If you have a steady influx of traffic to your ecommerce website, that does not guarantee that you can boast of having successful sales numbers. After all, there is really no point in having thousands of site visitors if only a few of them become customers, right?
Given how competitive the ecommerce market is, brands are looking to get the most out of the available resources and make more money.
The question is, how does one achieve that? Well, if you have a website up and running, and the products are added to it as well, that should be a good start. What follows next might seem a bit trickier.
Customer Perks
Sometimes, customers need that hook to catch their attention. Offering perks may seem like a loss in the long run, but if you can acquire customers by giving them special treatment, you would end up benefiting rather than losing.
For example, you could offer free shipping for their first purchase. According to 3DCart, about 3 in five customers abandon their online shopping cart because of extra costs, including shipping.
Discounts are another effective method. Seeing those 10% or 15% off banners is bound to pique interest.
Finally, you have complimentary gifts. The gifts you include in the package could vary from knick-knacks like calendars, keychains, stickers to customized backpacks on demand, t-shirts, hoodies, and accessories.
The goal is to offer something a custom might not expect. If there is an extra that comes with a purchase, they would be more inclined to spend money on your store rather than looking elsewhere.
Search Engine Optimization
About 71% of shoppers believe they will get a better deal online than in stores. So what do they do instead of bothering with local brick-and-mortar stores? That’s right, take out their smartphone or get to their computer and search for available services on the internet.
However, if you have poor search engine optimization, you will not show up on the first pages on Google. The odds of someone taking their time to scroll through hundreds of different ecommerce sites are quite low.
Investing in a solid SEO campaign does more than just bringing relevant traffic to your website that is more likely to convert. Your business would also benefit from brand exposure, content elevation, lowered paid search costs, and lasting value creation.
It is worth mentioning that search engine optimization is a long-term investment, but one that is valuable enough to spend your resources on.
The Fear of Missing Out
Some would argue that creating the fear of missing out is unethical. Regardless, businesses that do so seem to be the ones benefiting from their actions.
How do you create the fear of missing out on your store? It is quite simple. Whenever someone browses a product, make sure that they receive a notification about how there are only a few copies of the product left in the store. A counter of how many people are currently browsing the same item would make an impact as well.
Besides, you could also offer limited discounts. Create a banner that indicates for how long the sale will be happening. If someone visits the website and sees that there are only a few hours left to get a great deal, they will be incentivized to check the product and likely purchase it. After all, they might beat themselves up for missing out on an excellent deal.
Mobile Optimization
Smartphone and tablet users make about half of the internet traffic. Mobile optimization should be one of the priorities when you are looking to improve your ecommerce site.
Imagine someone using their smartphone and landing on a product page. If the page is not working properly on their mobile device, this person will not bother spending any time and leave the website.
Poor mobile optimization will also be a hindrance to your online store’s results on search engines. On the other hand, having a properly optimized site will have the opposite effect.
While there are mobile-friendly website themes ready for your use, you should not rely on them completely. After you install a theme on a website, make sure to test the website with as many different mobile devices as you can. Ask other people for help if you cannot do this alone.
There is a chance that a page or two might not be responsive on certain smartphones or tablets, meaning that you will need to spend some time fixing the theme or getting a bug-free replacement theme.
If you notice that the majority of your website traffic is coming from mobile devices, you may start thinking about app development. Offering your customers Android and iOS apps would make it easier for them to shop on smartphones and tablets.
Attractive Website
Often underrated, an attractive web design also plays a prominent role. The problem is that there are so many ecommerce stores, and when you really think about it, most of them look more or less the same.
Moreover, if you go over the top with creating a unique site, it may backfire because visitors may be put off by it. Those who have been shopping online for a long time have developed certain expectations.
Hiring a professional website designer would cost money, but if you feel like your current platform is not up to par with other stores, particularly your competition, you might have no other choice.
It is also worth mentioning that a website should have a reasonable loading time. If it takes longer than a couple of seconds for a page to load, expect that most of the site visitors will leave the store before spending any money.
Effective Customer Support
Poor customer support could be the deciding factor of struggling with online traffic conversions.
Someone new to your online store might have a lot of questions. And not finding answers in a reasonable amount of time could be the one thing that encourages them to leave the website.
Having 24/7 customer support is pretty much an imperative these days for ecommerce websites. And the support should be available on more channels than just a website’s live chat.
Customers expect to get a quick response after sending an email or a message on social media, not to mention someone available on the phone.
Whether you are hiring someone you know or a freelancer from another country to accommodate a different time zone, make sure that customer support employees have the right training and understand their duties.
One final thing to note about this point is that not every visitor will be keen to interact with customer support. Instead, they would rather seek answers themselves. Therefore, a detailed FAQ page would be a neat addition to the website.
Simple and Flexible Checkout Process
Do not overcomplicate the checkout process by adding multiple pages and asking customers to submit more information than necessary. It should be a one-page operation. The benefits of a simple checkout include:
- Fewer abandoned shopping carts
- Increased conversions
- Better site performance
- More satisfied customers
In addition to simplicity, you should also offer flexibility. One of the primary reasons why so many shoppers abandon their shopping carts is the lack of payment variety methods.
Credit cards should not be the only option. Including services like Payoneer, PayPal, and Skrill would open doors for customers who do not have a credit card and use eWallet technology instead.
Cryptocurrency is also worth a shout. For some, it is an unreliable gimmick that should not be worth their time. For others, crypto is a means of survival, and they would appreciate online businesses that recognize Bitcoin, Tether, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies as actual currency.
As for whether you would be willing to include crypto as a payment method, it comes down to you. However, keep in mind that some online stores are already accepting cryptocurrency by recognizing its worth.
High-Quality Content
Coming to check new products is not the only reason someone could be visiting your online store. Publishing high-quality content, such as articles, infographics, or videos, would also make people visit the website and spend more time on it.
And when someone spends more time on a website, they start to get attached to the brand and might not feel great about purchasing elsewhere when a product or service is available on your site.
Customer Feedback
Credibility and social proof should also be part of your strategy. The odds are that the lack of feedback from prior customers would discourage people from spending money on your store.
In fact, more than 90 percent of customers read reviews before buying goods online, reports BigCommerce.
Vendasta also carried out an online shopper survey recently and found out that 88 percent of consumers were influenced by reviews when shopping on the internet.
If your goods or services are great, customers will leave positive feedback and help you with marketing. And when someone new stumbles upon your site and notices five-star reviews on a product with detailed reviews from prior customers, they should be pretty happy to spend money on your ecommerce platform.
