It is no cakewalk to entice online shoppers on social media to visit your eCommerce store and purchase what you offer. 

Social media, the entire internet for that matter, is flooded with content and a barrage of ads, all trying so hard to capture the attention of the same audience. Amidst this chaos, brands have to deal with the challenge of turning those curious clicks into successful sales. 

The culprit? Often, it's the landing pages where social traffic touches down. 

Let’s say a potential customer clicks on your ad, intrigued by the deal you promised, only to be met with a mismatched product or overwhelming choices that annoy them. It’s one of the reasons why high bounce rates and low customer acquisition and conversion figures have become the norm. 

In this blog, we’ll look at the status quo of pages where customers land via social media and discuss how you can pump up your conversion rate by providing the right visual experience. 

Let’s dive right in! 

Status quo of pages used to land social media ad traffic and why they don’t convert 

eCommerce brands have stopped going out of the box. Everyone’s picking the conventional route, knowing really well that eCommerce is an industry of high-bounce and low conversion. Take a look at how the conventional route for landing social media traffic demands more strategic effort from eCommerce brands. 

The product details page mess 

When brands direct social media traffic to Product Detail Pages (PDPs), they often inadvertently set the stage for a disheartening performance. Despite being a common practice, this approach frequently results in shockingly high bounce rates and dismal conversion figures. 

Let’s say a potential customer who loved the product shown on the social media ad clicks through, only to find themselves on a Product Detail Page (PDP) overwhelmed with options unrelated to the showcased product. Moreover, if the product shown in the social media ad happens to be out of stock, the journey abruptly ends, leaving the potential customer with a frustrating, dead-end experience. 

This misalignment of expectations and reality can lead to a staggering 90% bounce rate, which shows a sharp disconnect between ad pull and landing page relevance. Furthermore, these PDPs may also suffer from a conversion rate as low as 0.5%, highlighting the inefficiency of winning through this strategy. 

For example, if an ad shows a sleek smartphone, but the subsequent PDP bombards the visitor with a mixed bag of electronics, the likelihood of a swift bounce becomes painfully obvious. 

These appalling metrics highlight the urgent need for a strategic reassessment of the commonly chosen path of directing traffic to Product Detail Pages. 

A maze of deals on campaign landing pages 

Imagine you are a customer who’s drawn in by an ad promising a 30% discount across the entire product range. 

If the campaign landing page emphasizes only a single product or limits the discount to a specific category, you may feel misled. What will you do? You’re most likely to abandon the page without making a purchase. 

This mismatch again shows the importance of aligning campaign promises with the content of the dedicated landing page. 

So, crafting custom landing pages for specific ad campaigns may seem like a strategic move, but if it leads to a mismatch between intent and content — avoid it. It leads to frustration and, hence, prompts a swift exit. 

Choice paralysis on the homepage 

The homepage, often considered the gateway to a brand's offerings, can unintentionally become a stumbling block for potential conversions. 

A homepage, in most cases, is cluttered with an extensive range of products, deals, and categories. While the intention is to showcase the brand's diversity, the overwhelming number of choices can lead to decision paralysis for the visitor. 

For example, an online electronics store featuring many products on its homepage—ranging from laptops and cameras to headphones and smartwatches—may overwhelm visitors. 

The paradox of choice sets in, making it challenging for users to make a decision. Rather than facilitating a smooth conversion journey, the abundance of options may result in visitors bouncing off without making a purchase. 

This tells you why you need a more curated and focused approach to homepage design, ensuring a user-friendly experience that guides visitors toward meaningful conversions. 

Four steps to create great visual experiences that lead to conversion 

Now that we know the pitfalls of mismatched landing pages, it's evident that tackling the increasing bounce rates and diminishing conversion rates requires a strategic overhaul. 

By optimizing the visual experiences on your eCommerce store, you can create a seamless journey for customers to go from click to conversion. Follow the steps below to ensure your customers land smoothly on your pages and find precisely what they’re looking for: 

1. Connect visually with the social traffic 

A picture truly speaks louder than words. The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, which makes them the core of our first step to increasing conversions. 

One of the biggest reasons why social media users click links is because they like the image they saw in the ad. Now, in your ad, there can be multiple products, which means multiple intents. So, you must ensure that the page customers land on caters to all the possible intents of the ad for the highest chances of conversion. 

More than 55% of online shoppers express frustration when they can't find the product they clicked on from social media or if it looks significantly different. And in most cases, they can’t find the product because the image is not the same. So, you also have to ensure that you’re mirroring the campaign's imagery on the landing page. 

For example, a user clicks on an ad featuring a handy backpack. To ensure a seamless conversion, you should use the same backpack image on the landing page. This consistency assures the visitor they're on the right path, which significantly reduces the risk of confusion. 

Furthermore, if the ad shows multiple products, strategically deconstruct the image on the landing page, providing visual cues that guide visitors to easily explore related products. This will ensure that even if the customer doesn’t like your primary product, you can still acquire them with other products shown in the ad. 

2. Streamline discovery and purchase of promoted products 

While it might seem like stating the obvious, a crucial step toward increased conversions is ensuring the effortless discovery and purchase of all the spotlighted products in your campaign. 

Despite its apparent simplicity, brands often don’t think about this step, resulting in a common failure when advertising on social media. 

Let’s say you use an eye-catching lifestyle image to promote a specific product, a vibrant butterfly T-shirt. The challenge arises when this visually appealing image also features additional items, creating a potential maze for the eager shopper. This misalignment between promotional intent and the user's ability to find and purchase the showcased product leads to lower conversions than what you would expect. 

Take, for example, a beauty brand showcasing a campaign image with a model gracing various makeup products. If the user clicks through expecting to find and purchase a specific lipstick, complications arise if the promoted image features a variety of makeup items. 

To address this, brands must meticulously align the campaign visuals with the product catalog, ensuring a seamless match that creates a frictionless path from discovery to purchase. This takes away all the confusion, making it easier for customers to find the products and convert. 

3. Cater to multiple intents 

While conventional wisdom in conversion optimization advocates for minimizing distractions, social media discovery requires a nuanced approach. 

Many visitors arriving from social ads are at the outset of their buying journey, which requires a balance between simplicity for ready-to-buy customers and exploration for those still in the discovery phase. 

For instance, imagine an ad featuring a new tech gadget. A customer ready to make a purchase should easily hit the "Add to Cart" option. However, knowing that others might be exploring the brand or seeking similar products, providing a path for them to find related content or view more social content becomes crucial. 

You have to understand the various intents of customers at different familiarity levels with the brand. By identifying potential intents tied to specific products, categories, or exploratory content, you can cater to a broader audience. This approach ensures that customers find what they're looking for, whether it's a direct purchase or a nurturing exploration of the brand's offerings. 

4. Don’t give dead ends to customers 

Avoiding dead ends is crucial to getting rid of high bounce rates and optimizing the equation of customer acquisition. It's not just about preventing exits; it's about guiding visitors toward relevant destinations with precision. 

You have to ensure that within one click of landing, they encounter content that resonates. This isn't only about showing products; it extends to brand content, especially social content that reinforces the connection. 

Shopping journeys often involve loops and returns, emphasizing the need for navigation back to the initial landing point to prevent customers from feeling adrift. 

Let’s say a user clicks on an ad featuring a limited-edition shoe. You can strategically place a link seamlessly that takes them to a landing page showing the promoted product and related items, brand stories, and engaging social content. 

With the help of SimplicityDX's Campaign Store, you can prevent dead ends and fundamentally change customer acquisition dynamics by providing a storefront tailored to varied intents, ultimately ensuring a smoother path to conversions. 

Convert more with SimplicityDX’s Campaign Store 

SimplicityDX's Campaign Store is the game-changer for eCommerce brands to improve their conversion rate. Campaign Stores act as a bridge to converge social media and eCommerce stores, meeting customers halfway to deliver an immersive and seamless shopping experience. 

Imagine your visitors clicking through and encountering the same engaging content they found on social media, now transformed into a shoppable storefront. 

With deep integration into both social and commerce platforms, SimplicityDX's Campaign Store simplifies and accelerates the creation of compelling landing experiences. These experiences reassure visitors they're in the right place and include onward navigation to keep them engaged. 

Want more conversions? Book a demo today!