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Do a quick site speed test on Pingdom or GMetrix to quickly see how fast your site loads. For every second your page takes to load you will lose around 7% of conversions.

After working on hundreds of websites over the last decade, I can tell you that around 90% of the time your site photos are the problem, followed closely by the rest of your HTTP requests.

Most developers remember to optimize the site photos with a great tool like TinyPNG, but they forget to change the image resolution.

My three golden rules for website photos:

If youre selling products or services online, your funnel will most likely look something like this:

Product Page > Add to Cart > Checkout Page> Order Confirmation

The more hassle-free you can make this flow, the more likely you are to convert. For this reason, and after spending nearly $800K on split testing for brands in multiple industries, I always recommend marketers to send traffic directly to the product sales page instead of a pre-sales funnel or product category page.

Here are some rule-of-thumb benchmarks I like to see pages reach to qualify them as effective:

A website without a live chat is like a store without a sales assistant. There is nothing as frustrating as having to fill a contact form and wait 13 days for a response by then youve already lost a sale to a competitor.

I would argue that there is an even greater benefit for you as an online store owner than just good customer care: you get direct insight into your customers and their needs.

If Tracey asks about shipping times, you know that your shipping times are not clear enough on your site and you need to make it clearer.

Think about it this way, both a seven-year-old and a foreigner that does not understand a word of the language your site is in needs to be able to answer the most common questions you get on your live chats. A great way to do this is by communicating through well-designed icons.

The best websites dont use FAQ sections simply because their sites answer 99% of possible questions a customer may have simply communicate clearer.

Live chats used to be very costly and reserved for large corporations only. After playing around with live chat widgets for the last five years, I found Tidio to be one of the most effective live chats on the market. I especially like their user-friendly chatbots that can answer customer questions. Ready for bed? Let a chatbot do the answering. The best part is that they actually look good on a site; who doesnt want to say hi to a friendly face.

Heat mapping software uses user mouse movements, taps, and clicks to determine what actions users are most likely to perform. One of the most powerful tools I found for heat mapping is called Crazy Egg.

I use Crazy Egg to determine where a pages weak points lie. A call to action (CTA) button needs to be a hotspot; if not, try making it stand out more whether through increasing contrast, size, or color and moving it above the fold close to the thumb on mobile devices.

Now that you know where the weak points in your page lie, its time to start an experiment.

A/B testing is the process of testing multiple versions of a web page to see which one is more effective by evenly distributing the traffic between the different variables and actively monitoring conversion rates.

Whenever doing any experiment, it is important to change one variable at a time you will never know what change had a greater effect on the conversion if you change multiple variables.

For on-page split testing, Crazy Egg works like a dream and it has its own visual editor that is compatible with just about every site.

My process of A/B testing is:

A slightly more complex reason someone may not add to the cart is because of a lack of trust. This is usually because of a lack of an SSL certificate, quality product or service images, or even just bad design choices.

Make sure you ask your host to add an SSL certificate to all pages to avoid browsers saying your site is insecure. I highly advise against using trust badges, they frankly make your site look cheap and less trustworthy. Most reputable brands moved away from this approach years ago.

Focus on adding legitimate reviews and customer testimonials. If you already have some, consider moving them closer to the folding point where a user has to start scrolling. Fake reviews are easy to spot instead, get real customers to post on social media and link their posts directly with their social handles. Dont be shy to add different testimonials to your add to cart and checkout pages. Humanize your page by adding faces everywhere you can. According to Topo, adding faces close to your CTA can increase conversions by around 20%.

I like to build trust through elegant design by polishing the finishes on your website and evoking a sense of professionalism that will set you apart from other online stores.

Micro-interactions seal the final ribbon of trust. Animations are increasingly becoming more important to web design. The secret is to make the interactions so subtle that they arent even noticeable but improve the feel of the experience.

This is one of the best presentations I have ever seen on micro-interactions and is well worth a watch if youre a design junky like me.