How to improve e-commerce conversion rates: steps + tips

If your e-commerce site is getting plenty of visitors but they are not converting to sales, you are not alone: Conversion rates rarely go over double digits. For example, the average conversion rate for Shopify stores is 1.4% and the platform recommends starting with a benchmark of 2.5%. 

This doesn’t have to be the norm: You can increase your conversion rate, turning more site visitors into paying customers. We’ll explain what an e-commerce conversion rate means, why it matters and how to improve e-commerce conversion rates using practical, proven steps.

What does e-commerce conversion rate mean?

Conversions can be categorised into two groups: macro and micro conversions. This is important because not every valuable action your visitors make results in a direct sale, but they do have an impact in the long run. 

• Macro conversions are actions that meet your primary business goals like completing a purchase, signing a contract, or subscribing to a paid service. They directly impact your revenue. The e-commerce conversion rate calculates this conversion.
  
• Micro conversions are smaller actions that indicate interest or movement through your sales funnel. Examples include signing up for a newsletter, adding a product to a wishlist, creating an account, or downloading a discount code.

Tracking both macro and micro conversions is important. Micro conversions help you understand customer behaviour and identify where they might be dropping off before reaching a macro conversion. Improving micro conversion rates often leads to more e-commerce conversions over time.

How to calculate e-commerce conversion rate

Your e-commerce conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase.

For example, if 600 out of 12,000 website visitors buy something, your conversion rate is 5%.

What is a good conversion rate for e-commerce?

In South Africa, the average sits between 0.5% and 1%. Globally, the average depends on the region and industry. For example, food, beauty and apparel typically have higher rates ranging from 2% to 4%, while high-ticket items, like luxury goods, may have lower conversion rates but higher average order values (AOV).  

Why is my e-commerce conversion rate so low?

Low conversion rates can be caused by:

• Slow loading times and poor mobile optimisation
• Confusing navigation
• Cluttered product pages and weak product descriptions
• Limited or inconvenient payment options
• Low-quality product images
• High shipping costs
• Unclear return policies and guarantees
• A complicated checkout process
• Lack of trust and safety signals such as customer reviews, security icons and a trusted payment provider

How to increase e-commerce conversion rates

Conversions are impacted by valuable actions throughout the sales funnel. This means that there are many opportunities for your business to optimise rates as your customer moves through each stage. 

Increase site visits

Raising awareness is the first step to boosting conversions. More awareness should translate to an increase in website traffic. Getting a captive audience can be achieved by skillfully using marketing tools and strategies:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

When your customer is already looking for a product or service your business provides, it means they are likely to make a purchase. An SEO strategy is essential for your business to be discovered first. It ensures that your site has high-quality traffic that leads to better sales.

2. Paid media 

While SEO is essential for organic traffic, paid media can amplify awareness by directly reaching your target audience and leading them to your website. Paid media includes using a mix of traditional and digital advertising, including billboards, Google Ads and Meta Ads (Instagram and Facebook sponsored posts).

3. Social media marketing

A consistent production of content and community engagement on your social media profiles can lead to more site traffic. Social media helps brands build their “social proof”, nurture their audience’s interest and turn scrollers into leads. 

Tip: 

Not all traffic is made equal. Beware of “cheap traffic,” which happens when your social media campaigns generate high traffic but lead to marginal conversions. 

• Meta ads remain a strong driver of targeted traffic – you can target your campaigns towards your ideal customer
• Use TikTok for brand discovery and seasonal campaigns like Black Friday.
• Match creatives to both your target audience and your ideal customer profile.

Optimise product pages and user experience (UX)

Your landing pages and product page are often where the buying decisions happen. Nurture the customer’s interest by improving your product pages to boost conversion and make it easy for them to navigate your site through seamless UX.

4. Optimise for mobile. Most South Africans use their phone for online purchases. Ensure product images and buttons are easy to navigate without excessive scrolling.

5. Use high-quality product images that are optimised for fast loading times.

6. Use conversational commerce tools to assist shoppers in real time.

7. Optimise copy for SEO. Write clear and benefit-led product descriptions that answer buyer questions. 

8. Show customer reviews, even the unfavourable ones. They help provide social proof and build authenticity.

9. Include trust icons and badges to foster trust. This could include data privacy badges, payment security certificates, guarantees and your returns policy.

10. Monitor user behaviour using heatmaps and analytics to identify drop-off points.

11. Stay in touch after they leave. Test and optimise email and WhatsApp marketing campaigns where possible. 

Tip: 

Analyse these micro conversions to see how your pages are performing. 

• Add-to-cart rate: Percentage of visitors who add at least one item to their cart.
• Product page bounce rate: Measures how many leave without further action.
  
• Time on page: Short times may indicate poor engagement.
• Click-through rate (CTR) from landing pages to product pages to see how effective your copy and UX is.

Go all out at checkout

One major influence on the e-commerce conversion rate is the checkout experience. You will know that your checkout process is costing you conversions if analytics show a high drop-off rate between the add to cart stage and order completion. Common warning signs include:

• A large gap exists between the number of site visitors who add items to their cart and those who complete checkout.
• Low uptake of guest checkout compared to account creation.
• Negative customer feedback on shipping and payment. 

Speed and incentives are key in reducing cart abandonment rates:

12. Recovery emails (also known as abandoned cart emails) are automated follow-ups sent when a customer leaves items in their shopping cart without completing checkout. They can be helpful reminders for buyers who simply got distracted or need a little more nudging. 

13. Offer free shipping where possible to increase your conversion rate, especially for first-time buyers or higher cart values. 

14. Consider discounts on higher ticket items.

15. Offer a guest checkout option. Not every shopper wants to register an account, especially if they’re buying from you for the first time. Letting them check out as a guest keeps the process quick, reduces friction and builds trust by asking only for the essentials needed to complete the order.

16. Ensure you have flexible payment methods that are secure and fast. For example, if you have a buyer that’s using guest checkout for its speed, you don’t want to put them off by asking them to enter their card details. Having a digital wallet option will suit them better. Still, others feel more comfortable paying with card, EFT and Pay by bank because they are more familiar. 

Tip: 

• Even a wishlist can be treated like an abandoned cart because the customer chose not to buy those products. 
• Discounts do not fix everything. Understand your customer’s pain points and address them through your marketing channels and UX.
• Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is effective for high-ticket items but can also work for lower-priced products by encouraging shoppers to add more to their cart. Consider adding it to your available payment methods

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Seal the deal with high-performance payments

How your customer makes the payment can make or break your conversions. 

In many cases, it’s a breakdown in confidence at this critical stage that leads to higher cart abandonment rates. 71% of potential customers abandon their purchase if a payment fails, and 62% of them won’t return at all. 

Help your customers complete their orders with a dependable payment solution:

17. Partner with a reliable payment gateway

Stitch is South Africa’s most reliable payment gateway, trusted by leading enterprises and merchants to optimise payments and streamline financial obligations. We achieve the best uptime in the market - 99.999% - ensuring your customers can trust your checkout to work all the time. 

18. Build confidence with security features

Card payment fraud remains one of the primary reasons why consumers hesitate to make online payments. Use biometrics, 3D Secure and two-factor authentication to ease any anxiety your customer may have about fraud.

19. Offer omnichannel payments 

As of 2023, Mastercard data shows online purchases accounted for just 6% of retail transactions, with growth expected to reach 10% only by 2026. In-person retail therefore, remains important even for consumers who choose to shop online for certain products.

Through the acquisition of Exipay, Stitch offers merchants industry leading payment solutions for both online and in-person payments. Through this partnership, we successfully support merchants to build out their omnichannel solution. 

20. Select payment options strategically 

Analyse user behaviour to see which methods actually convert. 

Digital wallets are a must to convert with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay users. For merchants, digital wallets mean faster adoption and transaction processing, outperforming traditional card payments. 

Pay by bank solutions like Capitec Pay are also essential for building trust. Consumers feel safe using this payment method because they can authenticate the transaction on their banking app, and processing is quick and easy. 

21. Convert faster with one-click checkouts 

Stitch enables e-commerce stores to build their own natively branded one-click checkouts. By securely linking the customer’s bank account to the retailers’ own customer logins, returning customers are able to pay in a single click anywhere on an e-commerce site, avoiding the need to redirect to a clunky checkout page.

How can Stitch help with e-commerce conversion rates in South Africa?

Businesses and enterprises can boost conversions by leveraging our robust platform to collect, streamline and manage payments: 

• Best-in-class uptime and payment reliability.
• Seamless integration with Shopify, WooCommerce and custom sites.
• Omnichannel capabilities to unify online and in-store payments.
• Flexible payment methods to improve checkout completion rates.
• Scalability for high-volume events.

Final Thoughts

Improving your e-commerce conversion rate isn’t about one big change; rather, it’s about optimising every stage of the buyer journey. By focusing on your discovery, user experience, product pages, checkout process and payment reliability, you can turn more visitors into loyal, returning customers.

Switch to Stitch.  Scale your business with payments engineered for performance and conversions. 

Contact us for a demo. 

FAQs

• What is e-commerce conversion rate optimisation?

E-commerce rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of turning website visitors into paying customers. To grow revenue, it's essential for businesses to apply optimisation strategies to help visitors find what they want, build trust in their brand and ultimately make a purchase. 

• How does user experience impact e-commerce conversion rates?

Every second of delay, unclear CTA, or broken link increases the chance a visitor leaves without buying. Site speed, intuitive navigation, mobile optimisation, and checkout simplicity are all key to reducing friction and improving conversions.

• What tools can I use to track e-commerce conversion rates?

Google Analytics , Hotjar or Crazy Egg (for heatmaps), Shopify Analytics or WooCommerce Reports, A/B testing tools like Optimizely or Google Optimize.

• Which other metrics could you track to measure conversions?
  
  • Average order value (AOV) - Total revenue divided by number of orders.
  • Cart abandonment rate - the percentage of users who add to cart but don’t complete checkout.
  • Checkout abandonment rate - the percentage of users who start checkout but don’t finalise payment.
  • New vs returning customer conversion rates - Reveals loyalty and repeat purchase behaviour.

• Can conversational commerce increase conversion rates?

Conversational AI and live agents can upsell and cross-sell based on browsing history and historical purchases. Real-time support nurtures buyer confidence and helps reduce cart abandonment rates. 

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