eCommerce Website Optimization:
28 Improvements You Can Make Today

1. Optimize for mobile devices

Researching and discovering products on mobile before purchasing on desktop is the norm amongst eCommerce shoppers.

And with an optimization strategy geared towards mobile users, you can ensure better conversions:

• Make search return results within the same category—for example, if a shopper types ‘shoes for women’, show them ‘shoes for women style,” “shoes for women gifts” etc.
• Place the CTA in a sticky nav bar—the bottom of the screen is the ideal placement
• Highlight call-outs to the app—after all 60% of shoppers claim they’d open an app to shop as against a mobile site
• Feature the most used “actions” as clickable icons in a sticky menu—this is what Casper does on their mobile site and we’ve seen how it eases navigation:

• Make your forms easy to “process”—reduce the number of fields, maintain a single column layout and apply auto-functions like date / address pickers wherever possible
• Optimize for voice search—and make sure your SEO strategy includes conversational keywords
• Leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages—buld pages that load fast, especially across heavier sections of your website like blogs
• Minimize pop-ups—and even when you’re using them, make sure their design does not cause friction

2. Optimize page speed for < 2 seconds

A recent research has pegged average website loading times at 2.5 seconds for desktop and 8.6 on mobile.

The way to go is to aim for less than 2 seconds either way and for this the following areas of website optimization need to take place:

• Use lazy loading—but make sure your first fold is exempted from this rule
• Arrange your navigation menus to reduce depth—club similar categories and sub-categories instead of having too many loose ends
• Remove inactive plugins—check for compatibility because incompatibility often results in speed issues
• Work with a CDN—a content delivery network ensures your website is depending on a server located close by, reducing loading time

3. Prevent cart abandonment

Without applying eCommerce optimization techniques on your shopping cart, you’d just be increasing the chances of people leaving their purchases midway.

While there are lots of ways to make a shopping cart interesting, we’d recommend the following to take shoppers closer to closing their purchases:

• Make use of a drawer cart—and make it pop out every time an item is added, for the rest, make sure the number of items clearly shows up against the cart icon
• Offer a popular payment as a secondary CTA—skincare brand Burt’s Bees features Paypal alongside the traditional checkout button, for example:

• Display a threshold bar to inspire adding more to cart—whether it’s for free shipping or for a free gift for a higher price threshold
• Feature a clear “remove” nudge—this makes it more definitive for shoppers when they don’t want a product or may have added it by mistake
• Feature clear microcopy about taxes & additional charges—this is why some eCommerce brands have begun to display a shipping calculator within the cart itself

4. Recover abandoned carts smartly

It’s not news that average cart abandonment stands at about 70%.

And this means what you do to recover abandoned carts could make for a significant eCommerce optimization strategy—here’s what we’ve done for clients:

• Create trust on your product, cart and checkout pages—even microcopy like “secure checkout” around CTAs has proven to be conversion drivers
• Feature a prominent live chat—aid it with a trigger question like, “Is there something you need help with?” and feature an option to ask about discounts / offers etc.
• Time your pop-ups to show when shoppers are opening their cart—a first-visitor discount pop-up can nudge them towards buying instead of exiting
• Create an email strategy around abandonment—make sure the flow inspires abandoners to convert

One eCommerce brand that’s known to super effective cart abandonment emails is Birchbox—check out how they even link to reviews of the abandoned product:

5. Offer a friction-free checkout experience

A lot of what we know as cart abandonment actually happens at checkout.

While the reasons are mostly quite varied, here are a few non-negotiables that’ll make your shoppers keep going:

• Feature additions that will drive the purchase, nothing more—bottle brand Larq features one snippet of a review as social proof
• Skip the recommendations—limit it to max two if you have to
• Use a progress bar right on top to show movement—if you’re taking the vertical approach, use numbers for the steps
• Feature all important policies as microcopy—this is where your privacy policy, return policy and any guarantee info come in

6. Build amazing product pages

In most instances, visitors don’t think of buying until they check out individual product pages.

This is good news because this means you can optimize your product page and use it as a tool to convert.

The following are the most critical components that need attention:

• An image gallery that creates an experience—you even have the freedom to use an image to label out the attributes of your product
• Video content that’s a quicker way to process information—consider the nature of the video: will it be about unpacking? Or an expert talking about how to use the product?
• How and where you feature your reviews—do you link microcopy at the top of the page so that shoppers can click and land up in your reviews section? Do you highlight review snippets?
• Recommendations that add to the experience—try not to add too many and land shoppers in choice paralysis
• How attractive you make the pricing & delivery—if there’s additional savings for members, mention that, if you have a limited time 2-day delivery window “if you buy now,” say that as well
• Last but not the least, product descriptions that help visualizing the product in use

7. Minimize the number of steps to complete any action

In your website optimization strategy, one of primary aims need to be reducing the number of steps it takes to close a purchase.

Here are a few we’ve found to be invaluable along the entire length of the checkout flow:

• Feature “Quick Add” CTAs on the homepage—once these are clicked, the cart drawer can open up and nudge the shopper towards checkout
• Stack available offers on the product page—this allows shoppers to first view the offers and then decide on the purchase instead of going into cart and then realizing they can’t avail anything
• Feature a couple of popular payment methods as secondary & tertiary CTAs in the cart—this quickens the process thanks to shopper details already saved with the third-party payment processors
• Auto-apply discounts at checkout—even better, if you can apply it within the cart itself and do away with coupon codes that can be confusing

8. Remove unnecessary distractions

Any eComm store’s ultimate goal is to sell well—but before that, UX that offers a seamless, stress-free experience.

While auditing sites across the world, we’ve found that typically low-performing sites have one thing in common: they’re high on distractions.

Here’s a list of these that you need to watch out for—and weed if necessary:

• Typography issues—you don’t want to be using more than two to three kinds across your site, based on where you’re applying them: Is it for a headline? Is it for microopy?
• Auto-play image carousels—swiftly moving images that don’t allow shoppers to make sense of ongoing deals or featured collections
• Too much action on your notification bar—not very different from a distracting hero header you know?
• Chunks of content that shoppers can’t hide—this especially becomes a nuisance on a product page where you need to offer enough info for shoppers to decide
• Random, ill-timed pop-ups—clients have seen increased bounce rates across instances where a pop-up fired either carrying random recommendations or even talking about exit intent 😓

9. Make your site’s search more accurate & interactive

An inviting site search feature tends to be one of the primary eCommerce optimization tactics that can result in better conversions over time.

In fact, almost 70% of your storefront visitors head straight to the search bar—which is why here are a few adjustments you’ll have to look, unless you’re already making them:

• Use dynamic hint text—some sites draw their shoppers’ attention to the featured categories and products by saying something like “search for cameras,” “search for TVs” etc.—some sites ask the simple question: “What are you looking for today?”
• Feature “trending” or “top” searches—this can especially be helpful for top-of-the-funnel visitors who’re not quite sure what to look for—check out how jewelry brand Mejuri uses this website optimization:

• Show up relevant suggestions even when there’s an error—use a good mix of auto-correct and auto-suggestion is what we mean—exactly what Walmart does while featuring thumbnail suggestions as well:

• Allow “add-to-cart” from your search function—not too many eCommerce brands are leveraging this website optimization but Frank Body is and how—what’s better they even feature some blog resources when you click on the search icon:

10. Use a pricing strategy that drives conversions

No matter what larger pricing strategy you pick, it’s how you make your prices stick out on-site that’ll make the biggest difference to your conversions.

Going by how the best-converting brands do, here are some website pricing optimization steps you could take too:

• Leverage the “subscribe & save” model—and also feature what a shopper will gain from subscribing—Vital Proteins uses this eCommerce optimization to get more sales:

• Offer quantity discounts—even if a BOGO tactic is difficult for you, you can make use of the “buy X, get $Y off” method just like Chubbies does.
• Use bundling for a win-win situation—this is one of the most loved eCommerce optimization tactics that ensure your shoppers save while you’re able to increase your AOV
• Apply a limited time offer—for example, when eCommerce jewelry brand Brilliant Earth attempts to sell their more expensive products, they sometimes run limited time discounts like this one:

If this doesn’t work for you, you can always offer a free gift when X amount worth of products is bought.

• Offer exclusive pricing benefits to long-term customers—many brands offer email-only discounts as well as discounted early access for new drops and discounted early bird pre-orders.

11. Make “nudges” across your site more effective

No matter where a shopper is in their customer journey, they always need that slight tipping towards making a purchase.

Nudge marketing as an eCommerce website optimization comes in the form of discount labels, back-in-stock alerts, limited edition drops as well as flash deal updates.

To make nudge marketing more effective on your store:

• Feature third-party social proof in the first fold—works to support the reviews you display across product pages—Huel shows us what can really catch attention:

• Offer a quality guarantee—and if you can tie it with your business values, nothing like it, just like Patagonia does:

• Associate with a “cause”—this makes shoppers really pay attention because they have a sense of contributing to something much bigger than just a purchase—exactly what Cariuma does across their website:

• Offer “get the look” nudges—this makes related recommendations gain a more comprehensive perception in the shopper’s mind (which is why Gymshark takes this approach)

• Use “frequently bought together” nudges—and make sure you make the section editable and also offer a separate CTA so that all the products can be directly added to cart—just like Native Pet does:

• Feature multiple variations of the same product (especially if there are feature differences)—and call out the price difference, plus if there’s a sale!
• Lead an upsell or cross-sell through a benefit—for example, if your main product lets shoppers “cool off your scalp during summers,” lead the upsell or cross-sell by saying something like “to nourish your hair without drying it…”

12. Personalize based on shopping journey

According to critical research, 78% of shoppers transform into repeat buyers after a single great experience of personalization.

And this is why this eCommerce website optimization tactic is gold—you’ll just have to apply it in ways that meet the customer exactly where they are in their buying journey:

• Offer more localized recommendations—since this covers weather and seasons, it becomes all the more likely that shoppers will add-to-cart
• Help them build their “set” from personalized recommendations—this is what Sweaty Betty does to great effect:

• Seek post-purchase feedback—a website optimization tactic would be ask for their experience on the Thank You page itself or send across a post-purchase email with a clear mention of products & associated questions
• Make space for a product discovery quiz—but try not to ask more than 5 or 6 questions
• Make those emails “exclusive”—if you’ve gotten them to sign up for your on-site membership program, you’ve also got to send emails that offer discounts not available to anyone else:

13. Resolve customer objections through product descriptions

Since 87% of shoppers are unlikely to make a repeat purchase if product information is unclear, the verdict stands clear.

How your write and lay out your product descriptions can be an eCommerce optimization that enables you to sell more—here are a few non-negotiables:

• Offer an easy-to-read snippet—this is especially helpful for those scanning across multiple product pages—here’s how makeup brand Covergirl does it:

• Talk about a relatable problem statement—and how your product is able to solve it, along with proof/ research
• Make your recommendations carry a descriptorr—especially when the layout carries just one
• include details on why shoppers must choose your brand—just as supplement brand NativePath does:

• Prioritize highlighting returns, refund and delivery info—mention shipping variations as different line items and also throw light on the delivery window

14. Create compelling offers

Most eCommerce shoppers love a good deal—and discounts can easily become a website optimization technique you can use to garner sales through the year.

The catch though is, how much to offer and how often. It’s a fact that online shoppers distrust deep discounts if they’re available all too often, if not from a thrift store.

So here are a few ways we’ve found to make on-site discounts work better:

• Create a yearly steeply discounted limited time clearance sale—when you run this for a few years, regulars will begin to anticipate it, and convert more easily—this is is exactly what PacSun does:

• Create a free gift threshold—and get shoppers to try a new product launch sample when they spend a certain amount—Tropic Skincare does this to optimize their online store:

• Announce brand anniversary discounts—and ensure you line up most of your bestsellers while using strategic product image call-outs like “last few left,” “never coming back again” and “best price on the internet.”
• Make a compelling pop-up drive the current sitewide discount—here’s an example from Booty Bands:

15. Easy-to-reach customer support

If you want your eCommerce optimization strategy to work towards conversions, you’ll have to be more upfront about customer support info.

Here are some steps that we’ve seen work for our clients’ CRO initiatives:

• Use microcopy to highlight the primary number and email addresson the top right side of the navigation panel

Here are some steps that we’ve seen work for our clients’ CRO initiatives:

• Make sure the FAQ page has a search bar—highlight some hint text in it so that visitors who have landed up can key in familiar phrases—jewelry brand Ana Luisa optimizes this aspect well:

• Offer a support nudge beneath product page descriptions—this prevents people from experiencing scrolling fatigue or confusion about where your support info is—check out how women’s boots brand Freebird does it:

16. Make your live chat helpful

Contrary to popular belief, live chat isn’t just about helping customers buy—it’s to do with easing a shopper’s life no matter which part of the funnel they’re from.

There’s a reason 52% of shoppers will stick to a business that has offered them effective live chat help—the following are a few optimization strategies to make your live chat do more:

• Feature FAQ on shipping, returns and order tracking without fail—other areas to highlight are loyalty, referrals, offers and order modification
• Give them an option to leave a message—mention your operational hours so that there’s no confusion
• Offer a way to take your personalization quiz from the chat itself—that’s what bamboo clothing brand Boody does for their eCommerce optimization:

• Highlight product-related questions, subscription doubts or even the ability to skip the next box (like HUM Nutrition):

17. Gather customer feedback across channels

Forbes data reveals that 84% of businesses that diligently work towards enhancing customer experience invariably see a rise in their revenue.

And collecting feedback is an essential first step of an eCommerce optimization strategy geared towards amplifying conversions:

• Segment audience data to see where the complaints are emerging from—while collecting on-site data, you can ask visitors to specify their feedback, just like REI does:

• Sift through your best and worst customer reviews and check for emerging patterns—is sizing a persistent issue? Are people constantly asking for an extended return window?
• Observe customer comments on social—keep an eye out especially on product queries, comments on order fulfillment as well as negative buying experiences
• Use an email survey to open up a two-way conversation—offer a limited time discount or seek permission to enter their name in a valuable giveaway like Torrid does:

18. Create powerful CTAs (and keep testing them)

Granted CTAs need to be direct and short, but if you’re relying only on “shop now” and “buy now” as eCommerce optimization, chances are you won’t get conversions consistently.

Even then, with a great CTA strategy across your eCommerce site, you can make shoppers think about offers, actions (and alternate actions) and why a purchase would make sense:

• Highlight subscriptions through secondary CTAs—this holds true for both subscription-based businesses as well as the rest—here’s how men’s grooming brand Harry’s informs about subscriptions in the first fold of the homepage itself:

• Make your pop-up CTAs inspire signing up—”sign up” is so obvious that most shoppers won’t even register it, but check out what Huckberry does:

• Always back your informational CTAs with a descriptor—otherwise most shoppers with more commercial intent on their minds won’t even notice them—Mud Jeans shows us how:

19. Use scarcity, urgency & exclusivity to drive value

“Too less” and “too special” are both conversion drivers in eCommerce.

But how and where you use scarcity, urgency and exclusivity as eCommerce optimization will decide the outcome:

• Offer “early access” to more than new arrivals—include product drops, exclusive expert content and online events
• Make “members only” messaging stronger across the site—be it on the notification bar, the product page or the banner on category pages—REI dedicates a lot of space to talk about their membership program:

• Use comparison charts for “exclusive” products—and if you can draw distinctions around your material sourcing, ethical practices or even fair pricing methods, nothing like it
• Talk about how many people are viewing the product (and not just feature a label like “low stock”—for better impact, use both)
• For “limited time” offers, clarify the window—if it’s going to be around only for a day, state it clearly

20. Use a mix of social proof

While customer reviews are absolutely essential eCommerce website optimization material, you also need other kinds of social proof to improve your conversion rate.

Let’s have a look at some tactics that we’ve applied across clients:

• Prioritize a social wall—this is especially helpful if you’re in a more visually oriented space like fashion or makeup or even fitness—Fabletics, for example, makes their social wall shoppable and for every product features a wall where UGC is featured:

• Feature a note from “the founders” (and support it by stating how many customers you’ve served)—shoppers buying from smaller brands are always on the lookout for transparency

• Use a third-party review website—combined with a feature of mixed reviews can be highly compelling

21. Prevent drop-offs with compelling pop-ups

There are multiple reasons why the average pop-up conversion rate is just a little over 3%.

But since you’d rather run an optimization strategy that works on this front, we’d suggest you:

• Create super-contextualized pop-ups—since you’re asking visitors to sign up, you need to create that extra edge of anticipation (and differentiation too!)

Wellness brand Beekeeper’s Naturals, for example, doesn’t just lure visitors through the promise of new arrivals and updates—icing on the cake: a nudge to sign up on SMS:

• Segment through them so that shoppers are drawn more—for example if you’re a clothing store trying to convert, you can offer radio buttons labeled “men,” women” and “kids” to choose from
• Time them correctly—it takes about 15 seconds for a visitor to start making sense of your website after they land up, so why should that exit intent pop-up fire at 3?
• Offer a pop-up CTA that’s not the same old—”sign up” is so far so good, but also consider “seal the deal,” take me home” and “keeps getting better” (to hint at long-term perks) or even “get it before it’s gone” (for limited-time offers)
• Make urgency the sign-up driver—this principle works at such an unconscious level, that most visitors are not able to resist it—something that Ryderwear leverages:

22. Highlight gifting on your storefront

This is an eCommerce optimization strategy that stores would think of only around peak shopping season—but that was once upon a time.

Now if you have to bring in the conversions, you’ll have to:

• Make space for “gifting” in your primary navigation—that’s exactly what jewelry brand Gorjana does:

• Offer an exclusive deal on the main “gifting” category page—this is what Harry & David does to increase conversion rates:

• Allow for gift customizations on the product page—this would include offering a choice of packaging and the option to enter a gifting message
• Maintain a separate, evergreen sub-topic on your store blog—you can link to these through your emails and also feature callouts on your homepage whenever necessary

23. Make more payment options available

Once a shopper has decided on a purchase and wants to checkout, they will quite simply want to do it the fastest way.

Offering more payment options as an eCommerce optimization can enable this—here are a few integral steps:

• Show express checkout options in the first fold—and make sure you offer at least two options (notice how Larq features three):

• Feature BNPL as a prominent option—this highlights split payments for shoppers, which in turn resolves their doubts of spending on a purchase—wellness brand Soylent features BNPL as secondary options:

• Continue featuring more traditional methods of payment like Paypal—this appeals to an older generation of customers who’re still not well-versed with newer methods

24. Feature a reassuring Thank You page

Post-purchase acknowledgment and support can go a long way in helping you increase your CLV—and when you optimize the Thank You page, you add to this impact positively.

Here are a few ways to make your Thank You page drive greater trust:

• Feature the order number clearly—and tell them you’ve emailed the same to them or chosen another medium (like WhatsApp) to send across the order details
• Show thumbnail images of the purchased products—this reaffirms to the shopper that you’ve registered their order successfully
• Talk about your refund / return policy—highlight the window and also link microcopy so that they can go back and re-check the policy

One eCommerce brand that shows up interesting Thank You page notifications is Marshall Fridge—check out how they nudge the shopper to share their purchase on social:

25. Build an effective email strategy

Since email represents 42x ROI, eCommerce optimization on this front often means a goldmine.

Here’s how you can approach your email strategy to land more conversions:

• Get sign-ups beyond that exit intent pop-up—leverage a platform like Pinterest, nudge them towards wishlisting or even create gated content that they can’t refuse
• Figure which areas need email attention—thank you, cart abandonment and win-back email flows typically have great scope for improving eCommerce conversions
• Segment & personalize like your life depends on it—focus on getting the send time, subject line and offer right
• Use email-only conversion tactics—offer pre-order options for new product drops or announce discounts you aren’t featuring anywhere else

eCommerce brand Bushbalm carefully segments their emails for better personalization, from the ground up:

26. Perform sitewide A/B testing to close conversion gaps

No amount of eCommerce optimization is enough unless you get your conversion funnel cleaned up—and this is where A/B testing comes to play a huge role.

Here’s what you’ll need to look into to cover larger base:

• Perform your tests in phases—too many changing elements can become difficult to track and measure
• Cover all high-intent sections of your website—even if you can’t immediately impact conversions, testing will show you more ways to achieve micro-conversions
• Put yourself in users’ shoes—this is the only way you’ll know what adjustments are really sustainable and enjoyable for a shopper to access in the long run

27. Create your SEO strategy around search intent

Whether your visitors find you through paid ads, social or customer referrals, you’ve got to show them what they’re looking for.

Well, mostly—and this is why when you do eCommerce optimization for higher user intent, you end up selling better.

Here are a few steps you need to cover:

• Study what’s ranking to understand shoppers’ intent—tune your paid ads accordingly—for example, when we went looking for “vegan clothing for pregnant women”, the top ads reflected a pattern: words that create reliability & customer trust to inspire the purchase decision:

• Take Google’s suggested keywords seriously—because if you’re seeing them, Google is registering the terms searchers are frequently keying in—so it’s anyone’s guess how effective it’ll be to embed a variation of these keywords into your website content
• Ensure your most searched keywords find their way into high-intent pages—apparel brand Anthropologie, for example, reserves a short writeup about their brand at the bottom of the homepage, and if you look carefully, the ‘about us’ snippet contains high-intent KWs that are linked to their respective category pages:

• Check competitor content that’s ranking better—what is different about the page? What sort of on-page SEO strategy have they applied? How are their other eCommerce optimization tactics supporting on-page SEO?
• Consider keyword clustering—when you connect this tactic to search intent optimization, you’ll be able to create related and resonant content across your eCommerce storefront.

28. Optimize images for SEO

When attempting website optimization for your eCommerce store, it’s not enough that you use only high quality images.

Your image SEO—the strategy that’ll make sure your site ranks via your images on Google—has to be on-point as well:

• Pick the right format for the right context—typically though, WebP is the most ideal for an eComm store, because it compresses without losing out on original image quality, and given the sheer number of product images you may have, this can reduce loading times too
• Bring in responsive images—to ensure your images work across screen sizes and devices, specify multiple image sources using the srcset HTML attribute
• Name your images in a relevant way—instead of saying “cooling summer icecream”, make more SEO sense by naming it as “strawberry gelato with almond cream.”
• Create clear & descriptive image alt text—since optimizing for disability is the latest trend for eCommerce, you’ll have to add image alt text to navigate around any speed or loading troubles—if you have product variations that have numbers, ensure you use them in your alt text
• Choose different alt attributes for thumbnail images—after all, you don’t want Google to index your thumbnails instead of the actual larger product images