At the heart of eCommerce conversions lies personalization. According to research, here's how personalization stacks up in the grand scheme of Shopify Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) things-- the latter being the practice of boosting the percentage of users who take a desired action on a website (think: purchasing a product, clicking 'add to cart', signing up, clicking a link, etc.).

Recent research by McKinsey indicates that a personalized and positive customer experience can lead to 20% higher customer satisfaction rates and a 10-15% boost in Shopify conversion rate. More importantly, data by Bain and Company claims that increasing Shopify customer retention rate by 5% can drive profits in the range of 25% to 95%. 

Clearly, improving Shopify conversion rate should be every eCommerce business’ growth-related North Star metric. In this blog, we will look at how eCommerce brands can boost their Shopify retention rate using real-life strategies, hacks, and tips. Let's get the ball rolling.

Top-4 CRO Strategies from Real-Life Brands for Inspiration

Let’s take a deep dive into the top-4 CRO strategies that real-life eCommerce brands leverage in a Shopify fashion store to boost their bottom line, namely:

1. Intelligent and Intuitive Product-Detail Page Recommendations

Seasoned eCommerce brands understand the importance of having a killer product page--complete with Shopify personalized recommendations of complementary products to gain the customer's trust and improve Shopify Conversion Rate. Take the example of LeSportsac’s product page which uses geolocation to personalize its offering under the label, ‘Trending in Your Area.’ This allows the customer to shop for products that are location-specific and trending in their area:

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Then, of course, you have the Fabletics website. The personalized product recommendations are aesthetically displayed with high-quality images and video. The game-changer for the brand lies in its recommended products section called "You'll Also Love" and "Top Bestsellers".

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Additionally, notice how the brand clearly demonstrates the product rating (in the form of stars) under the product heading to get social proof and establish credibility and trust within the shopper:

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In addition to this, you can:

• Up-sell by recommending products that are more expensive but relevant to the user's liking.
• Cross-sell by recommending complementary items and encouraging shoppers to increase their cart size as Quad Lock demonstrates below:

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• Showcase a customized best-seller list to boost click-throughs as Campus Protein did and witnessed a 50% click-through rate from adding the bestseller list to the product page:

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The learning: For eCommerce brands to stand apart from the competition, it is no longer sufficient to simply demonstrate the product being sold. They need to have Shopify personalized recommendations for the user that are relevant and factor in the user's personal preferences. This is where an AI-powered tool such as Argoid comes into play. You can gather real-time insights on user behavior and preferences to provide context-aware recommendations.

2. Consistent and Contextual Shopping Experience for Returning Customers

It's one thing to enable customers to add items to a "Wish List," and a whole another game to allow them to literally pick up from where they left off:

Here's another example of a brand that makes the shopping experience ultra-convenient to engage returning visitors by allowing them to save the items to the cart and literally pick up from where they left off the shopping:

This can only happen if you've got an algorithm in place that 'remembers' your visitor’s selected items and preferences that occurred in the past sessions. If you want to provide a seamless and convenient shopping experience to the user, your website needs to have this data-powered strategy in place. 

The learning: The online shopping experience is all about providing the right recommendations through personalization and making it easier for the customer to buy stuff online. The latter can be done by integrating a "Continue Shopping" button within the website that allows the customer to start shopping from the point they left off--much like Netflix does through its "Continue Watching" feature.

3. User-Generated Content Across the Sales Funnel

Customers live--and shop--in an omnichannel world. They like to seamlessly hop from one channel to the next while shopping. This is why integrating social media within your eCommerce website has emerged as a must-have. Here are a few advantages of engaging in social retargeting using 'smart,' Shopify personalized recommendations:

• Boosts your eCommerce store's traffic
• Increases engagement for the website as well as the social media platforms
• Amplifies brand voice, visibility, and reach
• Results in better ROI on product campaigns
• Helps deliver a contextual, rich, and meaningful user experience

Take, for instance, SkinnyDip London website's use case. The brand has a dedicated "Shop the Gram" section where users can shop for a particular 'look' that's trending on the brand's Instagram page:

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On clicking a product image, the user is redirected to the following page where they can add products to the cart instantly and conveniently:

Additionally, brands can also go the ORO LA way and leverage the "Shopping on Instagram" feature. The process allows merchants to add tags to posts so that customers can simply “tap” on it and view the product details at the click of a button:

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After launching this program, the brand witnessed a 29.3% lift in month-over-month revenue directly attributable to Instagram.

The learning: Stores need to strategize ways to boost their Shopify retention rate using a robust omnichannel strategy--one that uses platforms and channels where your customer base frequents and is most likely to convert. 

4. Automation of Your Content Marketing Efforts

Whether it's Home Page recommendations or "Add to cart" recommendations, you need the power of smart automation to boost users down the sales funnel. At the end of the day, it is all about driving relevant messaging to the right user base at the right time.

Using an AI-driven tool such as Argoid allows you to drive hyper-personalized email campaigns based on how users are behaving on your eCommerce website. For instance, say you have a first-time customer who has spent a considerable time on your eCommerce website. You can drive a follow-up campaign with them--providing tailor-made offers and outlining the brand's USPs--to reel them back in.

Remember that you can also retarget users using custom-made push notifications.

The learning: Analyzing your user's behavior, extracting valuable insights, and acting on the data to drive personalized campaigns can give your CRO the boost that it needs. With the right data at hand, Shopify conversion rate will no longer be a hard mountain to climb.

Wrapping Up

Improving eCommerce conversions in your Shopify store is an art and an exacting science - one that starts with real-time and accurate user data. Long story short, more and more brands are realizing the need to invest in the right mix of AI tools to bridge the gap between the customer expectations and the brand's potential to out-deliver the same. 

Argoid’s Shopify Data Connector functionality offers a seamless Shopify app integration, incorporating current themes and templates offering a comprehensive suite of solutions across content, offers, Shopify personalized recommendations and search.

Plus, you can enhance your Shopify conversion rates and drive sales while boosting customer happiness and brand loyalty. All things considered, if you’re not consistently improving your Shopify retention rate and catering to the latest trends in AI-powered shopping, you’re bound to fall behind the competition. Agree?

FAQ's on improving Shopify Conversion Rate

What is a good conversion rate for Shopify?

Anything more than 3.3% will rank you in the best 20% of Shopify stores. And more than 4.8% can actually put you in the top 10%. Improving your Shopify conversion rate to this range can definetely fetch you good results, increase revenue and overall profit.

What are the factors that affect the conversion rate of your Shopify store?

There are several factors that affect conversion rate but the main factor including relevance which means that visitors should find relevant content for what they are looking for in your Shopify store. Another factor which affects conversion rate is distractions, you need to remove distracting elements from your website. And factor is clarity in communication and providing relevant recommendations of the products. These factors affect the conversion rate of your Shopify store.

What is conversion rate optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the total percentage of users or website visitors who want to take a desired action. The actions include submitting forms, signing up, doing trials, making a purchase and so on. If customers fulfil such actions businesses can generate more leads without investing money on website traffic.

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