24 Scientific Strategies to Increase your eCommerce Conversion Rate

The average conversion rate for eCommerce is just 1.82%.

In fact products priced over $50 see a drop in conversions, which increases even more for products that are priced more than $150 and then $500. 

Since higher price points present longer decision-making times, it’ll fall on your business to keep selling by making the buying experience smoother and more trustworthy. 

Something that the most successful eCommerce stores already seem to be doing right,  while converting up to 20% of their visitors.

What do they do differently? Science: they rely heavily on assessing user behavior & working on feedback. 

1. Make site search more welcoming

2. Build trust fast 

3. Segment pricing incentives carefully

4. Make room for more micro-conversions

5. Sprinkle urgency nudges across the store

6. Simplify your checkout flow

7. Deliver a streamlined mobile experience

8. Make returns easy and flexible 

9. Make your navigation easy

10. Highlight key benefits

11. Feature attractive cart deals

12. Use only hi-res product images (& show multiple angles)

13. Make recommendations super relevant

14. Feature an interactive review section

15. Prevent cart abandonment with specific exit intent pop-ups

16. Make your live chat instantly helpful

17. Incentivize pre-orders

18. Design for more adds to cart

19. Use coupons to draw shoppers across the funnel

20. Depend on data customers consensually share

21. Reward loyalty with incremental benefits

22. Offer multiple popular payments (& express CTAs)

23. Simplify all forms (especially the checkout form)

24. Decrease loading time

How do you define & calculate eCommerce conversion rate? 

eCommerce conversion rate is most commonly defined as the percentage of website visitors who make a purchase on your store, with a specific time period set for calculation. 

Your store’s eCommerce conversion rate = Total number of conversions / Total number of visitors * 100

Realistically, how your store’s eCommerce conversion rate fares depends on multiple factors including:

✓ Industry type (industries that see a longer product life cycle typically have a lower conversion rate)

✓ Traffic source (ads, for example, can increase conversion rate by bringing in more high intent traffic)

✓ Device type (while many shoppers do their research on mobile, they convert on desktop)

And yet, there are other areas where you’d want to calculate eCommerce conversion rates:

👉 Landing page conversion rate = Number of desired action / Total number of visitors * 100

👉 Product page conversion rate = Number of add to carts / Total no. of page visitors * 100

👉 Cart to purchase conversion rate = No. of completed purchases / Total cart adds * 100

👉 Email marketing conversion rate = No. of purchases from email / Total email opens * 100

How To Increase eCommerce Store's Conversion Rate

1. Make site search more welcoming

The science behind this: Natural language processing or NLP decides how a search bar “reads” a shopper’s query and throws up results that are closest to what the shopper is looking for.

Look closely and you’ll notice more UX-friendly eCommerce site search bars include “hint text” like “what are you looking for today?”. Similarly,you may want to incorporate autocorrect & autosuggest to make the search entry experience friction-free. 

You may also want to enhance the search experience for first-time visitors and feature a list of “trending searches”. Including both in-category and sitewide suggestions for searches will also help shoppers find their way faster. 

2. Build trust fast 

The science behind this: The principle of perceived trustworthiness enables a shopper to bank on your brand and products—not just increasing their intent to buy but also to spend on products that are relatively unfamiliar to them.

Two things challenge shopper trust THE MOST: 

Quality and payment security—so if you can offer them visual reassurance around these, nothing like it. So go ahead and feature icons on how you do ethical business—this could involve info around sourcing, use of labor or even the materials. 

Additionally, if you’ve received an industry certification or even have an SSL certificate, bring them out at key junctures like the footer section and in the mini cart. 

Further Reading: 30 Ways to Build Trust FAST (On Your eCommerce Store)

3. Segment pricing incentives carefully

The science behind this: Psychological pricing hits the “sweet” spot the shopper finds agreeable (based on competition, perceived value etc.) and convinces them to buy more.

When Benjamin Franklin wrote, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten,” he didn’t know it’ll come to apply to eCommerce too. 

Pricing incentives need to balance the cost and the value of the said product, and in eCommerce a third dynamic becomes essential: segmentation. Push the right price to the wrong customer segment, and you’ll fail miserably at increasing conversion rate. 

No matter what pricing strategy you use for conversions, here are a few pricing hacks you can try:

✅ First-time buyer discounts to reduce hesitation in ToFu shoppers with more objections

✅ Volume-based offers for repeat buyers and especially for subscription takers. 

✅ Free shipping thresholds for high-intent shoppers who come through paid ads. 

✅ Limited time offers for impulse buyers and those who shop the most seasonally. 

4. Make room for more micro-conversions

The science behind this: The design of micro-conversions falls back on how developmental milestones work—the idea that a set of markers along a journey need to be met before the final maturation or destination (in this case, a macro conversion.)

The small steps that a shopper takes towards finally converting are micro-conversions—after all, it takes an average of 8 touches to generate a conversion. 

To make your eCommerce store more micro-conversion friendly, make it easy to view a listing quickly. This is why featuring a secondary “quick view” button across product recommendations is a good idea. Similarly, call out to “wishlist” if someone isn’t ready to buy yet—make the saved list shareable or make it easy to share hints from it, and you’ve made more micro-conversions possible. 

Further Reading: 19 Brilliant Ways to Get More Micro-Conversions (For 2025)

5. Sprinkle urgency nudges across the store

The science behind this: Urgency is when a buyer feels like they need to act quickly—the bigger principle behind this is loss aversion, the trait people exhibit at feeling twice the pain than they’d have gaining something.

Nudge marketing that triggers urgency in shoppers is essential to improve eCommerce conversion rate. 

Such nudges work especially well across high-intent pages including the home page, category page and product pages. You could try showing a limited time offer on the hero header on the homepage and the notification bar running across the site. During peak holiday season, it’s also a good idea to mark some of your category page listings with a countdown timer. 

eCommerce skincare brand True Botanicals applies nudges across their store—be it through survey results on limited editions on the homepage:

6. Simplify your checkout flow

The science behind this: The principle of transparency in the eCommerce business context is all about building trust where uncertainty would most possibly exist—and since much of cart abandonment happens during checkout, easing this experience could have an instant impact on your conversions.

Starting from shopping cart review in the mini cart to keying in shipping details on the checkout page to confirming payment details to the final order confirmation, the checkout flow needs careful optimization. 

eCommerce fashion brand House of CB breaks down the steps till checkout and even includes a separate page where shoppers can see the many ways to checkout later:

7. Deliver a streamlined mobile experience

The science behind this: Change blindness is a visual phenomenon where shoppers don’t register important changes in their mobile experience journey, creating chances for lower conversions.

A report shows that out of 60% of eCommerce traffic, 53% of sales are through mobile commerce sites.

Mobile-first design ensures there’s lesser distraction, more instant ways to act and easier usability on smaller screens. 

For more actionable advice, read: eCommerce Mobile UX: 27 Ways to Get More Conversions & 35 Tactics to Increase Mobile Conversion Rate

8. Make returns easy and flexible 

The science behind this: Reciprocity often seals the deal between eCommerce businesses and customers because the latter get convinced the business is there to help them beyond purchases.

Create a policy that has room for seasonal variations, customer preferences as well as some unusual events (like the product is intact but the packaging is lost.)

And even then, you must be able to balance the return surge spiked by the holiday season on one hand and customer expectations around returns on the other. 

eCommerce brand ASOS is known for their detailed and flexible returns policies, which are further broken down for the shoppers’ convenience:

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9. Make your navigation easy

The science behind this: You want to reduce your shoppers' cognitive load. Make things so simple that they take the next step almost automatically (don't make them work hard to understand).

A simple navigation with limited featured categories and well-organized sub-categories makes for happy shoppers—but you’ve also got to remember that navigation is about a lot more than just what your primary menu does. 

10. Highlight key benefits

The science behind this: Good writing that also creates a narrative for your products has the ability to light up the neural circuitry in your shoppers’ brains—and this in turn can convince them to buy!

The idea really is to have them see the cumulative benefit of shopping with you instead of a competitor—so the more they’re able to answer “what’s in it for me?” the better your conversions will be. 

For example, Burt’s Bees improves conversion rate by highlighting what makes the brand trustworthy.

11. Feature attractive cart deals

The science behind this: The Fogg Behavior Model talks about three steps to making an individual perform a behavior: motivation, ability and trigger (to buy, in the eCommerce context.) Ask: Are we forgetting to remind shoppers to perform any of the three?

When you’re toying around with eCommerce conversion best practices, you’ll have to consider the number of people who add-to-cart and then drop off. 

Research shows the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is around 69.57%. 

12. Use only hi-res product images (& show multiple angles)

The science behind this: The design principle of context comes into the picture here, because in an eCommerce scenario, shoppers can't really touch and feel the product before deciding.

How much detail you can show of a product will decide how much of it will sell. 

Here’s a quick checklist on what your images need to do to turn in the conversions:

✓ Zoom needs to be intuitive & activated upon hover (on mobile, show a “+” for better control)

✓ Reserve separate shots for details that make the product unique

✓ Show a scale reference if the size is relevant (especially for categories like apparel & furniture)

Further Reading: 20 Experts Share Proven eCommerce Growth Strategies (2024)

13. Make recommendations super relevant

The science behind this: Information framing is a principle that allows an eCommerce business to frame a set of recommendations within a narrative that the buyer is likely to take seriously—based on a target segment’s biases and preferences.

Since every eCommerce site features product recommendations across high-intent pages, shoppers are jaded—and you gotta be smart. 

For example, placing your star products in the middle can trigger the central fixation bias)—something that eCommerce brand Beer Cartel leverages: 

14. Feature an interactive review section

The science behind this: While reviews are all about driving social proof, enriching them further with visuals & videos uses the principle of customer-centricity, that is, putting the customer at the center & understanding their core needs.

65% of the world population happens to be “visual learners”—and this makes reviews that carry visuals more convincing. Alongside, if your reviews are easily searchable, that improves engagement too more instantly, than what it is for paginated reviews. 

Further Reading: 15 EASY ways to get customer reviews and boost sales

15. Prevent cart abandonment with specific exit intent pop-ups

The science behind this: The psychology of FOMO when leveraged, triggers both anxiety in a shopper as well as offers them a reward to ease that anxiety.

Rest assured, the same X% off exit-intent pop-up won’t work for everyone—if you’re trying to improve your online store conversion rate, you’ll have to target shoppers across the conversion funnel. And that means speaking straight to what the shopper is most likely to do or want. 

16. Make your live chat instantly helpful

The science behind this: The principle of interactivity, which is especially relevant in web 2.0, treats clear & real-time communication as a cornerstone of customer experience.

Amongst one of the most underrated eCommerce conversion best practices is to make your live chat be more accessible & helpful—research has proven that 43% of customers spend more on the brands they feel loyal to and support creates loyalty. 

Plus, 42% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 23% for email and 16% for social media or forums. 

17. Incentivize pre-orders

The science behind this: Pre-orders relate to the psychology of hype that blows up any announcement of a scarce kind, and that becomes a marketing tactic on its own.

If you’re wondering how to improve eCommerce conversion rate, making pre-orders attractive for potential customers can be a leading strategy. 

While it’s commonly thought that pre-orders are relevant only for eCommerce product launch scenarios, in reality, they can also be applied to: 

- Limited time products 

- Seasonal bestsellers

- Popular out-of-stock products 

Further Reading: 26 Brilliant Ways To Boost eCommerce Repeat Sales

18. Design for more adds to cart

The science behind this: It’s not enough to get your CTAs to look great from the UX standpoint—they’re worthwhile only if they’re able to drive the principle of desire in a shopper to complete the purchase action.

Wondering what your CTAs need to feature apart from a relatable shape and color—here’s a quick list:

✓ Create context around the CTA—you could do this by featuring microcopy that talks about easy returns or even a money-back guarantee

✓ Relatable messaging—yes, the end goal is to get them to shop, but how do you get their interest going first? Loeffler Randall, for example, features its founder and her picks through a compelling CTA:

✓ Use cues along with CTA text—and that’s mainly because cues offer immediate direction to the action-orientation of shoppers—think of those right-side pointing arrows that people click on instantly!

✓ Orient messaging tone & color to your brand—this cuts out the mundane language while safeguarding the trust your brand is building—one look at eCommerce brand Perky Jerky’s CTAs and you’ll know what we mean:

19. Use coupons to draw shoppers across the funnel

The science behind this: The trigger stage of the Fogg Behavior Model, which often rides on high ability (to buy) but low motivation—this is why coupons give that extra impetus to buy!

How well you use coupons across your site for visitors across your funnel, decides how your online store conversion rate improves. 

20. Depend on data customers consensually share

The science behind this: Using zero-party data for hyper personalization falls back on the principle of purpose limitation, that is to use the information that’s compatible only with an agreed purpose.

2025 will be about more shoppers respecting you as a brand if you’ve gathered their data through preference centers, quizzes and surveys. This will not just help you make recommendations more targeted but also offer tailored discounts & offers. 

Ryze Coffee is an eCommerce brand that collects zero party data by making it compelling for shoppers to share their email right from the first step:

MeUndies,on the other hand, believes it’s important to keep zero party data updated, leading them to send surveys even to loyalty members:

Further Reading: 7 Smarter Marketing Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies (for eCommerce)

21. Reward loyalty with incremental benefits

The science behind this: Milestone offers and deals connect back to reinforcement theory, which has to do with customers getting more of what they want by doing certain tasks (in this case, engaging with a brand longer, buying more etc.).

First things first: knowing your customer journey map becomes crucial in creating milestone offers that customers will in fact want to redeem. Align this with what your brand celebrates as milestone events, and you’re set. 

If you run a community, you can also work with discounts and a progress bar to achieve x number of offers and create Y amount of impact within that context. 

eCommerce brand Ulta is known to honor a number of important customer milestones including birthdays, purchase anniversaries as well as spends: 

22. Offer multiple popular payments (& express CTAs)

The science behind this: Featuring multiple recognized payment methods drives the theory of inclusivity, which is all about creating choices for a wider audience based on geography, cultural norms as well as behavioral tendencies.

For improving eCommerce conversion rate, it’s important that you feature a number of payment alternatives—audit your target audience preferences and also see what competitors are doing. 

Next, check factors like payment compatibility with the platform you’re using as well as geographic location of your shoppers. 

23. Simplify all forms (especially the checkout form)

The science behind this: The idea of priming ensures a shopper is gently nudged with a course of action that finally ends in the purchase closing without friction. And this is what  well-designed forms in eCommerce are supposed to do—guide towards closure without becoming an effort!

Here’s a list of functionalities that we’ve seen the best eCommerce forms drive action with:

✓ Limit number of fields when you’re asking for key info—if it’s about a guest checkout, make sure you ask for nothing more than the phone number, for example

✓ Feature limited questions (especially if it’s a funnel quiz)—for more detailed personalization, you may need an extra edge of gamification to keep things interesting

✓ Display a progress bar when multiple steps are involved—ideal in that checkout form especially

✓ Bring in auto-functions such as date & address pickers (associated with a number or email)

24. Decrease loading time

The science behind this: 47% expect websites to load within two seconds—this relates to performance-related stress that can lead to shoppers experiencing negative emotions, which in turn can affect their engagement with an eCommerce brand.

47% expect websites to load within two seconds. And more than desktop users, mobile shoppers admit that they’d like faster loading experiences so they can browse, compare and shop faster.

The fastest hacks to reduce website speed to enhance eCommerce conversion rate include:

✓ Choose an image compression plugin that does not hinder image quality

✓ Reduce redirects while building internal links

✓ Disable plugins you don’t use / that have overlapping functionalities

For more, there’s: Smart Ways To Speed Up Your eCommerce Store (Top 5 Platforms Covered)

BONUS RESOURCE: 10 Unusual Ways to Boost You eCommerce Conversion Rate

Recommended reading:

13 eCommerce Leaders Share How To Improve eCommerce User Experience

The Right Way to Calculate eCommerce Conversion Rate (& How to Improve it)

People also ask about eCommerce Conversion Rate:

1. What is a good eCommerce conversion rate?

eCommerce conversion rates across industries seem to lie between 1% and 3% generally. 

According to merchant net profit platform IRP Commerce, as recently as May 2022, the conversion rate across eCommerce businesses averaged at 1.78%.

When businesses aim for a baseline conversion rate of 3% +, it’s considered to be a good benchmark to have. 

You'll love: eCommerce Conversion Rate by Industry (2024 Update)

2. What factors contribute to eCommerce conversion rates staying low?

There are a bunch of varying factors that can come together to make your eCommerce conversion rate fall or keep it at a low level. Here are some of the most significant ones:

Unoptimized product pages

This essentially means visitors are not converting on your product pages for several possible reasons: not knowing how to act, not finding the information they need, not seeing good deals, not seeing suggestions that match their preferences & lifestyle etc. 

Confusing or outdated search & navigation

The search functionality on an eCommerce website is the foremost factor that contributes to shoppers finding their way through the complexity of landing, product and category pages. 

Low or badly timed customer support

‍In the lack of a brick and mortar setup, customers may need advice and information on a bunch of queries.

A lack of either can lead them to feeling lost and not converting at all. 

‍A painfully long checkout process

‍Too many steps after a product has been added to the cart can annoy customers no end.

Once they have already picked a product, they don’t want to spend extra time paying for it or being offered a payment confirmation notification.

‍Lack of mobile optimization

‍Many eCommerce businesses have the misconception that whatever works for their websites, will also work on mobile.

However, mobile needs very targeted optimization strategies to impact conversions in a positive way. Here’s an exhaustive list.

3. Over what period is eCommerce conversion rate measured?

While there's no standard answer for this, most businesses prefer to measure eCommerce conversion rates for at least three months at a stretch.

The reason is simple: a shorter time may not be reliable for finding out overarching patterns.

And then again, some businesses do conversion rate measurements across various sections of the business.

They may choose to look at conversions across:

- Loyal customers vs. New customers

- Bestselling categories vs. Slower selling categories

- Sitewide sales vs. Personalized offers

- Peak season sales vs. the rest of the year

- Several buyer locations separately

- Separate devices

4. Which key aspects define an effective eCommerce conversion rate strategy?

High-intent pages

That would be your homepage, category pages, product pages as well the checkout. 

The cart page also counts but if you have a great mini cart drawer, it’ll naturally make more shoppers lean towards checking out. 

How these pages are organized, how well shoppers are able to make out the nature of the products displayed, how the layout convinces them to keep engaging with filters, reviews, forms etc. are crucial.  

Overall design and UX

The “flow” of your website is critical. After all, to engage shoppers, bring in the micro-conversions and improve conversions, they need to find it seamless: easy to know where to go, easy to find support and easy to act while moving from page to page. 

Copywriting

Labels, product descriptions, headlines and microcopy across your website need copywriting. 

And how each of these create clarity, inspiration and action for your shoppers decides how well your site is able to convert in the longer haul. 

Quality and relevance of visuals

In the absence of a physical store, visuals are quite literally one of the only ways shoppers can instill trust in your brand. 

Attempting to increase your eCommerce conversion rate without paying attention to the quality of images is a bad idea. 

Search, discovery and navigation

Standalone elements like dynamic search, well-structured navigation and hooks like notification bars & sticky menus have to work together to ring in conversions. 

Product recommendations

Relevance, frequency and positioning of your product recommendations are the key elements that you need to define before diversifying your eCommerce conversion rate strategy. 

Pricing & offers

While defining your conversion rate strategy, you’ll have to consider what the competition is doing and what price points your existing customers have been more amenable to. 

Similarly, it’ll be important to find out what times of the year discounts work best and if regular flash sales would be a good idea for your business (based on the category, brand recall etc.)

Returns & shipping

How long will your return window be? Should you extend it during certain times of the year? 

Will you offer free shipping—if yes, will there be conditions? How many shipping options can you realistically offer to enhance customer experience? 

You’ll have to figure out answers to these if you have to build a great eCommerce conversion rate strategy.

5. What are the common misconceptions around eCommerce conversion rates?

Implementing eCommerce CRO best practices will instantly resolve conversion issues

This is a big illusion because uplifting your eCommerce conversion rate means a bunch of other things, including having a robust marketing strategy and innovating on product offerings as time goes by, amongst several more. 

Some branding tweaks here and there, and sales will improve

‍ This is a dangerous assumption made by many businesses that think branding is ONLY about the look and feel. In reality, branding is about WHAT you do to make your customers’ buying journey a whole lot easier and enjoyable. 

Doing what a competitor is doing will change the eCommerce conversion rate for the better

‍Nothing is farther from the truth. Even in the same category, every business is different - right from their USP to the way they prefer engaging with customers.

So no two businesses employing the same techniques can ever have the same results. 

Read: eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization: 40+ Practical Ideas, Examples, Checklists

6. What are some unusual ways of improving eCommerce conversions?

There are a number of understood ways of improving eCommerce conversion rates, but there are some rare ones too.

Here are some that work well when applied with care and consideration. 

Use your primary CTA to talk about the value proposition

‍More than something feel-good, customers are willing to take action on something that promises them tangible benefits.

A prime example is Shopify’s “create your store”. 

Make your live chat feature multiple languages

‍You guessed it right - everyone talks about the live chat feature but not enough about how the chosen language of communication keeps it relevant.

We suggest featuring at least two more important languages apart from English to make it relevant for a wider audience. 

Employ odd pricing

‍It leverages slight adjustments to pricing and reaps big benefits.

It creates the illusion of a much better price alternative whereas it in fact is not. For example, consider $12.79 instead of $13.

This is an instance of odd pricing that makes the customer pay attention only to the first two digits to come to a positive buying decision. 

Before great conversions comes memorable UX...

98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.

Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.

And this is the problem Convertcart solves.

We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.

How we can help you:

Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.

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