7 basic CRO tactics for new Shopify marketers to get some quick wins and double conversions within 2 weeks

You’re a seasoned marketer who just got hired to manage a Shopify e-commerce store. Or you’re a brand new Shopify entrepreneur who just finished setting up your store, and now you’re ready for some sales. Except… all you hear are crickets. 

Here’s a fact to keep in mind: there are currently 1.8 million e-commerce sites in the United States, and more than 7.1 million e-commerce sites in the world. Imagine if every single person in New York City owned an e-commerce site — that’s your competition. 

Out of those e-commerce sites, more than ⅔ generate less than $1,000,000/year in revenue. And even for some of the very best stores, conversion rates top out at 2-3%. 

But you’re new, so you need to put some points on the board — either to prove it to your team, or to yourself. And if you want to compete, you need to stand out. 

You already know all the basics — make sure you have a site that loads quickly, minimize friction in the checkout process, etc. We’ll take this a step further. 

Here are 7 tried-and-tested basic conversion hacks that’ll help you double your conversion rates… 

‍

Your return and/or guarantee policy should be front and center — it helps your prospective buyers answer one really important question: what’s the worst that can happen if I were to buy from this new Shopify site? 

The answer you want to be able to give them? Just return it for a refund! 

More than 50% of your customers will read the return policy before buying — make sure yours is clear, concise, and most importantly, honest. 

One of the biggest drawbacks of buying online is losing the ability to touch or try on the item you’re buying. Your customers need the comfort of knowing that regardless of what happens (even if it’s their fault for picking the wrong color, size, etc.), you’ll still take care of them. 

When you’re upfront with your return and guarantee policies, prospective buyers are more comfortable and confident… therefore, more likely to complete a purchase. 

Another trick related to this one? Offer free shipping. 

Yes, it’ll hurt your gross margins in the short-term, but the dirty secret to e-commerce is that most merchants will inflate the price of the product they’re selling to cover the cost of free shipping (the easiest way to do this is, of course, using Italic). 

But if you absolutely have to charge for shipping (either because you sell heavy items such as canned drinks, or bulk items such as furniture)? Mention it upfront. Don’t bury it, and definitely don’t just add it during checkout.

It’s a surefire way to lose a sale. 

As weird as it sounds, some people just don’t want to enter their credit card information online. And while you’re never going to make everyone happy, it’s important to offer more than just a “pay by credit card” option (without resorting to, you know, taking down credit card details over the phone). 

PayPal is a popular option with more than 44% of online buyers saying they use it for payment as a fraud-prevention measure.  

So, consider adding payment options like PayPal, or Amazon Payments. Yes, you’ll have to pay 1-3% in additional fees — but consider that the cost of doing business. 

More interesting is, however, the recent rise of the BNLP (Buy Now; Pay Later) industry and option. 

Led by Affirm back in 2012, these apps (Affirm, Klarna, Bread, AfterPay, etc.) all allow for easy integration with your Shopify checkout and payments gateway so your customers can complete their purchases today, have the BNPL provider you’ve selected pay you the amount upfront (minus some small % cut), and they, not you, are responsible for collecting the installments from your customers.

Since most of these BNPL offer 0% interest installments, Italic has seen up to 17% of customers choosing for the BNPL option during checkout (across all Shopify merchant sites with Italic installed). 

‍

The psychological principle of Jakob’s Law states, in effect, “don’t fix what ain’t broken.” You can almost certainly bet that your customers aren’t making their first ever e-commerce purchase on your Shopify site. 

People spend most of their time on other websites, and therefore, are already used to certain design patterns. Don’t break it for them. 

When you have a CTA on-site, you want to make it as blindingly obvious as possible — subtract any cognitive overload such CTA buttons may have by simply converting ambiguous icons into text. 

Not everyone will understand your custom icons — but you can be sure that most people can read. 

‍

If you have a Shopify store with a high-inventory count (or a lot of SKUs in general), you’ll almost certainly need to implement a search function. This may come in the form of a basic Shopify search bar, or if something more sophisticated is desired, then a third-party SaaS tool like Algolia. 

Filters can also be added to complement your site’s search functionality. 

‍

While your search bar is great for customers who know exactly what they’re looking for, filters are perfect for customers who have a general idea of what they’re looking for, but just need a little bit more guidance. 

In addition to search and filter functionality, your Shopify store can use recommendations to increase sales, or — and this is rare, but possible — even increase customer trust. 

How? 

Look at Crate & Barrel. On their checkout page, not only do they have a smooth and seamless checkout experience, but they also tastefully attempt to upsell you by showing you other items you may be interested in. 

Indeed, it’s like having a friend say, “I saw this and thought of you!” 

‍

Searches and recommendations can provide an opportunity to show your customers similar products they may like, and as a result, boost your AOV. But there’s a fine line between being strategic, and too aggressive. 

Even if your customer enters a nonsensical string of words into the search bar, your results page should never come up with… nothing. It’s wasted real estate. If the search term isn’t found, your search functionality needs to be able to show customers items similar to what they searched. 

In the worse case scenario, at least give them the option to reach out — “Can’t find what you’re looking for? I’m sure we can help. Give us a call, email us, or simply open the live chat window on the bottom right hand corner.”

Never let a customer walk away with nothing. 

Customers who abandon their carts at the last minute are the very best prospective buyers to go after. Think about it: they’ve taken the time to understand the product. They’ve taken the time to accept the price you’re selling it for. They’ve likely read up on every review and press article you’ve been covered in. And lastly, they’ve gone through the majority of the checkout flow. Yet, at the very last moment, something stopped them. 

Your job now is to start working backwards to see what might’ve been the culprit. In our experience, it could be something as simple as outbound links (to the Returns page, Terms of Service, etc.) in the checkout flow. 

Further, abandoned carts are an enormous opportunity to increase conversion. 

According to the Baymard Institute, a lot of these blockers usually fall into one of the three categories below: 

1. 21% of U.S. online shoppers have abandoned an order in the past quarter solely due to “too long/complicated [of a] checkout process.” 
2. 13% abandoned due to “website errors and crashes” (!). 
3. 28% abandoned due to the fact that “the site wanted me to create an account.” 
   

All of these fixes (covering 62% of the issues) can be implemented within a week — and it’ll likely be the most profitable week you can spend working on your Shopify store. 

However, if your newly streamlined checkout process just isn’t enough to push customers over the edge to complete the sale, then be sure to follow-up on abandoned carts via email after a few hours of abandonment. 

‍

Even better still, use a provider like LiveRecover to reach out to your customers over text and see if there are any quick concerns you can resolve, or if offering a small custom discount is enough for them to pull the trigger. 

Luckily, Shopify collects your customer’s phone numbers  (in addition to email) during the checkout process now by default. 

Yes, there’s great incentive to force customers to create an account either prior to checkout, or during the checkout flow. You can track their order history, pull account information faster when dealing with a customer service inquiry, or revive them if they’ve lapsed with discounts in the future. 

However, as the same research study we’ve reviewed from the Baymard Institute above shows, up to 28% of customers abandoned their orders because they’ve been forced to create an account during the checkout process. 

In other words, if you’re a Shopify store that’s doing this, just do a quick and simple exercise: take your monthly gross revenues, and multiple it by 128% (or 1.28x) — that’s how much more you could be making. 

So… why bother forcing your customers to create an account? The downsides substantially outweigh the upside. 

Oh, and also, you’ll have their name and email address to retarget with discounts, pull order history, etc. when they buy anyway (after all, they’ll want to receive an order confirmation email!). 

Implement a full-page email capture form 5 seconds after a new unique visitor has landed on your Shopify store. Take a look at this example from Brooklinen, a Shopify e-commerce store selling luxury bedding: 

‍

Sure, you may be concerned that this full-page popup may end up annoying your customers, or it’ll hurt your page load speeds. Based on all the data we’ve seen so far, we’ve arrived at one definitive conclusion: it’s worth it. It works. And it doesn’t just work with some Shopify stores — it works with every Shopify store that’s receiving a meaningful amount of daily visitors. 

Visitors will most likely take more than one session on your Shopify store to convert (this is also known as the “buyers consideration phase”). That’s why capturing emails on your site is crucial. 

If you can effectively capture emails through a pop-up, offer a coupon code so you can continuously market to them while they’re in their buyers consideration phase. This will almost certainly increase your conversion rates — without spending a single ad dollar on Facebook or Google. 

Not sure where to begin? Justuno and Privy are two of the most popular third-party apps for creating such pop-ups (and many more!) quickly and affordably. 

The LTV (lifetime value) of your customers will be the most important factor in determining your profit margins, how much you can spend on paid advertising, and other important levers you need to keep an eye out for while managing any marketing campaign.

However, we know how important it is to have that early traction — to prove that yes, this is a viable concept. A product that people actually want. 

The above CRO tactics are effective in helping you build not just a flash sale site, but a brand. And once you’re confident in the early traction and sales numbers, Italic is the secret sauce most Shopify merchants use to take their profit margins (not just gross revenues) to the next level.