Do you know that 79% of customers who are dissatisfied with your website performance are less likely to buy from your site again? Apart from losing customers, you certainly don’t want your website to crash during a high-volume shopping day like Black Friday.

Even if your site doesn’t crash, slow speed will mess up conversions too.

Apparently, mobile users complain about slow page load speed more than site crashes, according to Mobile 1st. A load time over four seconds will likely cause serious customer dissatisfaction and abandonment.

A few useful tips to correct this issue include:

• compressing and reducing image file sizes
• using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• improving or minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on your site

Currently, mobile accounts for more than 67.2% of all e-commerce globally.

Therefore, if your site isn’t easy to use on mobile, you’ll be missing out on approximately half of your potential conversions.

Fortunately, you can correct that just by the design of your website.

Here, simplicity is key. Get rid of pop-ups and text-blocking ads. Remove unnecessary features that don’t directly enhance user experience. Don’t use flash and make everything as clear as possible.

The design should be so simple that someone using your site on mobile can make a purchase with one or two clicks.

Ratings and reviews will add valuable social proof for your online store.

Surprisingly, they don’t always need to be positive.

Spiegel Research Center and PowerReviews carried out a study which revealed that negative online reviews can be equally helpful. In fact, products with ratings close to 5.0 on a five-star rating system are viewed with skepticism. Customers consider them to be too good to be true.

The ideal average rating is between 4.0 and 4.7.

Reviews can give potential buyers a new perspective of a product, beyond what you present in the product description. This may give them the added push to buy it. Moreover, people are more likely to trust the words of other customers more than what the seller says.

Therefore, reviews play a critical role in convincing more people to buy.

Free shipping is the top most incentive for 9 out of 10 consumers shopping online.

However, free shipping is sure to cut into your profit margins.

To offer this valuable incentive and still remain profitable, you can apply various strategies, including:

• Set specific terms on the delivery method and destination. For instance, only ground delivery within specific regions.
• Free shipping with minimum order value thresholds to ensure profitability, especially for products with low profit margins.
• Free shipping on certain items that have greater margins or specific items that people are more likely to buy with free shipping.
• Free shipping during certain seasons such as holidays when competition and sales volumes are high.
• Free shipping to a local brick and mortar store instead of shipping to the customers’ doorstep.
• Fee-based member program in exchange for free shipping.
• Free shipping to the most loyal customers.
• Free shipping on returns.
• Flat-rate shipping, to encourage larger orders.

The right product research tool can help you identify products that people want to buy. This will help you avoid the hassle of trying out multiple products.

A particularly useful tool is E-sniper.

This tool helps you identify top-trending products based on the performance of other online stores. It will provide insights from product adverts run by other sellers so you can gauge just how successful those marketing campaigns are.

By having such an insightful tool, you won’t need to spend hours sifting through hundreds of products to find one that might sell. Instead, you can base your decision on the performance of products sold by other online retailers.

The tool also provides insights on the most relevant influencers for specific products and niches. This way, you can focus your marketing efforts on the right personalities that can deliver the highest possible conversion rates.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “How long does it take to improve conversion rate after applying these nifty tactics?”

Well, that depends on the level of impact from the strategies you apply. If such an issue as site speed had a major negative effect on conversion rate, correcting it can increase conversion even within one day.

On the other hand, a strategy like generating reviews can take several weeks or months in order to get genuine reviews from multiple satisfied customers.