Poor conversion rate - ideas?

[jreimer]

Hi everyone,

I have a Prestashop ecommerce site at http://HisGifts.com.au. Have been focusing on SEO, increasing traffic, etc; however am realizing that our conversion rate is shocking. Any ideas on increasing our shop's conversion rate?

The site has a 0.00% conversion rate (1 purchase / 256.41 visits). That's pretty horrible; if I could move this to the 1-2% range it would be awesome.

I thought we were doing everything "right", e.g.:

- We use a simple one-page checkout
- We process credit cards on site, with a secure connection
- We prominantly feature a picture of our retail store, with a phone number, to build trust
- We have live chat for customers to ask questions during business hours
- We offer cheap, flat rate postage anywhere in Australia

Any other ideas on what we can try? Any advice would be gratefully received!

Joshua

[cassim]

Personal i won't buy anything from that shop even if i had shits lot of money and needed just the items you had in your store.

I will come with a few things i know work better for me (most of it based on rules in Denmark)

Try to move your creditcard logos to below the cart or try to put them in the cart layout.

Also make the livechat (livezilla) abit smaller and put it into your information box below the phone nr.
Remove the "Get it fast only 7,95$"

Insert your firm info into the footer of the page. like this (HisGifts - Hewish Rd 10A - Croydon VIC 3136 - Mail. [email protected] - Phone. (03) 9723 3362)

I looked like over 1 min to find where your retail store was and what firm adress you had.

Personal i will give your site a total new remake of the design (still looks like standard Presta)

I will try to make the category look better.
Try put a top bar or something in to highlight your top 5/6 most selling brands/Category
Make the Category titel shorter please ! As when i look on it, i am very unsure what category is what and i think you only have 2-3 categorys but with very loong text in them. It kills the good view on the page.

Im not sure if that will fit your firm but since we installed the (Facebook Connect) we had lot more registrations than the normal one, as the customer don't have to type all his info all the time.

Hope this is a few things to go work on.

[dawiddb]

For the begining You must change the theme. Now there is nothing that refers to the store offer.
Look here www.galaxyjatekaruhaz.hu - this is perfect example.

[jreimer]

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for the feedback, and taking the time to look at it and give me some honest input. I really, really appreciate it. Martin, your ideas for re-placement and re-organization are great. And I will look at changing the theme. I guess one thing I think is important is keeping it clean and simple - personally I hate shopping at sites which are garish and messy - but I suppose, it's not what I like, but what customers like!!

Much appreciated. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know. I will do some experimenting and let you all know how things go as to what types of improvements I see in conversion rates...

Joshua

[PrestaDesigner.com]

Joshua,

I think the problems are as follow:

- The traffic - Is it targeted to your niche? For instance the traffic generated via this thread is not.
- Website design. I think website is too crowded. It will be a good idea to make the images larger. You know...a picture is worth a thousand words.

Cornel

[JET-Dev]

Use one page checkout and use the guest checkout. Cause people shopping dont wanna spend to much time filling in their personal information. Make it so that there is as few clicks as possible to complete the order.

 

An example of reducing clicks in cart is:

 

I added the code checked="yes" to my terms of service checkbox in my cart.

 

I reduced my order process with one click by doing that.

 

So now I have like three clicks to complete an order.

 

Any other tips?

[jreimer]

Hi again,

 

Okay, I took the advice here, added a snazzy new template, fixed up the main page with a slider image thingy, cleaned up my categories menu, made my business address clearer, and lots of other good improvements. For the first week after making these changes, our conversion rate TRIPLED! We were busy packing orders, it was awesome.

 

PROBLEM: About a week and a half ago, the orders dropped off, back to less than they were before the changes to the site. No changes had been made immediately before, and our traffic levels and search engine rankings have not been affected - we just had a massive drop off in conversion rate.

 

Any thoughts? The site is at http://hisgifts.com.au, if anyone wants to tender any further comments on the revisions.

 

I really appreciate everyone's help.

 

Joshua

[Tom_Rufener]

Have you already tried search engine advertising, e.g. Google AdWords? Search engine advertising has proven to be essential for all of my projects. It's not just good design / good usability and onsite SEO that counts - it's also the search engine advertising.

 

Also consider to purchase the Book "How to create selling e-commerce sites", published by Smashing Mag. From my point of view, it's an excellent read about usability, customer behavior, common mistakes in e-commerce design etc., and it's totally worth the money. (I'm not related to Smashing Mag - I bought the book when it came out and can recommend it wholeheartedly)

[Cap Elec Conseils]

8 seconds to load your home page here. Try to see why. how much bounce rate?

[Mike Kranzler]

Hi Joshua,

I know you say that you just changed your template, so while I can't compare the current version to what you had prior to this thread being posted, I can say that the instant you page loaded (which, as Cap Elec mentioned, takes a little while), it hurt my eyes to look at it because of the background.

 

If at all possible, I would try to go with something much more subdued. You want it to be a pleasant experience for potential customers, and I personally can't get past the homepage right now just because of that background.

 

I hope this helps. I'm not trying to be too harsh, but I really think something small like this could make a difference in your conversion rate.

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Thanks,

Mike