cold audiences. You can do this via trust badges, reviews, guarantees and so on. When it comes to emotion, people do not buy with logic, it’s the emotion that influences their decision, how will they feel using or owning the product. You do this by writing compelling product descriptions to move the customer to add the product to the cart and checking out.”

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Paul Matarelli

Digital marketing expert and business consultant specializing in building eCommerce brands

“If I had to pick one tactic, it would be establishing trust. But establishing trust comes from a few key points:

1.) Product reviews, in which I always recommend Loox

2.) Trust badges and company guarantee

3.) An email capture to warm up your potential customer through an abandon cart sequence and weekly blasts”

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Add psychological triggers

No matter how much we would like to think otherwise, our motivations for doing things are often emotional, not rational. In the end, you are selling to other human beings, not just “visitors” to your website. That is why understanding human psychology is crucial to boosting conversion rates.

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Thaddeus Strickland

E-commerce entrepreneur, YouTuber

“I think the biggest pitfall with most eCommerce merchants is lack of psychological triggers. Some to note are scarcity (lack of infinite inventory), urgency (a set date of expiration where visitors can no longer then purchase), and FOMO (fear of missing out – if everyone else is doing it, they need to too!), and Social Proof (showing there are many others also on the same boat).

That being said, my favorite tactic is using social proof, and showing evidence to potential would-be buyers that there are plenty of other buyers already purchasing from me. Some people prefer to use the apps with little pop-ups and whatnot, but simply showing them the hundreds or dozens of customers that are purchasing, and showcasing the photos that those customers take – is a no-brainer.”

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Yoni Elbaz

CEO at Loox

“Social proof is a powerful psychological trigger. When people see that others have had a good experience with your store, they are much more likely to make the leap of faith and convert. We see a correlation between adding reviews to a product page and an increase in add-to-cart conversion. Analyzing over 100,000 product pages from over 13,000 Shopify stores, we’ve discovered that once you’ve reached 10 reviews per product, the conversion increase stabilizes at a little over 30%.”

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Carlos Zappien

Development expert at Storetasker

“We’ve observed that properly worded exit pop-ups or abandoned cart follow up messages are the most effective. The copy needs to be really impactful and suggest to package with another product. To fine tune, A/B testing can help find the best solution.”

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Revise your pricing strategy

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Mordechai Arba

Founder & CEO, Ecomhunt

“The most important thing to understand in this industry is the price point. Many new stores price their products at retail price like all other stores. The only problem is that their brand is new and they didn’t establish any trust yet, therefore it will be much more difficult to turn those visitors into customers.

Now if they offer a very good price (lower than what you can find with other brands) they can stand out

and convert those visitors and start building trust, customers, and of course after a while increasing the prices back to market retail price.”

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Email marketing is NOT dead

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Claudia Howard

Setup Expert, Storetasker

“My go-to solution for optimizing conversions is to have an ongoing email marketing plan in place. Nothing cheesy or spammy – delivering content your audience is eager to hear about along with bits in each email to educate them about your company’s vision, mission, product benefits, and reviews. The best part, it’s automated so you’re continually building a community of customers from your first-time website visitors.”

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Bonus tip: reach out and ask for advice!

When I  reached to Timothy Dann-Barrick at Storetasker his response was “What makes Storetasker so powerful is our team of experts. So rather than answer this question myself, I opened it up to a few of the Shopify experts who make Storetasker run so smoothly.”

Not only did we get three times the advice from Storetasker experts who contributed to this post, but Timothy’s response is a great piece of advice in and of itself – when in doubt, don’t be shy and reach out to the awesome Shopify experts!