7 Powerful Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies to Implement

Exit-intent popups are a last-ditch effort to make visitors rethink their decision to leave before they bounce. 

They pop-up just as the user heads for an exit button, leaves the page idle, checks out other browser tabs, or sweeps the cursor across the screen. Then they offer or suggest something that should be tempting – like a discount, access to useful resources, or a free newsletter.  

Modcloth offers discounts if you enter your email address.  

Another good exit pop-up strategy is to offer results to the customer, like Optimonk. This shows the user what they can gain by committing to a purchase and converting.  

If you want to make sure you stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds, you could copy Optinmonster and design an exit pop-up that asks your visitors to allow you to send push notifications. This means that even if your potential customer does navigate away from your page, you can still send them marketing materials.  

Timing is important. You need to make sure your pop-up doesn’t appear the second they arrive on your page, but you also don’t want to wait too long, otherwise you run the risk of losing your customer!

For the most part, exit pop-ups can boost your conversion rate by 2.87%. That might not sound like a lot, but over time it really adds up! And for the ones that are really well-thought out, they can boost up to 20%.

Here are some tips for writing impactful exit pop-ups:   

• Keep the message clear and as short as possible.  
• Make the headline stand out.
• Include a compelling call to action (CTAs) in an eye-catching color.  
• Make the offer extremely tempting!  
• Make sure if the customer has already converted that they don’t get any more exit pop-ups. 

Limited-time offers and countdown timers create a sense of urgency by implying scarcity and tapping into the fear of missing out that we all experience. Countdown timers work particularly well. One recent marketing analysis of 20 million popup views found that the countdown timer converted 112% better than campaigns without one.  

So how does this strategy look online? BetaBrand is a good example of this. On the landing page, it ties a discount to an immediate purchase.  

If you want to be more obvious, you could imitate Steam, who opt for the big sales countdown on its tickets for events.  

But using this conversion rate optimization strategy means you must keep within ethical boundaries. For example, we wouldn’t recommend using this technique to misrepresent real urgency when in fact the deal isn’t only available for a limited time. Some tips to consider:  

• Use this strategy sparingly – no one likes feeling duped or pressured  
• Provide real value   
• Ask yourself if pressured selling is in alignment with your brand  
• Make sure these offers and countdowns are genuine and relevant to your target audience 
• Does your countdown deadline exclude people in different timezones/location from buying on time? 

We’ve all taken a fun, goofy quiz or two on a website like Buzzfeed, right? But interactive quizzes and assessments are also useful conversion tools, engaging users in a fun and interactive way. When done right, they provide personalized experiences which guide customers to the products or services they’re supposed to see. 

Barrel Room’s Wine-identity assessment helps potential customers figure out which wines will suit them according to their personal tastes and preferences.  

Interactive quizzes are a powerful tool for boosting engagement and conversion rates. They provide value by offering personalized results and recommendations, boosting user experience. They also give you valuable information about your audience, their likes, needs, and preferences.  

No matter what the nature of your business, quizzes can work for you! Chaz Dean has implemented a simple quiz (with the help of Octane AI) to help people figure out the best skin and hair products for them. Including the quiz had hugely positive benefits – it upped the average order value (AOV) by 21% and had a completion rate of 85%!  

Another excellent example of the serious potential of quizzes is Zenni’s interactive quiz – with the help of market reps Req, a simple quiz brought in $1 million, over 29k lead conversions and 9,655% ROI. That’s in just six months.   

Tips for designing quizzes that will keep your audience engaged and guide them to your store:  

• Make sure your quiz is not too long, and user-friendly 
• Offer real value (useful and accurate results)  
• Understand your audience – remember what their interests are. How can you shape the quiz so they have the most fun? How can you work your brand or products into the experience?  
• Keep it short – there’s a reason why most of us don’t want to go to classes when we’re on our sofa. Keep it to ten questions or less 
• Guide users naturally to a conversion with a clear call-to-action – it shouldn’t be clunky!  
• Design the results to recommend different products and services that you offer 

Interactive quizzes need to give value and be user-friendly. The more intuitive the design and easier the navigation, the better. Is the content relevant to the audience? Would they need additional information?  

When customers receive the results of the quiz, it’s important to make sure this includes good feedback, actionable insights, or personalized recommendations or resources.   

Upselling is hard to resist when it’s done right. It involves offering your audience either an upgrade or an add-on to something they’re already buying. Not only does this make buying more really simple, but it’s effective. Amazon gets 35% of its revenue from the “customers who bought this also bought” and “buy it with” one-clicks!  

You can also use upselling after customers have made a purchase, too. It works like this: directly after a customer completes an order, they’re given an offer for a related product or service. The product has to be relevant or complement what they’ve just bought to work best. If you sell vintage jeans, it’s probably not wise to try to upsell motor oil.  

Manssion has an excellent jewelry upselling conversion rate optimization strategy. They sell stacks – if their audience is interested in one bracelet, they recommend two perfect matches. 

In fact, they’ve leaned into this strategy so much that they sell stacks at the front end of the shopping experience too. And combined with the upsell pop-up and AI-generated rules and recommendations, they’ve had an 18.5% increase to AOV. 

It’s a powerful strategy that can boost average order value and overall profits. But knowing your audience is key. Here’s how to do upsells without seeming pushy:  

• Keep it in a similar price range – try to stay within 15-20%. If it’s cheaper, that’s even better  
• Make the process as seamless and convenient as possible, so that it doesn’t feel like it will take up any of the customer’s time  
• Avoid pushy language – phrases like “You might also like…” or “Have you considered…” feel softer.   
• Limit the amount of upselling you do – no one wants to be overwhelmed! 

More Information 

• A lot of upselling is done on your product pages, so if you want to make sure these are fully optimized, check out our guide on How to Optimize Your Product Pages for More Conversions.  
• The checkout page is also a good place for upselling. In our guide to Checkout Page Optimization, we’ll show you how to net all those precious sales!  

Using a good AI-powered chatbot on your website is a great way to connect with customers and increase conversions. They ask the customer what they’re looking for, answer any questions they have, and recommend products that perfectly match the customer’s preferences and buyer behavior. 
Chatbots also operate 24/7, so potential customers on the other side of the world won’t have to wait to get the answers to their questions!  

 Chatbots reduce cart abandonment rates (by 7-25%) because they proactively engage customers, personalize the experience, answer queries in real-time, and guide them through the buying process. 

They also save you time and boost your relationships with your customers, like Benefit discovered when they integrated chatbots into their network. Chatbots answer 1/3rd of customer queries 60% faster than it takes to answer emails. That’s a lot of happy customers coming back!  

And speaking of cosmetic companies, Sephora shows the value of chatbots in countries in other parts of the world. Sephora launched chatbots with a wide range of abilities in Malyasia. On top of asking questions and seeking recommendations, customers could reserve their products and check availability too. Within 12 months, they had 332,000 conversations and the chatbots brought in $30k a month.  

56% of global customers still prefer a real person on the other end of the interaction so it’s best to give them the choice. To help, here are some tips for chatbots including how to balance automation with human touch:  

• It’s best to put the chatbot on your landing page so they’re easy to spot  
• If there’s a way to personalize the conversation with the user’s name, go for it!  
• Let chatbots handle routine queries and tasks and save complex issues or inquiries for humans 
• Design your chatbots with the best human language understanding possible – this makes chat more natural  

Shopping online from international retailers is great – there’s so much interesting stuff out there! But it’s always a bit of a pain if customers can only see the prices in a foreign currency.  

Offering localized pricing and currency conversion on your sight makes your products more accessible for customers and removes one barrier to conversion. Of course, it’s more than currency conversion. It’s also setting prices taking into account purchasing power, the economy, and customer expectations in each of your regions. This makes your offering more tempting, and by showing you care about and consider customers’ local situations, it enhances customer experience.  

Building localized pricing and currency conversion is a great conversion rate optimization strategy. If your website automatically adjusts prices to match the visitor’s local currency, businesses can make the shopping experience more convenient and personalized.  

Filipino fast-food company Jollibee has expanded rapidly because they are very good with localization. A quick glance at their American website (and a pop-up advertising free peach-mango pie!) shows they know how to appeal to American tastes. They’ve grown 20% in North America in the first quarter of 2023.  

So how do you head potential challenges with localization and conversion off at the pass? What considerations do you need to think about? 

• Keep up-to-date with changing exchange rates  
• Check your website builder has built-in tools before you buy external software  
• Comply with different tax regulations/duties and keep the costs upfront – if there’s a tariff, don’t wait until right before payment to tell your customer. Let them know as soon as that product goes into the cart 
• Make sure any images are relevant to the customers’ locations  
• Give your potential customers automatic translations for the language spoken in that country  

Augmented reality (AR) isn’t just for video games. It gives e-commerce customers an immersive and interactive shopping experience that helps them better understand how a product can fit into their lives. 

AR does this by allowing a customer to see products in a realistic way, like whether that new sofa will fit in their living room. Or how clothes will look on their body. Rebecca Minkoff used this strategy and their customers loved AR so much that they were 65% more likely to buy an item.  

We’re not going to say that integrating AR into your online store is going to be an easy conversion rate optimization strategy (though it gets easier all the time!). In fact, if you’re doing it yourself it can be technically challenging and resource-intensive.  

But the potential benefits are significant. Offering customers a more engaging and personalized shopping experience can boost conversions and set your business apart from the competition.  

Plus, it can be used in all sorts of creative ways. Aircards helped create an AR experience using animated versions of the characters from the film Dune. It was cross-platform, and encouraged users to create their own avatars. The result? 16,000 downloads and an average interaction time of over three minutes.  

While AR offers tons of benefits, there are some challenges and technical considerations to think about: 

• Device compatibility (AR is most popularly used on mobile devices)  
• Data privacy issues including physical movements and other biometric data  
• User interface design and ease of user experience  
• Accessibility issues for disabled users  

Make sure your customers understand what they have to do to get the most out of the features and, if you can, work closely with experienced AR developers to ensure seamless integration. Lastly, test, test, test! Rigorous testing allows you to spot any glitches or bugs and catch them early so that it doesn’t interfere with your customer’s experience. 

More Information 

Now we’ve covered all of the top CRO strategies, why not put your site through a CRO audit to help you evaluate and understand how well your site is converting your visitors? Then you can implement some of these techniques to help boost your sales! 

We all know that ecommerce moves fast. Your potential customers are distracted by a lot of online noise and tons of your competitors. Online store owners need as much help as possible to help customers to convert to paying customers. And that means strong conversion rate optimization strategies.

Some of the best strategies to boost conversion include:  

• Exit-Intent Popups with Offers 
• Limited-Time Offers and Countdown Timers 
• Interactive Quizzes and Assessments
• One-Click Upsells 
• Chatbots for Product Recommendations 
• Localized Pricing and Currency Conversion 
• Augmented Reality (AR) Product Visualization 

There’s no shortage of strategies available to boost your conversions. No matter which options you choose, the best strategy for you is one that makes sense for both your brand and your target audience.  

And to optimize which strategies you choose, constantly check and adjust them. Experiment and test these strategies. CRO is dynamic, so staying flexible will give you leverage over your competition.  

The more you refine for your audience, the better the chance they’ll stick around and become long-term customers. It’s all in your hands!