Low Conversion Rate? Conduct a Shopify Website Diagnostics

Diagnosing Your Shopify Store for Low Conversion Rates #

If you're experiencing low conversion rates on your Shopify store, it's time to conduct a thorough diagnostic analysis. By identifying and fixing issues that are causing low conversions, you can improve your store's performance and increase sales.

You can do it yourself reading different random articles and trying to apply the tips, it is similar to doing self-surgery watching TikTok short videos, or you can hire professionals to do it for you. For professional Shopify CRO services, we're here to help.

Understanding the Warning Signs #

Symptoms that my Shopify store needs a diagnostic #

We like to bring this analogy to help you understand the importance of a diagnostic for your Shopify store. Imagine you are driving a car and you notice that the engine light is on. You could ignore it and keep driving, but that could lead to a breakdown or more serious issues down the road.

The same goes for your Shopify store. If you're experiencing low conversion rates, slow page load times, or other issues, it's important to take it to a garage for a diagnostic.

So the main symptoms that your Shopify store needs a diagnostic are:

• Low conversion rates
• High bounce rates
• Slow page load times
• Poor user experience
• Low search engine rankings
• High cart abandonment rates

Diagnostic Deep Dive #

Let's take a closer look at each of these symptoms and what they could mean for your Shopify store.

Finding the main Shopify store issues #

Let's go through the aforementioned symptoms and see what could be the main issues causing them:

Low conversion rates #

We could easily have this as a "parent" issue, as the rest can be a reason for low conversion rates.

As we have talked about the symptoms, one of the first indicators can be this one, because not every site owner checks the site speed or organic traffic drop, but they will immediately notice that the sales are down.

So, if you did not change any major thing in your store and the sales are down, then, my friend, you have a problem. We are not trying to scare you to sell our services, but if your Shopify sales are down then we have to find the reason and our Shopify Plus Agency is focused on that - to find the reason and fix it.

Okay, let's go to the next one.

High bounce rates #

We assume that you or your team use some analytics tool, like Google Analytics, or visual analytics tool, like Hotjar, and you have noticed that the bounce rate is high.

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page, or stay on the site for a very short period of time.

From our experience, the high bounce rate can be caused by "bad flow" of the website design, blocking popups, breaking sections, or simply the content is not interesting for the visitors.

Please remember if you recently added any new apps for popups, or changed the design.

Have a look at your page in 2x or 3x speed; imagine your actions are speeded up, just visit your site and start to scroll down very fast without paying too much attention, and you will see what real customers are doing. If there is nothing catchy, or the natural flow is broken, and you have a feeling of discomfort, then something is off there. This trick is very useful, and we use it a lot.

Slow page load times #

Oh, slow page, the most common issue that we see in our Shopify Audit requests.

Sitting in your fancy office, with a high-speed internet connection, you may not notice that your site is slow, but your customers do. Well, we have to bring you back to reality, the reality is that the majority of the world is not as lucky as you are, and they have slow internet connections, and they are not patient.

Majority of our customers are just sitting in food courts, or on public transport, and they are trying to check some products, and if your site is slow, they will leave.

You probably think people are buying the thing fully prepared, in comfortable conditions, but no, first customers are just checking without any intention to buy right away, they are just exploring, and if your site is slow, they will just not even explore your website, you will lose them.

Our Shopify Full Website Audit includes all technical and site speed issues in its report, so if you are interested, you can check it out.

If you are interested just in SEO Audit, you can check our Shopify SEO Audit.

Poor user experience #

This is a very broad term, but we will try to explain it in a simple way.

"Make that "Add to Cart" happen... More Often"

Imagine you are in a store, and you are looking for a specific product, but you can't find it, and you are looking for the staff to help you, but there is no one around.

The same goes for your Shopify store, if the customers can't find what they are looking for, or they have to click multiple times to find the product, or the checkout process is too complicated, then you have a poor user experience.

Most of the time, the buying journey is 3 steps in most of the stores:

• High level information about the product/products - Homepage, collection page, etc.
• Lower level information about the product/products - More details, reviews, etc.
• Cart and checkout - The final step.

If you have more steps, or the steps are not clear, then you have a poor user experience.

During each of those steps the expected action should be achieved without any distractions.

Most common mistakes are happening in the product pages, where the ATC button is not visible, or the product images are not clear, or the product description is not clear. There are convincing graphics or information to make the customer add the product to the cart.

This is where our "Make that 'Add to Cart' happen... More Often" comes in place.

Another issue is too long AI-generated product descriptions, or exactly the opposite, too short product descriptions.

Guys, you have to find the balance, and we can help you with that. We have seen a lot during our years of experience, and we can help you to improve your user experience.

Low search engine rankings #

Okay guys, this is going to be tricky, search engine ranking issues are always tricky, because there can be at least 28 days delay between the reason and the effect.

Google can index your site today, but the effect can be seen in 28 days.

So, if you see the drop now, it doesn't mean that the issue is now, it can be from 28 days ago.

Do you have an SEO team who is monitoring this on a daily basis? If not, then you have to hire someone to do it for you. We have a Shopify SEO Audit service, and we can help you with that.

But, to give you some hints, the most common issues are:

• Duplicate content - your product descriptions are the same as the manufacturer's descriptions.
• Site performance - slow site speed - Yes, Google is checking this very hard. If you installed some apps, then Google will rank you lower than the equivalent site with faster site speed.
• Lack of JSON-LD - Google loves structured data, and if you don't have it, then you are missing a lot.
• Lack of backlinks - Check if you recently lost some backlinks, maybe you collaborated with some influencer, and they removed the link, or the link is broken. You should always keep tracking your backlinks.

Use some tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush to monitor SEO health of your site, and if you see some drops, then you have to act fast.

High cart abandonment rates #

At least this one is not that tricky as the SEO issues.

Customer added product to the cart, and then they left. Why? Or they started the checkout process, and then they left. Why?

First thing we/you should check are the technical issues, like whether the checkout process is too long, or the payment gateways are not working, or the shipping rates are too high. Or if the cart drawer is opening properly; Shopify has this cart drawer issue very often especially if some inexperienced developer is working on the site.

Check not only in your personal devices, but also in the devices of your friends, or family, in different Operating Systems, and different browsers.

Next Steps #

Honestly this is not the whole checklist for Shopify website diagnosis, but these are the most common issues that we see in our Shopify Audit requests.

We have create a free Shopify Website Checklist for you, you can have a quick look at it, and see if you are missing something.

If you want just a Shopify search engine optimization checklist, you can check our Shopify SEO Checklist.

Running an online business is not easy, if it was easy then every second big mouth friend of yours would be a millionaire. You need to learn how to manage the processes, trying to do everything by yourself will take your time, the time that you could spend on the things that you are good at.

It is the art of delegation, and we are here to help you with that.

You can request a free quote for your Shopify needs in your custom Shopify Development page. We are extremely fast and motivated.