What is the Best Way to Increase Shopify Conversion Rates?

July 4, 2024

This is one of the most commonly asked questions in Shopify forums, and for good reason. When a store increases its conversion rates it automatically increases profits.

It’s one of the hardest questions to answer. Here’s why there’s no easy answer to this question and what to do about it. You’ll learn that:

There are no silver bullets when it comes to increasing conversion rates. You need to find your own way if you want to improve them.
There’s a method you can use to find it. It’s called High Tempo Testing and it’s done in five easy steps.
Plus, a list of ideas from Shopify experts you can test using the High Tempo Testing method.

We found 88 different answers to the question of how to increase Conversion Rate online, coming from different Shopify experts, developers and entrepreneurs (read the list below).

No one is able to give a satisfactory, straight-up answer because there isn’t one. It depends on your store, your market, your products and your brand (If you don’t know your Conversion Rate, calculate it by signing up to Compass for free).

Every company is different. Even if you’re selling a product that is also sold by other stores, you have your own unique brand and voice. The best-converting stores use that voice to increase conversions.

If you’re copying what other people are doing, you’re already one step behind. Consumers tire of generic marketing tricks quickly. They want to see something unique.

High Tempo Testing

Finding the tactic (or tactics) that are unique to your store is not as hard as it seems. All you need to do is follow a process called High Tempo Testing.

High Tempo Testing was invented by Silicon Valley startups that needed to find innovative ways to reach exponential growth. It’s how Facebook, Airbnb, Uber and others keep innovating and creating value to their customers at lightning speed.

You can use the same principles to discover a unique tactic that will boost your conversion rates in record time. Just follow these five steps:

1. Set your Conversion Rate goals

To set the right Conversion Rate goal for your company, you need to know if your target is possible or out of your reach. Find out the conversion rate benchmark for the top stores in your segment and set a challenging but achievable conversion target. You can calculate and benchmark your conversion rate by creating a free Compass account

2. Brainstorm and prioritize ideas

Set up a time with your team or by yourself to brainstorm thirty ideas that could potentially boost your Conversion Rate, from the modest and simple to the crazy and infeasible. Then categorize them into ideas that:

Are already working for you
Will probably work
Are possible, but not probable

3. Create a hypothesis and test your best ideas

Now get the list of your probable ideas, create a testable hypothesis and create experiments to test them. Use your creativity to find the easiest, cheapest ways to create experiments and find out which of these ideas are most likely to work for you.

This is called rapid prototyping and it’s the easiest way to test as many ideas as possible, cheaply. A great (and free) tool to help you test different ideas is Google Optimize. It makes it easy to create and analyze your tests without much technical knowledge.

4. Analyze results, learn and implement

Chances are, most of your experiments won’t bring the results you wanted, but that’s OK. The important thing is to analyze the results of the tests, summarize your learnings, create new hypotheses based on these learnings and create new experiments to test them.

Each experiment will give you a bunch of new insights and ideas to test. If the experiments bring good results, even better. Simply move on to the next experiment idea.

5. Re-evaluate weekly

Run a meeting at the beginning of every week to evaluate your numbers. Start by reading Compass’s dashboard to see if your conversion rates improve compared to the previous week.

And make sure to take some time to think about your testing process. How can you improve it? What tools do you need to help you better run and analyze your tests? What new tests are you going to launch this week?

High Tempo Testing is a management style that focuses on the amount of tests you do each week. The more tests you run, the more you’ll learn about your conversion rates and your customers, which will lead to better and more sophisticated tests and better results. Work on it diligently and you’re guaranteed to see your numbers improve.

A List of 88 Ideas to Improve Your Conversion Rates

It’s hard to come up with unique ideas right off the bat. So to help you get into the habit of High Tempo Testing, here’s a list of test to try.If they work, great. If not, you can learn from them and come up with your own ideas.

Moreover, you’ll see that some of them, such as “Add personality to your copy,” are subjective. They will require a personalized approach. You can even test different “types of personalities” and see which one sticks. The possibilities are endless.

Test different prices
Personalized product recommendations
Add customer testimonials
Add Reviews
Use social media proof
Offer a free ebook
Add a rewards program for referring a friend
Add a Bounce Exchange (or similar) pop up
Add logos of media outlets you’ve been featured in
Use quotes from researchers, doctors or other authority figures
Add personality to your copy, like DollarShaveClub
Do limited-time-only sales
Add a 24-hour real-time clock showcasing a discount or sale
Show people how many units of a product are left in stock
Test button sizes, colors, call-to-action copy
Test headlines: Make sure they’re benefit-driven
Offer discount coupons
Add upselling and cross-selling
Add an exit intent popup at checkout
Create giveaways and competitions
Offer ways to create wishlists
Add website search
Display product categories
Add an About page
Add guest checkout
Show all payment options in footer and in checkout page
Internationalize your business
Use a heatmap to see where your visitors are dropping off
Test remarketing
Try live chat
Eliminate distractions at checkout
Add videos to product pages
Add video to the homepage
Add customer support via SMS
Add breadcrumbs
Add detailed, clear product descriptions
Have professional quality photos
State availability, shipping terms and delivery times
Use security / trust badges
Reduce number of steps in checkout process
Start a blog
Start a newsletter
Capture user sessions with Hotjar
Nail your unique selling proposition
Provide sub-newsletters based on interest
Offer daily deals
Offer discounts to subscribers
Offer free shipping to subscribers
Make sure there is a direct correlation between your ads and your landing page
Add a local phone number
Do onsite retargeting
Write in your audience’s language
Invest in Long Tail SEO
Reduce clutter in design
Design every page for just one purpose
Keep the best content above the fold
Start a loyalty program
Reduce the number of fields in forms (especially mobile forms)
Browser push notification
Set up a funnel in Google Analytics
Generate email leads
Survey your most satisfied users
Survey your least satisfied users
Color is important. Sometimes a simple color change may affect the conversion.
Increase the size of your add-to-cart buttons
Start an affiliate program
Use top bar CTAs, such as Hello Bar
Ensure that product pages overcome as many buyer objections as possible
Promote the hell out of your best-selling products
Create a movement/tribe/community
Add a guarantee and refund policy page
Give buy-one-get-one-free offer
Make sure you’re targeting the right audience
Do one-step checkout
Use marketing automation
Sell below your margins to new users to capture them
Add “Save the Cart” functionality
Create dedicated landing pages for PPC ads
Tell an interesting story about your website and its brand
Add advanced search feature
Test static image vs. rotating slider on homepage
Use huge customer photos on your Home page
Move the call-to-action to the left of the screen
Use bullet points to outline benefits
Offer next-day shipping
Make your links red
Show (real) humans on images, not stock images
Use aspirational imagery and copy