Ezra Firestone has been selling physical products online since 2007. He is now rounding the corner on a decade in his blossoming business. In fact, Ezra is becoming increasingly popular in the eCommerce space. In 2008 and 2009, he was one of America’s top mullet wig retailers.
During the years, he has sold millions of bar stools, gift baskets, dog supplies, skin care products, cosmetics, and a host of other products. Ezra currently leads a team of 50 people and owns and operates a top 100 Shopify store. This year alone, he earned a revenue of a whopping $11 million!
Why is all of the above relevant for you? The answer is simple – if you want to succeed in the highly competitive eCommerce world, you can just copy what Ezra Firestone is doing right now.
The Art of Conversion
You need 3 ingredients to succeed in online commerce:
1. Visibility: People need to know that you exist
2. Conversion: People need to say yes to buying your product once they know about it
3. Repeats: People buying again and again from you
According to Ezra, conversion is the most important of the 3 ingredients. Grasping the art of getting someone to say yes to buying your product is imperative to your success. Ezra has also managed to understand and capitalize on the art of online advertising in order to boost his conversions. He now uses influencers, traditional press, YouTube, Pinterest, joint ventures, and other marketing channels to increase his visibility online and drive high quality conversions.
However, the art of converting is not just about visibility. You can always go on Facebook and Instagram and buy visibility. Instead, the art of converting is all about knowing how to get people to say yes to buying your product once they know it exists. Thus, you should focus on conversion first instead of visibility.
Boosting Conversions by up to 9x
An average conversion rate for an online business is 1%. Ezra has spent close to a decade getting that number to 2%, and guess what – he has managed to get there. In fact, in some cases he has gotten that number to 9%. That means a 900% increase over the traditional conversion rate, or 9 times the standard profit.
To better understand what Ezra has managed to achieve, let’s say that you sell Will Ferrell wigs for $24. If 1000 people a day see your product, at a regular 1% conversion rate you would sell 10 wigs a day, which is $240 a day. Multiply that by a year and you got $87,600 a year from that one product. Now if you implement some of Ezra’s secrets revealed below and you take that conversion rate to 2.5%, you would make $220,000 a year. The difference is huge – an additional $130,000 in income with no extra traffic over a one year period.
This is why Ezra’s business had grown so well and why he has such tremendous success selling physical products online. He has managed to understand how to double or triple the conversion rates for any type of products.
How do you Increase your Conversion Rate?
What Ezra has discovered is really amazing. First time visitors look at around 4 pages per visit, while returning visitors will look at around 6 pages on your site before making a purchase. People are consuming so much more than just your landing or product page. Thus, it is fair to say that you can increase your conversion rate by focusing on improving ALL PAGES on your store.
Here are some of the best conversion practices that you can implement on every page on your website to boost your conversions and make more money from every visitor that reaches your site:
1. Focus on mobile: As of September 2017, 62% of smartphone users preferred to shop online using their mobile phones. eCommerce is going mobile, so you need to have a mobile-optimized store. Now is the right time to be super aggressive about mobile optimization.
The first thing you should do is to give your mobile visitors a mobile page and your desktop visitors a desktop page. You now have the freedom to create less content on mobile and add unique java elements and scripts for an improved mobile experience. You can also add a mobile header to give mobile visitors a more usable version of your site. This decreases bounce rate and entices mobile users to spend more time on the site.
Another improvement you can do on your mobile site is to use larger images for your products and to add an “add to cart” button above the fold. Make sure to remove any navigation links when on a product pop-up page. You only want to add a “return to store” arrow to permit visitors to easily return to the main product page.
On mobile, your pages should be light and should contain minimal information. Using Zipify, you can create your own custom mobile pages which are SEO optimized and load extremely fast. You can also create your own desktop pages and add more content and visual information for users to consume.
2. Communicate in every available media format you have: People prefer to consume content in a wide variety of formats. Thus, every one of your pages must have a video, image, and text. This also includes FAQ pages, Why Buy from Us Pages, and contact pages.
3. Long form left/right design: Every single page must also have a long form left/right design where you are leveraging every available piece of media format that you can.
4. Add a CTA (call to action) in the header: Whether it’s joining a mail list, a club, or an association, make sure to have a unique CTA in the header.
5. Change the color of the cart when there are products inside: This is a great visual tip to help ease the buying process for your customers. Implement it and you will enjoy guaranteed higher conversion rates and lower cart abandonment rate.
6. The Isolation Effect: One of the best ways to increase the conversion rate on all of your site pages is to leverage the “Isolation Effect”. This basically means that you have one unique color on your website that does not exist on any other part of your website. This color should be used on the most important call-to-action buttons.
Conclusion
You can start implementing all of the above strategies on your Shopify stores to enjoy increased conversions, lower bounce rates, and increased customer satisfaction. However, before doing that, stay tuned for the next article where we will showcase Ezra’s best product page conversion practices.
Leave a Reply