In today’s internet driven society, the market for online shopping has grown at an exponential rate and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Consumers are demanding more than ever: they want convenience, affordability and a range of items that meet their needs. If your ecommerce website doesn’t give them what they’re looking for, you can be assured that a competitor’s website will.
Approximately 87% of U.K. consumers have bought at least one product online in the last 12 months, demonstrating the enormity of the online market that ecommerce businesses need to be capitalising on. But competition is tough and the online marketplace is becoming an increasingly hard space to last in. To help you, we’ve come up with 8 tips that will help your ecommerce website thrive and survive.
1. Offer Free Delivery
There’s something about free delivery that motivates us to buy and secures that conversion from visitor to buyer. We’re all looking for deals when we visit an ecommerce website and we’ve all been fixated on buying something until reaching the final stage at checkout and being put off by a hefting shipping charge. Buyers are more incentivised by free delivery than a discount on the total shopping basket so if you want to avoid abandoned shopping carts, offer free delivery and emblazon it loud and clear on your homepage.
2. Identify Your USP and Sell It
Knowing your demographic is so important: what they want, what they expect and what they need. This would have been what helped you identify your Unique Selling Point (USP). You probably started your business because you thought you could bring something new and different to your market. If you’ve not established your USP then you need to determine what it is in order to set yourself apart from your competitors. Knowing your company and representing it proudly will inspire customers to buy from you and help you carve out a reliable, trustworthy brand image that will convert clicks into sales.
3. Ensure Industry-Standard Security Measures are in Place
Any online transactions must be protected by the proper security payment options. Customers will be more inclined to buy from you if they can see that all transactions are secure. Clearly displaying your secure payment options will give them peace of mind and give you a much greater chance of securing a sale.
4. A Seamless Experience to the Shopping Cart
If the shopping experience is too complicated and requires a lot of effort on their part, they will lose interest and you’ll probably lose a sale opportunity. You have to make an effort to ensure that customers can get to where they need to in as few clicks as possible in order to maximise user experience and provide a streamlined, hassle-free customer experience.
5. High Quality, Optimised Photos
Your website is the platform from which you’ll sell your products and often the only chance you have of reaching the majority of your customers. As customers can’t hold the product in their hands and get a feel for them before buying, your pictures have to clearly illustrate the quality of the products and reassure the customers that they’re buying something worth their money. Using high-quality images from various angles is key, and all images must be correctly optimised so that your website loads quickly and gets Google’s approval.
6. Encourage Customer Reviews
Customers only buy from companies they can trust. Seeing positive reviews from other people will reassure customers that they’re buying something of quality. Reviews of products are regarded as an essential element of ecommerce sites as they help remove anxieties about online purchases. Customer reviews also benefit SEO by creating fresh content and we all know how much Google loves relevant content.
7. Always Follow Up Abandoned Shopping Carts
Although customers place items in their cart as they browse ecommerce sites, most of them drop out and fail to commit to a sale. Crafting a friendly follow-up email that's sent out as soon as possible after a shopping cart has been abandoned can help secure a sale whilst the items are still on the customers mind. Customising the email to contain certain products or special offers can encourage the customer to go back and make a purchase. Providing a direct link back to the abandoned shopping cart is also an effective way of reducing shopping cart abandonment rates as it takes them to where they were before they changed their mind at the last minute. Syncing follow-up emails with Google Analytics can help you measure the success of the emails and understand your customer’s preferences: data that you can use to increase conversion rates in the future.
8. Be Honest and Transparent
All important details such as contact information have to be displayed clearly and accurately by law. Buyer confidence can be increased by including content that answers questions they might have. Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and ask yourself what you’d want to know before making a purchase. Then, formulate a FAQ page that is clearly visible on your homepage and ensure that the page is giving the customer all the information they need to inspire a purchase. Always be open, honest and upfront, and your customers will reward you for it. For ecommerce businesses, their websites are the focal point of their engagement with customers. It’s so important that ecommerce websites tick all the boxes for maximising user experience because if they don’t, they’ll miss out attracting so many potential new customers. Our web designers specialise in creating ecommerce websites that give your target audience what they’re looking for, get in touch with them here.
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