With nearly three million stores hosted on Shopify, it’s safe to say that there is a lot of competition on the marketplace, especially with more and more brands being launched every day.

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No matter what industry you are in, you have competition, plus with rising ad costs and email inboxes being flooded with spam, you need all the help you can get to stay profitable with growing your brand.

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This is where improving your website comes into play.

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By improving your customer journey and experience, you can improve your key metrics such as conversion rates, AOV, and returning customer rates.

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Keep reading to learn seven things that you can do to improve your site today… that nobody is talking about!

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Customer service callout

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Everybody loves good customer service so sharing your customer service quality is huge. This is especially important for premium, high-ticket, or specialty products because you need to give your customers some reassurance in their purchase.

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A great example is talking about customer service for an auto parts store.

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A simple call out on your product page that says something like “not sure if this part fits your vehicle? Send us a message for help.” is huge for purchase assurance.

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Remember, a huge aspect of customer service is to service your customers and help them make their purchase confidently! 

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Multiple person fit guide (see ten thousand)

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If you run a clothing store, this is for you!

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Every one of your customers is unique. They have a different height, weight, body type, etc… which means that your clothes are going to fit each of your customers differently.

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In addition to having a standard size guide that has basic measurements, you can use your models to show a fit. For example, you can add a line on the product page that says something like “model is 5’9, 145lbs, wearing a medium.” This would be a huge improvement!

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Now let’s take this even further!

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In addition to having a single model with their fitment, you can look towards the TenThousand product pages to see a tailored sizing guide that shows numerous body types in different sizes.

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Now your customers can get closer to seeing someone with their exact proportions in a specific size so they can confidently buy a specific size.

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Frequently bought with section

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Everybody wants to improve their average order value (AOV). In fact, a higher AOV is one of the fastest ways to improve profitability.

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A huge element that we can take from Amazon is their “frequently bought with” section that is on their product pages.

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No matter what you’re selling, adding a section to show what complimentary products are also for sale is a great way to show people exactly what they should also buy.

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Similar to social proof, people get confidence knowing that other people bought something. So by applying the same concept, we can show that other people bought multiple products so they should as well.

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The best part about this section is that you have control over it! 

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Use this to your advantage to encourage people to buy the products that you want them to buy. 

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Multi-step email capture for zero party data

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It’s no secret that the key to unlocking profitability, especially through email and SMS, is segmentation. With more accurate data from your customers, you can further your segmentation and market more accurately to your audience.

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Traditionally, most ecommerce stores are using a simple and generic email capture form. For example, enter your email for 15% off.

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That’s better than nothing, but it’s not giving you any actual info about your customers and what they are interested in.

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Instead, using a tool like JustUno is a great way to make a better pop up that also helps you collect more data.

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For example, if you have a dog store, you can ask your customers about their dogs! How many do they have, what breeds are they, how old are they… now you can pool similar customers together in your marketing.

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If you didn’t have this data, you would market something like “nutrition for older big dogs” to your audience and have only a small percentage of your audience care..

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With this data, you could send that same email to your customers that have older big dogs and have a much better response!

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FAQ page CRO hack

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This is probably the most powerful hack on this list so if you only implement one thing from this resource, make sure you implement this.

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First you need to make sure that you have a heatmap tool set up. We like HotJar! If you aren’t familiar with heatmaps, basically they track what people are doing on your site.

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There are a million things you can use this data for, however, the FAQ page hack is a golden nugget for your store.

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Let’s add some background info here.

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Your product page is one of the most important pages on your site. The whole purpose of your product page is to give people the information they need in order to make an educated buying decision. Your product page also needs to answer questions that people might have about your product and/or brand before they even have them!

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So with that knowledge, in theory your audience shouldn’t be going to your FAQ page.

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But people still do! 

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Thankfully, you can use your heatmap to see which questions people are looking at the most. 

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Take that data and apply it throughout your site to give people that information more upfront so they don’t have to search for it!

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Emphasis on your return policy

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Thanks to Amazon’s amazing return policy, it’s more important than ever to show how easy it is for people to make a return. This is especially important for brands where fit is tricks such as clothing or specialty parts.

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Keep in mind that there is a fine line that you need to walk for your return policy.

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Make it easy for legitimate returns, but don’t make it so easy that people take advantage of your brand. 

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Remember, returns are expensive! 

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They take a lot of time for your customer service department and if you’re using a 3PL, restocking fees can add up quickly!

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Obviously on your product pages you want to educate your customers enough to where they have as much buyer confidence as possible to help reduce returns, but for those customers who are on the fence, great return policy can be the difference in order or not.

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If you haven’t put much thought into your return policy, this is your sign to optimize it and make it a value add for your customers. 

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Social proof on collection pages 

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Are you sending traffic to your collection pages? If so, then you definitely need to have more than just the products!

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Most of the popular review apps, such as Stamped, have the ability to add an app block to the collection pages. This is huge! 

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In addition to reviews, having any publication feature logos and some general value propositions on your collections can help build trust and buyer confidence and can lead to improved click through rates to your product pages.

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The goal here is to make your collection pages more like value-building landing pages that you can use throughout your marketing campaigns.

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Think of it like this, if you’re dropping a Spring Collection, you’ll want to send people directly to that collection. This is a dangerous game to play because you’re relying on your products to speak for themselves and for your audience to know any value propositions that your brand has.

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Instead of relying on that, add a couple sections to share that information quickly as either a reminder for returning customers or as an education section for new people. You can’t lose here!

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Obviously there is a lot that goes into a high-converting store and these upgrades are not going to save a sinking ship. However, for many brands, these can each have a marginal impact on your conversions. 

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No one thing is going to be a game changer for your conversion rate, however when all done together, you can see significant upticks in your store’s analytics that can lead to massive improvements in your long-term profitability.

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