70 conversion optimization tips for a Magento shop

E-commerce has become one of the best ways to sell products today. The Magento application is one of the biggest shopping platforms. In this checklist we like to show you how to become individual and more successful. Your competitors are not sleeping and a good communication between your Magento shop and the visitors decides about the success. The checklist will help you on how to convert a visitor into a shopper and how to make your business more profitable. Often there are only small changes needed to reach the goal, because you have done a lot of tuning before.
Start / Home Site Optimization

1. Show your bestsellers on home pageYou can find your bestsellers at Magento Backend: Reports->Products->Bestsellers
2. Offer more than an order buttonNot every customer likes to do an online purchase, often older customers, which mostly do not trust the internet, like to do there purchase by phone, fax or mail.
3. Show a video of your company on your home pageTrust is a very big aspect, which turns a visitor into a shopper. Showing your company, your team and how you work, helps to get a higher trust. Creating a nice video is not expensive and takes only some hours.
4. Localize your Magento shop to specific countriesWhen you sale products international, make sure that your customers understand, that you offer an international shipping. For this you can use an identification by IP and redirect them to a storeview in their language. For example, an US customer with a US IP goes to www.your-shop.com/us
   Navigation Optimization
5. Category structuresThe number of categories should correspond with your inventory. We only recommend to create a category, when you have a minimum of 20 products in it. Also you should try to have as less as possible sub categories. Too much categories can confuse the visitor.
6. Sort category structure by popularityCategories with a higher popularity should be on top! You can use google analytics to find best clicked categories.
7. Create categories names based on what people are searching forTo find the best category names, you can use names which your customers are searching for.
   Go to Standard Reporting-> Content-> Site Search -> Search Terms
   A good alternative could be to do a research on ebay or amazon. Keep in mind, that these platforms spend millions per year for just getting a perfect sorting and naming on their platforms.
8. Use a Compelling Business Tag lineCreate a short text under your logo. Please note, that this business tag line gets the same attention as your logo. This line could be a summarize of the experience you are offering.
9. USP ‘Unique Selling Points’A strategically presented USP helps visitors to break the „mental barrier“. A great USP can be:
   Easy Returns, Free Shipping, Price Guarantee, Risk Free Shopping or the count of Facebook likes.
   Product Search Optimization
10. Test your search for accuracyOften users search for the same products in singular or plural. The search result should be the same!
    If a product is not shown in the search results as it should be, you can add product tags by hand at:
    Magento backend at: Catalog-> Tags -> „Add a new Tag“
    There you can fill in the search tag and place it to the product.
11. Implement an intelligent searchFor shops with a big product catalog you should use a better search engine than built in Magento search. For this we recommend to use „solr“ or „elasticsearch“. Just because this is a far too complex thematic, we will write a separate article about shop search in the next weeks.
    Product Page Optimization
12. Take only high quality product imagesThe product image is the most important point on product and listing pages. The product images are the first points visitors will notice, when they are browsing your store. Products with good images will have a better conversion rate than products without images or with images in less quality.
    Pay attention to following facts which generate a better emotional response:
    - Default ( base image) should be the highest quality
    - Do not use generic stock images. It´s better to take actual pictures in best with real persons using/showing your products
    - Try to show more than one image, different angles make a product more „touchable“
    - Try to design a nice photo background ( If you sale a toaster you should put some bread, fresh tomatoes and eggs in the photo background ) A tasty photo has always a higher emotional response!
13. Product’s description- Don´t use standard product description text from the manufactory
    - If you have a multi store, each store view should get its own description
    - Key features of the product should be appear at the beginning as paragraphs bullets
    - Try to keep natural, it´s the user which decides if a product will become a hype!
    - Bullet points help to make information easier to understand
    - Magento offers a short description. Often customers are in hurry, this will be the first case, where a product get customers interest. Additionally, you should pay attention to create an individual summary of the full description.
14. Product Videos for top selling productsOften an image can´t transport the feeling of a product like a video. A video doesn´t need to cost the world, you can try to create it by using your smart phone. More important is, that you stay natural!
15. No Surprise on product pageOften visitors leave a shop, because information is not shown correctly or is missing.
    This should be checked:
    - Price must be shown on the product page
    - Price should be shown in large, bold formatting or different colors
    - Shipping and handling price should be shown directly under the product price
    - The checkout process should be also no surprise, all information must be there, before the customer adds the product to shopping cart
    - Do not add additional cost in the checkout process
    - Show the count of product stock!
16. Show the Product delivery time
17. Allow to select delivery date in check out
18. Enable “Out Of Stock”-NotificationIn best do not show products, which are out of stock.
19. Invite customers to leave reviews for bought products
20. Higher trust through relevant information to turn visitors into shoppers- Security: Let the visitor know that your magento shop is secure and that their privacy will not compromised
    - Accurate shipping & tax details
    - Offer different payment methods and show them
    
    - Additional information about your products, company like FAQs can help to reduce a break in check out.
    Checkout process optimization
21. Persistent shopping shopping cartCustomers often add products to shopping cart, but they do the checkout some days later. Here your cookie lifetime should be high enough, that the shopping shopping cart is still full, if the customer returns after some days.
22. Make sure, that the user doesn´t need to enter same information twice in checkout processA visitor doesn´t like to spend much time for the check out. If the same information must be filled out twice, the user gets nerved and often they stop their purchase.
23. Preserve information on a validation errorNobody likes to enter all information again, when a needed field was not filled.
24. Try to reduce the needed fields ( * ) as much as possible
25. Write example information in the needed fields ( Name: John Smith )
26. All fields should have labels
27. The checkout form should be linearFor this you can find very good examples at companies like amazon, or apple shop. In this case we wouldn´t recommend to try to create a complete new way of checkout process.
28. The expected length of the input should match to the form field length
29. Each button should be named specificlyAdditional information to your buttons can help to reduce possible irritations
    - „Continue shopping“ – add more products to shopping cart
    - „Continue checkout“ – continue the checkout and pay
30. Offer a guest checkout
31. Do not create an unasked customer account!
32. Display validation errors correctlyOften these errors are displayed at the top of the page, where the customer do not see the information.
    It´s better to mark the error field.
33. Don´t complicate password selectionWe all know, that most customers do not use save passwords, but your shop is not the customers mail account! Try to make it as easy as possible.
34. Checkout button placementMake sure, that the primary buttons do not confuse the user. Here you should place the button on the right or left corner, same color at the bottom of the frame.
35. Set as much as possible checkboxes pre checkedIf you have a standard payment, or default shipping, it should be pre-checked.
36. Redirect to shopping cart after the customer has added the product to shopping cartMake it as easy as possible for your customer to get to checkout. If a customer likes to buy more products, he will „continue shopping“ after he has added a product to shopping cart.
37. Each checkout step should become a logical number; also a one step checkoutBreaking the checkout process into steps makes it easy for the customer to fill the forms. The big benefit of different steps is, that the user can get individual information, for example about the shipping cost or delivering time.>br>
    All steps beginning at shopping cart. ( Automatically redirect after product is add to shopping cart )
    - Step 1 Register or guest checkout
    - Step 2 Shipping Information
    - Step 3 Billing information ( one click solution for copy „shipping information“ )
    - Step 4 Pre selected payment method
    - Step 5 Pay
    - Step 6 Success page with all information about the order
38. Never surprise the customer in checkout by extra costs!
39. The newsletter signup should be not pre checked; let the customer make his own choiceCommunication optimization
40. Meta tagsWrite individual meta tags, in best you do this as you would create adwords commercials.
    The quality makes the difference. The time you spend for these details will help you to get a huge improvement on your online business!
    To create meta tags
41. Check all Auto-responder emailsKeep in mind, that these mails are the first contact to your customer. These mails help to reduce the load of work and the customer gets information about shipping or that an order was placed sucessfully! Also it helps to get a higher trust!
    You should check following things:
    - Company name and logo
    - Mail formatting
    - Support or help center
    - Your social media links like facebook
42. Check your mail sending methodOften mail do not arrive at the customer, because the customer´s mail provider marks your mails as spam. This can have different reasons, for example wrong sending method or just mistakes in mail formatting. To prevent this, you should setup a good mail provider for sending mails like Amazon „SES“ or „mail chimp“.
43. Check each functionality: reset password, registration, or newsletter signup
44. Order confirmation mail should contain only all information about the orderDoing additional marketing should be done in other mails. If you put commercials in the order confirmation mail you only run the risk of confusion.
45. Send shipped informationThis reduces questions from your customer. If you send a tracking number, they can follow online where and when the products will arrive.
46. “Thank you”- messages and success pagesPlease keep in mind, that the difference between a physical local store and your magento shop is not this big! So you can use the chance to get a bit more interaction with your customer, this could be:
    - A request about signup in the newsletter
    - Invitation to social media sharing
    - Asking for feedback
    - Offering support
    - A discount for doing the next purchase
    - A store credit for come back
    - Adding trust points
47. Show your social media, facebook likes or twitter followers
48. Check each error message, 404 page, no search results pageThis pages are built by developers!
    However, often these smart guys have no idea how to communicate with customers and the messages feel a bit harsh. http://www.mgt-commerce.com/blog/wp-...icon_smile.gif
49. Your „about page“ should be an impressive page- share your company story
    - show people behind the company
    - maybe you like to share some facts?
    - write in your natural voice
    - it should be more than just some text
    - be authentic
50. Support – contact – imprint pagesDisplaying a phone number, a street address and the town should be a basic! Your customer is no computer. Often a short touch by phone helps to break the emotional barrier before the customer does the purchase. Alternative options could be a live chat, email or fax.
51. Usability testingUsability tests can´t be done often enough. Just asking some friends and family, is often the first kind of testing, but you can also hire professional testers like http://www.usertesting.com/
    Take care about the test results, redo tests after you have done changes!
    testing, testing, testin
    Speed optimization
    
    Don´t let your customers wait! Every millisecond on page load time counts. High performance is not just good for getting a better SEO, it´s for getting a much better conversion rate. Every page should be fast as possible.
52. JavaScript Reduce JavaScript as much as possible. The browser must parse the JavaScript content. Minimized amount of JavaScript lines speeds up the page load time.
53. CSS Try to clean up your css, often there is a bunch of unneeded lines and rules.
54. Combine JavaScript & CSS files Whenever it´s possible, you should try to combine js & css files.
55. Optimize imagesNormal product images don´t need to have a file size of more than 300kb per image. Unneeded information in jpg header like exif data can be deleted with tools like http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/
56. Combine images into CSS sprites Try to reduce the number of images by combine them into a sprite. A great tool to do this is: http://spriteme.org/
57. Use a CDN for your static content A CDN ( content deliver network ) helps to reduce the load on your server. Also the visitor gets the static content from CDN, which is the nearest to him. We can highly recommend to take amazon´s CDN!
    We have developed a nice tool for amazon´s CDN and Magento
58. Try to use as less as possible third party extensions for your front end It is not the biggest secret, that more than 98% of all third party extensions for Magento are not well developed. Often they generate a performance bottleneck, which will slow down the best servers.
59. Take a server which can handle your Magento shop It will stay a dream to take a shared hosting server for a Magento shop and getting a good performance. A good solution will not cost a lot, it must be done only once right. If you have no well done server configuration it costs you new customers every day and this is expensive!
60. Server configuration
61. Performance bottlenecks by not well developed shop code High performance can only reached if every detail is well configured.
62. Usage of a full page cache
    Shipping and return policy
63. Minimize the shipping time as much as possible
64. Tell the customer the expected date when his product will arrive or give him a tracking number
65. Offer a selectable deliver time in checkout
66. Write a clean and easy understandable refund policy
67. If possible, offer a free shipping
68. Offer different shipping companies
69. Offer express shipping
70. Offer a good return policy

Very good aticle. Thanks

Good thread and tips that clearly explains on tips for a magento store. Thanks!!!

Awesome post. Appreciate the effort. Each and every site owner will be focusing on the conversion. Driving good traffic ti their site and optimizing the site development are main thing for conversion with the help of paid services. If you want to read more to get conversion, please find the link for your future reference: http://apptha.com/blog/ways-to-optim...version-rates/

Yes, nice information sharing by Jaredovi. Every site owner doing this all steps than they definitely get maximum visitor to the site. All this steps are very informative for us and Magneto Community.

Sounding quite good,Basically the thing is all the strategies which are being made regarding it and the sort of tips you have given will help.I guess this is is the way it has to be because there is a need of learning these steps and that works for sure.

Sensible tips these are basically when we get to learn from something there is a need growth chart going high and what you have written can help someone in understanding how appropriately an action is performable so your highlight is good and at the same time appreciable.

Very good article.
thanks!

Helpful content! Keep on sharing this kind of useful information.

Internet business has gotten probably the most ideal approaches to sell items today. The Magento application is one of the greatest shopping stages.