Shopify witnessed unprecedented growth in 2020 as Gross profit dollars grew 87% to $405.1 million in the third quarter of 2020, compared with $216.7 million for the third quarter of 2019. The reason for such tremendous growth is the ease of setting up an online store on the platform. You can do so with a few clicks. However, merely setting up your store won’t be enough as there is a need to ensure that you get enough sales. And that need is to optimize the call to action for your store. We will answer all your queries in this article.
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What is a call to action?
Call to action (CTA) is a fancy term for a button or link that leads customers to take any action they want as a Shopify store owner.
That action could be adding a product to the cart, purchasing a product, subscribing to the newsletter, or liking your social media page.
Unless and until your CTA grabs the visitor’s attention, you cannot get the desired outcome. In this article, we will only talk about those CTA’s which lead the customer to purchase the product, I.e. “add to cart” and “purchase” buttons. We focus on this particular aspect because it is the most important of all for any e-commerce store.
One that brings in revenue and prevents the business from operating in the red. However, you can apply almost the same strategies to other types of CTA’s as well.
Importance of a Call to Action
By now, you have already figured out how vital CTA is, but still, let’s look at some statistics that further demonstrate its importance.
The average conversion rate of an e-commerce store is around 2.27%.
Yes, this is a meager figure, but you shouldn’t be disappointed as you can go well beyond this.
For instance, Amazon Prime has a massive conversion of 74%, and non-prime customers have a 13% conversion. These stats are from a 2015 study by Millward Brown Digital and demonstrate that sky’s the limit.
Another point to be noted is that the figures are from the 2015 study. Online shopping got a significant boost in 2020 due to pandemics as people preferred shopping online compared to in stores due to health concerns.
As such, one can safely assume the e-commerce conversion average to be much higher than 2.27%.
So how to optimize your call to action for Shopify stores to take advantage of the growing number of shopping online people?
The next section mentions seven proven techniques to do so.
Let’s find them out!
7 ways to optimize your call to action (CTA) for a Shopify store
Improving the CTA is no rocket science. It involves making small changes to your Shopify store.
However, store owners often ignore these small changes, either intentionally for being too small to bring a change or unintentionally.
So read on to find what those little tweaks have the potential to bring hundreds of dollars in sales.
1. Display your value-added service under add to cart option
For example, if you offer free shipping for products worth XYZ amount or a discount on bulk purchase, it is better to display these things below the add to cart option rather than on a separate page.
This is one of the simplest tricks to optimize your call to action for the Shopify store. Remember to add a sentence that is as short as possible as you don’t have much space.
If you have multiple value-added offerings, choose the best ones instead of adding all of them. Make wise use of the limited space.
2. Call to action option on the list page
For a lot of e-commerce pages, you have to click on the product, go on the new page, and then you will be able to add the product to the cart. This is not a bad idea, but a better idea is to add the call to action on the list page itself.
Think of it from a UI/UX perspective.
The fewer clicks a customer has to make to purchase a product, the better it is. Adding the product to the cart achieves the same purpose.
It also means the customers will have the option of adding multiple products to the cart without the need to navigate back and forth to different product pages.
That’s quite simple. Isn’t it?
3. Add trigger elements near the call to action
This point closely relates to the first one on our list.
Triggers refer to those words or phrases which prompt the customer to click on the call to action. These are enticing phrases that lure the customer to purchase the product.
You can easily find quality copywriters in the market who can create a compelling trigger element. For example, you could add something as simple as “20% discount for the next 48 hours”, “last 5 units left in stock,” or anything along similar lines.
If you note the above two examples, you will see that we have mentioned a time limit_ 48 hours and the last 5 units. This is a psychological trick to create a sense of urgency.
This is not the only tactic, but a very powerful one without any doubt.
4. Add live chat option
As simple as it may seem, adding a live chat is one of the best ways to optimize your call to action for the Shopify store.
Imagine a customer has added a product to the cart. He is ready to make a purchase but has a few queries regarding the shipment policy.
Even if you have a clearly visible “contact us” page and a social media account where the customer can drop you a message, do you think he has the time to wait for your response?
Absolutely not!
He wants to make the purchase but only requires a small clarification before proceeding. The customer needs an instant response!
This is just one scenario where the lack of live chat would hurt badly.
Now you have two options. Either hire a customer service representative (CSR) who would look after the customer queries, or use a chatbot.
If you plan to deploy a chatbot, there should be a person to monitor the responses of the bot and rectify any mistakes as they occur. Over time, the bot would be trained well enough to handle all the inquiries themselves.
5. Make your site mobile friendly
“In 2021, 53.9 percent of all retail e-commerce is expected to be generated via m-commerce” Statista.
This shows how rapidly mobile commerce (m-commerce) is growing, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that with every passing year, the percentage of m-commerce will increase.
Just look around yourself, and you will see how many people use mobile phones for all their activities: from browsing the net, using social media, watching a video on YouTube, and of course, for e-commerce.
Almost all Shopify themes are mobile-friendly, so you won’t need to make major changes to your store to make it mobile-friendly.
However, one thing needs your particular attention, I.e., the size of different buttons should not be very small, and there must be enough spacing between them. Don’t make them very crowded.
This is because it is common to mistype and accidentally press buttons on a mobile device. By making them large and with enough spacing, you can ensure that customers are not frustrated by these accidental presses.
Experiment with different Shopify themes and consider using the one which is the most mobile-friendly. This will go a long way in optimizing your call to action for the Shopify store.
6. Use split testing
This is one of the most effective strategies for optimizing your call to action for Shopify stores.
Split testing, also known as A/B testing, entails testing out different strategies to figure out which one works the best. The best strategy is then adopted, and the other one is discarded.
For your Shopify store, there are a number of strategies you can split test for your call to action. Some of them are as follows:
- Testing different colors for the CTA button.
- Using different wording for the message below the call-to-action button. For example, you could either use 60% off for 48 hours or $30 off for 48 hours. Similarly, you can use different wording for the trigger message (point 3)
- Different placement of the “add to cart” button on the product page to check out which placement works best.
The above were just a few examples of using A/B testing. You can test out anything of your choice.
7. Create an exit pop up message
Let’s admit and be realistic. Not all customers who add to the cart would be purchasing the product. Some of them would abandon the cart due to numerous reasons.
You can’t force all of them to complete the transaction. However, you can use an exit pop-up to decrease the abandonment rate and hence increase the chances of conversion.
For example, when the customer exits, a pop-up message appears offering some discount on the products which are in the cart of the customer.
It’s time to optimize your store
Now that you know the 7 tweaks to optimize your call to action for the Shopify store, it is time to implement them. For example, adding a special offer below your call to action button and ensuring that the customer can purchase the product with minimum clicks, among other things.
As you must have realized, these are not very difficult to implement and also don’t require a huge budget, apart from implementing the chatbot.
However, if you are short on budget, you don’t necessarily need a bot. Rather, you can use a CSR to answer customer queries.
Make sure to use A/B testing (point 6) before finalizing any changes. This will ensure that the change you have implemented really brings in the results.
So, which of the above tweaks is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.
If you are still confused about how to apply the above tweaks to optimize your Shopify stores, look no further. We, at HappyPoints, are there to assist.
